Marlon’s Secrets of Hiring Your First Virtual Assistant Full Or Part Time – Secrets From Years Of Experience
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Memo From: Marlon Sanders
Re: Marlon's Marketing Minute for December 20
Hello,
Marlon here.
This week is killer. I have a new FREEBIE ebook for
you. Give it away and snag commissions!
Details in this issue.
This week's ARTICLE:
“Marlon's Secrets of Hiring Your First Virtual Assistant
Full Or Part Time — Secrets From Years Of Experience”
I have field-tested answers to these questions:
— What are you doing that someone else could do for you?
— What is YOUR time best spent doing?
— Should you hire people smarter than you?
— What are the downsides of hiring virtual help?
— What do you do once trust is violated?
— What if their work isn't up to par?
— How do you use exchange rates to your favor?
This is NOT theory. This is all based on what I've personally
done.
Save this for reference and use it as a checklist
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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 4 ADS at the end of this ezine. You can replace
all THOSE with reseller links if you want.
Marlon
P.S. Read the announcements…
* FREEBIE DOWNLOAD (see announcements)
* Brand new reseller site makeover. New tools!
* Jingle songs
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.
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Marlon's Marketing Minute
Electronic Newsletter
http://www.promotemarlon.com
Vol. 3, #40, December 20, 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 Secrets of Hiring Your First Virtual
Assistant Full Or Part Time — Secrets From Years Of Experience
D. Services You Can Use
Brought to you by: Marlon Sanders – Publisher
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A. SPONSOR ADVERTISEMENT
Attention All Resellers and Affiliates:
I've revamped completely my affiliate site and tools:
* You can now GIVE AWAY the Best of Marlon Sanders ebook
and get commissions.
* I also have a “Newbie Guide to Internet Marketing”
Marlon Sanders
PS: If you need your reseller ID, contact Tim at:
http://www.getyoursupport.com
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
B. ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM MARLON
One: 35 versions of jingle bells!
http://www.jinglesongs.com
Two: Give Away “The Best Of Marlon Sanders” to your friends
or list and snag spending cash and prizes!
I've just released “The Best Of Marlon Sanders”
Give it away to your friends or list and snag affiliate
commissions as well as prizes.
Three: Download your FREEBIE ebook now.
“The Best of Marlon Sanders”
There is a squeeze page. The idea is for you to enter
the email address you actually READ! I'll send out a version
later where you can bypass the squeeze if it bugs you.
http://www.bestofmarlonsanders.com
Four: Affiliate contest
Affiliates. I just launched a new contest.
http://www.TurboProfits.com/tracking/go.php?c=affpromo_dec08
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
C. “Marlon's Secrets of Hiring Your First Virtual Assistant
Full Or Part Time — Secrets From Years Of Experience”
Save this for reference and use it as a checklist
By Marlon Sanders
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I'll never forget, actually.
My phone rang off the hook all day long. All night long.
The fax churned with manual orders.
I had more customer service emails than I knew what to
do with.
I couldn't get tables on my web pages to center right or
the background to look good.
I had ebooks with typos and sales letters with the same.
Money poured in. But how to handle all the mundane WORK?
I realized quickly that by doing my own customer service, I'd
soon lose all the customers I had!
I tried hiring a girl at the gym to run errands and help
out. That went absolutely nowhere.
I hired another girl to come in and help with customer service
and orders. That didn't really turn out so good.
I needed REAL talent. And real help.
But I didn't know if I could afford someone full time or not.
Still, things were starting to tear apart at the seams. In
a moment of desperation, I posed on Anthony Blake's forum
at ablake.com/forum that I was looking for a virtual assistant.
I'll never forget that Michel Fortin emailed me and said he
worked with IMC (Internet Marketing Challenge). But when
the late, great Corey Rudl bought the company, he let go
of their customer service person.
He thought she was awesome and I should contact her.
Her name was Lisa Edwardsen. And Lisa worked with me for
7 or 8 years, doing everything under the sun. I was scared
to death I couldn't afford her.
But the cool thing is, she lived in Canada. And for 3 or 4 years,
I got her at half price because of the exchange rate. Later,
when that rate turned against me, I had to pay more and more
for her services while she netted the same amount.
So it wasn't all a bed of roses.
