We’ll show you how to become an Outsourcing Master with these tips

When I first on boarded clients it took forever to sort out the schedule and to get everything working properly. We all make mistakes when we first start out. I wanted to really understand how the on boarding could be sped up, so I took the time to interview my first few clients. What you see below is lessons they learned when on boarding their first Virtual Assistant and understanding the outsourcing world.

Ask yourself why you want to outsource in the first place?

Reverse engineer the reason why you want extra help in the first place. If you understand where you are headed, then you’ll know what is required to get there. It is easier then to delegate appropriate tasks to your Virtual Assistant.

What don’t you want in an assistant?

This is quite an important question to ask of yourself. When I did my interviews, my clients brought the following to my attention.

• They wanted someone who easily volunteered status of tasks, so they didn’t want someone they had to keep hounding to find out how far things are.
• They wanted someone who was always available. But what they realized after the fact was they never carried that message across when they first interviewed their Virtual Assistant.
• The client didn’t want to make the time to train the VA, so they ended up doing everything themselves. Be prepared to train your Virtual Assistant, it’s the same concept when you on board a new member of the team. This kind of training refers to how you want correspondence dealt with, times you are available, etc. It is not your duty to train your VA on certain apps and general software.

The best way to on board your Virtual Assistant

1. Have a job description ready. This negates missing steps in the support required, plus, you are able to weed out chance-takers.
2. Ask your potential Virtual Assistant to do some tests. This can be anything from a trial test to see how well they communicate, can navigate certain software to personality profiling to ensure that you are a good match to work with. Some of my favorites are Roger Hamilton’s Genius Test and Tony Robbins DISC profile test.
3. Sign a contract. This contract should include a NDA to cover any confidential information you may be sharing with your Virtual Assistant.
4. Check their availability. If you know you’re going to require assistance certain times of the day, or you want your VA to be ready for a quick meeting every morning at 8am, then you need to address is when interviewing her. If you don’t mention it she won’t know that this is a priority for you.
5. Sort out systems. Be sure to give your Virtual Assistant the access she needs to appropriate systems. If you are concerned about sharing passwords, LastPass is a great tool for this. Take the time to take your VA through these systems, especially if they are unique to your business.
6. Be ready to back off. Allow your Virtual Assistant to do what she is great at. We are all control freaks at some point to some extent, however, sometimes wanting control everything can be counterproductive. Make sure your instructions are clear, that they cannot be misinterpreted.

Make sure that you use a template to outsource tasks, again leaving no room for misinterpretation and wasted time. Take the time to take your VA through what you need, how and when, then let her do what she does best, offering support to you, the busy Entrepreneur!