Joshua Saunders

Over the last few weeks, I have received more emails from blog readers about virtual assistants than anything else.  So thought I would provide an update on how everything is working out and provide some advice on the best ways to handle a virtual assistant to maximize your time and money.

Here is how my assistant has done on some of the following tasks:

Task: Find software vendors with experience in a specific niche of online gaming
Result:  Quickly sent me a spreadsheet of over a dozen companies with contact people, information and websites for each.  Good job.

Task:  Detailed research on the liquor industry including trending, growth, sales, margins, legal implications and licensing, info on manufacturers, etc…
Hasn’t done a good job to date.  The data on sales and growth was very dated (1994, 1995 and 2002) and unusuable.  The information on licensing was too specific to random states, like Alaska.  Information on manufacturers was partially related to wine and beer when I needed it on distilled spirits.

Task:  Catalog products from a website by category into a spreadsheet
Done very quickly and the spreadsheet was exactly as planned.

So as you can tell, he hasn’t done well with research and information gathering, but does a good job with word processing type tasks.  Unfortunately, I need more than this, so we’ll see how he holds up with some more challenging tasks.

Some advice on how to get the most of your VA (if they’re from another country):
1)  Speak clearly and succintly.  Give direct orders.  Do not worry about coming off sounding rude.
2)  Tell the VA specifically how much time you want them to spend on the task or a time limit.  Otherwise they may be off spending 20 hours on a simple 2 hour task.
3)  Give a firm deadline.
4)  Give feedback after tasks are completed.  Let them know if something isn’t exactly to your liking or not what you were looking for.
5)  On more complicated tasks, make sure they understand the background of how and why you need the information you do.  This will help them deliver better results.