16-Point Guide To Hiring Your First Part Time Virtual Assistant
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Memo From: Marlon Sanders
Re: Marlon's Marketing Minute for November 15
Hello,
Marlon here.
This week is killer:
Marlon's In-Depth 16-Point Guide To Hiring Your First Part Time
Virtual Assistant Based On How I Hired My Own Virtual Assistants.
I have field-tested answers to these questions:
— Can you afford it?
— Where do you find them?
— How do you work with them?
— How do you save 50% on their pay?
— What country should you hire them from?
— What if their work isn't up to par?
— What skills do they need?
This is NOT theory. This is all based on what I've personally
done.
Save this for reference and use it as a checklist
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Take the article, change the URL in the resource box at the
end to a reseller ID and stick it on your web site, blog,
Facebook blog, Myspace blog, Hub Page, Squidoo lens, or Google
Pages.
Put it up and announce it on Facebook, Twitter, your blog,
email, or whatever else you have.
This IS an article people will want to read. You WILL make
sales from the link in the resource box.
If you don't have a reseller ID, just go to:
http://www.getyourprofits.com and sign up. It only takes
2 minutes.
There are 5 ADS at the end of this ezine. You can replace
all THOSE with reseller links if you want.
Marlon
P.S. Read the announcements…Pimp Your Website Webinar
soon! Also, on the last Ateam call, I tore apart a multi-million
dollar model that is very simple. One short squeeze, one
Camtasia video and forced continuity.
PPS: Other marketers ONLY send you good content during their
product launch. I'm with you every week, motivating, inspiring,
educating. Where are THEY when a product launch isn't going
down?
I'm here every week delivering rock solid content based on years
of experience.
******************************************
Marlon's Marketing Minute
Electronic Newsletter
http://www.promotemarlon.com
Vol. 3, #39, November 15, 2008
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This issue contains:
A. Sponsor Advertisement: Last chance to discover a clever
way to create killer stuff using stock video.
B. Announcements from Marlon (Important)
C. Main Article: Marlon's In-Depth 16-Point Guide To Hiring
Your First Part Time Virtual Assistant Based On How I Hired
My Own Virtual Assistants
D. Services You Can Use
Brought to you by: Marlon Sanders – Publisher
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A. SPONSOR ADVERTISEMENT
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
B. ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM MARLON
One: Follow me on Twitter
http://www.twitter.com/marlonsanders
This way, if you don't get my emails, you get my Twitters.
Two: Ateam Call ROCKED!
The Ateam call this past week ROCKED. If you missed it the
audio will be posted this next week. You need to hear it.
I break down a multi-million dollar model.
Three: AFFILIATES — I'm totally revamping the way you get
your tools and stuff. This is going to 100% rock!
Four: PIMP YOUR WEB SITE WEBINAR
Watch your email. Should be this NEXT week. I'll announce
whose web sites get pimped.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
C. Marlon's In-Depth 16-Point Guide To Hiring Your First Part Time
Virtual Assistant Based On How I Hired My Own Virtual Assisants.
Save this for reference and use it as a checklist
By Marlon Sanders
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Let's talk about hiring your first part time virtual assistant:
— Can you afford it?
— Where do you find them?
— How do you work with them?
— How do you save 50% on their pay?
— What country should you hire them from?
— What if their work isn't up to par?
— What skills do they need?
One of the big steps in your online career will be
when you make that move to hire your first online
assistant.
There are many ways to outsource your work. You can,
of course, hire freelancers off of elance or other
sites.
That's good for one-off projects.
But very soon in your career, you're going to want
to hire a part time virtual assistant and later a
full-time one. That way, they can learn over time
how you think and what you want.
You get a higher quality result with less work.
As you know, Lisa worked for me for 7 years. I've
had other virtual assistants. And now I have some
employees. But I worked my way up to this point over
time.
Here are my tips for finding and using your first
part time virtual assistant:
1. Hire someone in Canada. They have high speed Internet
and are Internet savvy. If you're in the U.S., they're
on US time.
Lisa was in Canada. Rick Hanson did my technical stuff
for many years. He's in Canada.
2. Hire someone in your relative time zone.
It's hard for me to work with virtual assistants in UK
or Australia because of the time zone difference.
Whatever country you're in, I think you need to look for
someone in the same time zone. That way, you can collaborate
on projects during work hours.
The cool thing is that if you're a night owl, you can find
a time zone where that's someone else's work day.
3. Grab a 50% discount on pay
The great thing about Canada when I started there with Lisa
was I got a 50% discount due to the exchange rate. Over
time, this wilted.
But when you're getting started, look for that exchange rate
discount.
4. Use your resources to find people
a. Craigs List — That should be obvious. I love using
Craigs List.
b. Newspapers. I ran classified ads in several newspapers
in Canada.
c. Post in forums. Post what you're looking for in forums
like Warriorsforum, Digital Point forums, the Rich Jerk
forum, abestweb forum, Anthony Blake's forum (ablake.com).
There are many other forums you can use, depending on the
talent.
5. Do NOT be scared to hire someone if you have revenue.
As long as you have a profitable sales process, don't be
scared to hire someone part time. You'll NEVER feel like
you can afford it.
