Create and Run a Well Oiled VA Machine

Sep 30, 2009 Executioner

By: Don Fowler

As COO of Realeflow, I am in charge of executing on all
of our major (and minor) business plans. One thing that
I have put into place is successfully utilizing Virtual
Assistants (VA’s) for a ton of different activities at Realeflow
and a couple of our other businesses. Our virtual assistants
are Onshore (US Based) and Offshore (Mostly in the
Philippines).

A lot of my colleagues and some of our customers find
the idea of virtual assistants to be very overwhelming
and have no idea how or where to start. However, over
the last 12 months or so, VA’s have been a “hot” topic in
the Real Estate Investing Community so much so that the
overwhelming aspect has subsided a bit and now people
are taking action.

First, what is a VA?

The definition of a VA is simply someone who works for
you part time or full time offsite. You may be utilizing “VA’s”
now and not classifying them as such. For example, you
may be utilizing a college student during their free time and
letting them work from school, dorm or home. This is the
definition of a VA. We tend to think of VA’s being minimally
paid in 3rd world countries but that is not always the case.
We have several employees that work from home or we
contract with them to do a particular project. In this case,
that outside work is done virtually by an assistant (VA).

What can a VA do?

Basically anything that is computer based. VA’s can do
research projects (comps), organization work (Excel or
Realeflow), setting up appointments, taking incoming
calls, making outbound calls (hot buyers list), and many
other tasks. Most VA’s are not so good with direct e-mail
communication or for that matter, anything that is writing
intensive. VA’s cannot do personal, local tasks for you
which is pretty obvious as they are “virtual” but you’ll find
that having a LOCAL assistant is far more powerful than
an offshore assistant. The local assistant will cost you
10x more but can do all the stuff that takes up your time…

Greg and I have local assistants, Onshore VA’s and Offshore
VA’s and the MOST bang for the buck is the Offshore VA’s by
a long shot. Our offshore VA’s are systematic, full time, and
we have clearly defined roles and responsibilities for each.
We have a “well oiled VA Machine” up and running and I will
delve deeper into that in just a bit.

What should you pay an Offshore VA?

We pay our VA’s on an hourly basis but they work 40 hours
a week. We pay our offshore VA’s $2.88 per hour which is
a little on the high side. Yes, $2.88 is on the high side believe
it or not. All of our VA’s have 4 year college degrees and
most are working on their Masters. Most of our VA’s are
young (under 25), energetic, enthusiastic and very eager
to learn. We have several people that have been with us
for more than a year and plan on being long term VA’s for
us.

We actually developed one of our VA’s to be the manager
and we pay him $3 an hour. Our manager on the ground
is there to be the single point of responsibility if someone
is not performing up to par. Our manager is there to make
sure everyone is performing up to speed. At first, you’ll
probably not have this luxury…

How to RUN a well oiled Virtual Assistant Machine:

Point 1 – Hire slow, fire fast:
Hiring a VA can be very difficult to do as you have to do it
over the phone without any visual cues. To start, you will
need to do a quick search on Google with the following
keywords: Virtual Assistant in X country.

The country preference is up to you but we find a lot of
success in the Philippines. Others swear by India, Eastern
Block Countries, and African countries. It’s really up to you
and who you think you would interact with better.

A couple of interview questions I like to ask are:
1. What types of computer skills do you have and what would
you say is your best?
2. What have you done in the past with your VA agency?
3. How long have you been with your current agency? (if
it’s short, beware…)
4. Where did you go to school and what degree(s) do you
currently have? (You will find many VA’s have more than
one degree and a lot of them go to school during the day
while being your VA at night (daytime for us).
5. What do you do for fun? Did you/Do you play any sports?

In the Philippines we have a lot of basketball and baseball
players. We found that people with team sports backgrounds
do better in a team environment (which we have but may not
be important for your needs).

Firing anyone is tough but don’t feel too bad for the VA if you
need to let them go. They typically get paid by the agency
and the agency will place them with another employer or hire
them for their own purposes until they get placed, so don’t take
it personally if you need to make a change.

Point 2 – Spend time training them:
You can’t expect anyone to succeed if they are not trained
properly. Compounding the problem is these people are
not near you and may not “get” what you are asking them
to do right away. We found that VA’s are reluctant to tell
you they do not know how to do something and very
reluctant to raise potential issues. You will need to spend
extra time training them for sure. One great way to train
is to develop a training course that’s recorded. This could
be as simple as recording your conversations the first time
or as elaborate as creating screen captures with your voice
over it explaining in detail what you want done. Either way,
record it so that if you need to make a change with your VA
or you need another one, you will just need to have your new
VA listen to the recordings and then have them ask questions
later.

Either way, YOU HAVE TO BE DETAIL ORIENTED. Take
NOTHING for granted and spell out every nuance that could
come up. This is critical to the success of your VA and your
business.

A great way to make sure they are ready is to have them
write out the processes they will be doing and how they
will be doing them. Tell them to be detailed and note every
instance where a variable could come up and how they are
going to handle that variable. This document is important
for a couple of reasons:

1. To give you the warm fuzzies that they’re ready to handle
these tasks and they will be done correctly the first time.
You can also gauge their writing abilities, how detail
oriented they are, and an overall feel on what their finished
work looks like.
2. Solidify in the VA’s head exactly what they need to do
and how they are going to accomplish it.
3. You can utilize this for future VA’s in 1 of 2 ways: You
can either give it to the next VA as a document for them
to work from OR better yet, use the original document as
a measuring stick for the new VA. If the document comes
back incomplete or not up to par, you might want to make
the change sooner rather than later. If the document comes
back better, then you might have a superstar on your hands.

Point 3 – Create detailed timesheets:

You’ll find that most VA’s will put in an honest days worth of
work so a standard timesheet is useless. A timesheet that
lists each of their tasks and how long it took is critical though.
The detailed timesheet should be put in place to only make
sure they are working effectively. A lot of times we have found
that our VA’s are doing a task completely backwards or doing
it the “hard way”. You’re not there to monitor how they are
doing a particular task so that’s where the timesheet comes in.
If you see it’s taking an inordinate amount of time to complete
a task, then you should step in and see what they are doing
and how you can fix the issue.

Point 4 – Reward them with Small Bonuses:

You will need to work with the agency first to make sure that
100% of your bonus is going to the employee. Establish this
with the agency before even hiring anyone and make it a part
of your contract with them. If you have a good VA and want to
make them a GREAT VA, reward them with a small bonus. A
$50 kicker is about a weeks worth of wages and they will be
grateful for the bonus. You will see that your VA will work
harder for you just because they know you care. This will go
a long ways to improving your relationship with them and
getting the most out of them. You could also find a long term,
dedicated VA this way if you hand out small bonuses a few
times a year.

Point 5 – Make them feel like a REAL part of your team:

VA’s are people with emotions and most employers treat them
like 2nd class people or worse yet, slaves. If you show some
compassion on the front end, it will go A LONG ways! We Fedex
all of our VA’s a care package when joining. We found that our
male VA’s love the NBA and since we are in Cleveland, we ship
them as much Cleveland Cavalier Gear we can get our hands
on. I can’t tell you how many grateful thank you’s we get from
them. Treating them like a valuable member of your team is
critical and if they see that you care and give a crap, they will
give a crap right back and you will get the most out of them.

If you follow these tips, I think you will be WAY ahead of the
game and have a VA Machine working for you in no time.

More to follow from me, but I hope this first post was helpful.
Please leave any comments or questions and I will make sure
I get back to you.

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Tags: hiring virtual assistants, Real Estate Investing, va's