Tersh and Barbara Turley talk about why people fail when it comes to hiring and keeping a virtual assistant. Below is a list of the five most common reasons Barbara sees!
1. You think your VA can do everything.
2. You hire a VA and you expect them to just 'know' your business.
3. You haven't created systems and processes yet for your VAs to properly execute tasks.
4. You didn't guide your VA to success.
5. You squeeze your VA and try to get productive work out of every second you are paying for them.
Key Points in the Conversation with Service Business Mastery:
- It’s not even just about virtual assistants. It’s about how do we maintain control without seeing people or without micromanaging people, giving flexibility without losing structure.
- The VA’s job is to execute process that you have built. Their job is not to develop the process or to think out your strategy or to figure out what’s the best way to get more leads.
- Your job as a business owner is to build these systems, and then, train your people to run the systems.
- Virtual assistance can do really well when there are developed task lists. It’s very clear what tasks they’re actually being assigned to do. And then a process attached to each of those tasks.
- Get simple process develop step by step. You can record a video of yourself doing this, have it documented or save it for future references. So the next time that a certain problem happens six or eight months from now. You’ll have a five or three minute video recording ready versus wasting 20 or 30 minutes trying to figure out process again.
- Try and put some structure and then have a task list that is realistically enough to work in 40 hours and have a project management tool to keep things organize, to monitor each progress of your tasks and to communicate with your team or VA.
- It’s being realistic about what is a project versus what is what is a task as well. And then just delegating those things out effectively. I mean all of this is about being a leader. You’ve got to lead. You are the conductor of the orchestra and the orchestra are looking to you to delegate, to let them know when their moment is or what to do.
- One of the best strategy I put in place was the daily huddle. The basic concept of a huddle meeting is a very short, very targeted meeting that just asks three questions. 1.) What are you working on 2.) What are you planning to work on next, and 3.) Where are you stuck. This strategy unearths all the issues and it clears the gap between your communication and understanding for the whole team.
- You want to encourage everyone to have a voice at the table.