I'll never forget, though. I just didn't know for sure if
I could afford to hire Lisa. But I knew I had to have help.
Corey told me the hardest person you'll ever hire is your
first.
How right he was.
A talented person will treat your bank account very well.
Now, not all my hires have been good. Usually, if the person
is great the first week, they'll be great 2 years later. If
you aren't sure about them the first week, you probably will
still feel the same way two years later.
Danny does my graphic design now.
I brought him in on a freelance assignment from Craig's List.
He hit a home run on that project. And he's been a great help
ever since.
Here are my best secrets for hiring your first virtual assistant
full or part time.
1. What are you doing that someone else could do for you?
Your time is the single most valuable thing you have. What are
you doing that someone else could do?
2. Your time is best spent coming up with new product ideas
and promotions.
If you're doing a lot of things that aren't about coming up
with new product ideas or promotions, look at getting a virtual
assistant to help out.
3. Look for exchange rates that are in your favor
While the exchange rate between U.S. and Canada eventually turned
against me, for 3 or 4 years, it worked in my favor.
Look at countries where one of your dollars is worth two or more
of theirs. This way, you get talent at a bargain price. But your
talent still feels well paid.
4. Hire people who are smarter or more talented than you
I've always felt you need to hire people who are smarter than you,
faster than you and more talented than you.
This is the only way you'll feel confident delegating tasks to them.
Now, with Lisa I was lucky. I originally hired her just for
customer service. But to my surprise and luck, she had terrific
graphic design talents!
That's what you call a triple jackpot bonus.
5. Let your people grow
I've never wanted to hold my people back. I've always made it my
goal to let them grow as much as far as their talents and motivation
will take them.
When Matt worked for me, I let him do jinglesongs.com because he
loved music. I let him create vblogsecrets.com because he loved
mucking with audio and video.
Lisa had this amazing ability for graphic design. So I let her move
into that area as much as I could. That's why we did Design
Dashboard.
I wanted to give her a chance to showcase her amazing talents.
6. Give your people a bit of training
Lisa had an art background. I decided to let her pick out and buy
a book on Photoshop. She bought one bought. She went through it.
Thirty days later she blew me away with what she could do.
That's what happens when talent meets opportunity.
At the same time, if you give someone training and they need more
and more training to get mediocre results, that's not a good sign.
7. Graph your revenue
After you hire the person, watch your revenue. Does it go up or not?
If it doesn't, then that tells you all you need to know.
A talented person should have a very quick impact on your bottom
line.
8. Know the downsides of hiring virtual help
The good news about virtual assistants is if you hire them in another
country, you don't have to worry about employement taxes.
The bad news is that there's a good chance the person won't take the
position as serious. So you're in the middle of a product launch
and your assistant has an appointment they have to keep for a teeth
cleaning at the dentist.
Or their Internet “goes down” and you have no way to know if it's
true or not.
Or they schedule doctor's appointments during work hours.
Or their mom needs to go to the grocery store during work hours.
There are TONS of things that can come up. Set the rules as much as
you can upfront. But know that they'll probably never take the
position as serious as an employee at an office.
9. Once trust is violated, cut ties immediately.
I'm the kind of person who likes to give people a second chance.
Don't.
Really. If your assistant lies, steals, cheats or misrepresents,
cut ties.
10. Keep your focus where it belongs
Your focus should be on getting products out the door and promoting
those products. Your assistant should handle other things. Their
job is to handle details and make you look good.
By the way, if you want to see all the systems I originally created
for Lisa to follow, we documented all of them at:
http://www.operateyourbiz.com
Some of the systems are outdated. But you can see EXACTLY how we
documented her systems and work flow originally.
———————————————————–
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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D. “Services You Can Use
(If you want to post this ENTIRE ezine, you can replace the
following links with your RESELLER links)
Stop trading time for dollars and start trading products for
dollars: http://www.productdashboard.com
Save 100's on graphic design:
http://www.designdashboard.com
NEED A SALES LETTER? Fill in the blanks and click a button.
http://www.pushbuttonletters.com
Many people have copied my software. But there really and
truly is only ONE original.
NEED SYSTEMS FOR YOUR VIRTUAL ASSISTANT?
See the original systems I created for Lisa
http://www.operateyourbiz.com
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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.