But as long as you have a product that's selling, a target
market and a lead generation process, you will very likely
find it pays off.
You WILL be scared to death to hire that first person. But
if you have a sales process that's working, I really believe
it'll free up your time and let you concentrate on higher
return activities.
Face it, answering customer service emails doesn't make you
any dough.
6. Hire talent over pay
I'd rather pay more and get someone really talented than
pay less and get mediocre talent.
You want someone you don't have to train. Trust me on
this one.
7. Find someone with exposure to Photoshop and good writing
skills. When you're hiring that first virtual assistant,
you need a jack of all trades.
Someone whose very computer savvy, has had a little customer
service experience, good writing skills, and a little art
background or Photoshop is great. It's ideal if they can
do the basics in Dreamweaver.
When I hired Lisa, she was already doing customer service
for Internet Marketing Challenge but they let her go when
Corey bought the company. She could do a drop shadow in
Photoshop and had taken a correspondence course on html.
8. Call them first thing every day and plan the day's work.
Even if they're part time, you need to review their work
plan daily. Just call and go over the work for the day.
This is why I say you need someone in your time zone. In
my opinion, Skype doesn't cut it. You need to be able to
talk over the phone.
And you need to be able to EASILY reach the person. If you
have to email them and get a response overnight, this isn't
going to work out long term.
Yes, you can do that for repetitious outsourced projects.
But the virtual assistant person is your RIGHT HAND. You
need them on demand at least during set hours.
9. Here are some tasks you can have them do:
a. Fix html problems
b. Customer service problem solving
c. Compile pdf's
d. Create reseller pages and contests
e. Respond to the needs of affiliates or jv partners
f. Create products
g. Design banner ads for affiliates
h. Write emails
i. Write postcards to resellers
j. Do things you don't want to
10. Dictate your promo emails to your VA.
This is why you want someone you work with every day. You can
dictate your promo emails to them.
Over time, they'll learn how to type these up and you get
promos out to your list just by dictating an email in your
morning call.
11. Set rules upfront about days off, time off, emergencies
and advancing pay.
a. Set a rule upfront that you don't advance pay.
b. Set a rule on time off from work hours for personal errands.
Virtual assistants sometimes don't see it as a job. And you have
crucial tasks for the day when they up and announce they have a
dentist appointment or need to take a family member to the
Pharmacy. Whatever. Set the rules upfront.
c. Decide if there will be vacation time.
d. Have some form of non-disclosure agreement even if it isn't
legally valid. At least you can have a clear, unambiguous
agreement.
12. Be quick to pull the plug.
If junk goes on such as their Internet goes down all the time,
tasks don't get done and you get excuses, critical mistakes are
made, pull the plug.
13. You'll know within one to two weeks if the person is good.
A bad hire will want to take a month to get up to speed and
research the tasks. A good person will hop right in and start
doing work.
14. Let the person in your plans. Brainstorm with them. Let them
experience fun and exciting tasks also. Don't always just give
them boring stuff. Find out what they love to do and see if
you can work some of those things into their responsibilities.
15. Let them grow in the position.
If you see potential, talent or abilities they aren't using,
pay for them to get a little training and see if that talent will
blossom.
I bought Lisa a Photoshop book and in 30 days she had gone through
all the tutorials and was amazing. But she had an art background
and tons of talent.
16. The hardest person you'll EVER hire is your first.
I remember Corey (Rudl) telling me that once over the phone. And
it was so true. And it's true.
———————————————————–
Marlon Sanders is the author of “The Amazing Formula That
Sells Products Like Crazy.”
Check out all my products here:
(SIGN UP AS A RESELLER, put YOUR reseller URL and ID where
the above link is, post this on your web site and make some
dough for spreading a killer guide everyone will want to
read.)
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REPRINT RIGHTS: You have permission to use the above
article without omission and including the resource box.
You have the right to insert your reseller URL for any
products I mention
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=============================================
E. MY SPECIAL THANKS TO THE FOLLOWING PEOPLE
WHO HAVE SUPPORTED MY PRODUCTS AND CONCEPTS OVER
THE YEARS:
Allan Gardyne
Michael Merz
Bill Hibbler
Jim Edwards
Sasi Kumar
Ewen Chia Ti Wah
Michael Wong
David Vallieres
Titus Hoskins
Michael Paetzold
David DiPietro
Brian Terry
Dan Kelly
Michael Filsaime
Dave Lovelace
Derrick VanDyke
Matt Adler
Sean Mize
Gary Martin
Melanie Mendelson
Keith Wellman
Joshua Jenkins
Jeremy Burns
Sharlene Raven
Michael Nicholas
Anil Kumar
Joel Comm
Gabor Olah
Craig Haywood
Sterling Valentine
Frederic Patenaude
Jessica Clark
Liz Barton
Roger Hall
Marc Horne
Thank all of you. You have my gratitude forever.
Your contributions to my life and my business do
not go unnoticed nor unappreciated.
If we stand tall, it IS because we stand on the shoulders
of giants.
Copyright 2008 Higher Response Marketing Inc.
All rights reserved.
