Interview with Craig Cannings of VAClassroom

When do business owners decide to hire a Virtual Assistant? Maybe the idea comes to them after working 20-hour days, cancelling weekends and vacations. Maybe it happens after they miss some networking opportunities or didn’t follow up on a lead because of the routine office work. Or maybe it’s because they did some math of their own or used an existing savings calculators and decided that it’s more cost-effective to hire a VA than a full-time or a part-time employee.

For this post I interviewed someone who has experience hiring and working with Virtual Assistants. This interview is based on one client’s advice to other clients. Still it’s a good read for Virtual Assistants, especially the part about how this particular client found his VAs.

Craig Cannings is the owner and managing director of ESalesGuru.com, an innovative marketplace connecting e-businesses with niche Internet Marketing Specialists and Firms worldwide. In addition, he is a co-founder and a Managing Director of VAClassroom.com, a skill-based training center designed to equip Virtual Assistants with the exact “in-demand” skills that businesses are seeking right now in 2008.

I asked Craig a few basic questions about his experience with Virtual Assistants.

Hi Craig, thank you for taking time out of your schedule for this interview.

My pleasure.

As I understand, you have several Virtual Assistants working for you? What tasks do your they help you with?

Yes, I presently have 3 part-time Virtual Assistants working with me at VAClassroom.com. One Virtual Assistant handles all billing and customer support inquiries for our training center and provides some month-end financial reporting for our company.

Another VA does affiliate research and recruitment for our Affiliate Program as well as some blog maintenance tasks such as regularly submitting blog posts to major Social news and bookmark sites. She also helps moderate one of our Facebook business groups.

The last Virtual Assistant works on a project basis and provides some content writing and editing services for our ebooks, reports and other publications. All three play an integral role in our overall business objectives.

That’s quite a lot of work that you shift to your VAs. When did you realize that you needed VA help?

I realized I needed a VA when my wife told me to “Hire a VA!”:) But seriously, a year ago, I knew I desperately needed some help in a number of areas of my web business. I knew I was experiencing a “ceiling effect” in my business growth and found myself in a constant state of chaos trying to managing a never-ending sea of tasks.

I can honestly say that a Virtual Assistant can be a business saver for an “Island Entrepreneur” stretched to the max. I cannot explain the relief and freedom I felt to delegate a number of tasks that were weighing me down!

How long did it take you to find virtual assistants and to bring them up to speed on the tasks?

Interestingly enough, it did not take long at all to recruit a couple of great Virtual Assistants. I actually had corresponded with a couple VAs through another blog I write for and they had commented on a post I did titled “What’s on your Virtual Assistant Wishlist?”

They introduced themselves and provided some good feedback on the post and I immediately made a note of their websites and contact information as potential VAs to work with in the near future. I ended up hiring one of the VAs in the next couple of months to do a variety of tasks involving the pre-launch of a new business. This one VA was a great networker and was commenting on all blog posts related to her field. This turned out to be a smart marketing strategy for her as it led to a new client – me!

It did not take long to bring this VA and another I hired after up to speed on the tasks at hand. While they had not previously performed some of the tasks I assigned them, they were very teachable, web-savvy VAs who were able to adapt to new roles with ease. Given that they were easy to train on my first set of assignments, I was much more comfortable assigning them more pertinent tasks for my business.

What would be your advice to entreprenuers who are thinking about contracting a Virtual Assistant?

For entrepreneurs considering hiring a Virtual Assistant, I would advise them to be crystal clear on their expectations and project details right from the beginning to avoid any confusion or miscommunication. I would outline the project details in a formal contract to be signed by both parties, so there is a mutual understanding on the work to be done right from Day 1.

I would establish a clear time-line for follow-up communication and milestones on various projects being assigned to a new VA. One of the biggest reasons many businesses fail at the outsourcing game is that they don’t proactively manage their projects. If they are clear on the expectations, project parameters and timelines, then this will lead to a more succesful outcome.

I would also recommend that business owners treat Virtual Assistants like collaborative partners rather than employees as this will go a long way to forging a successful long-term relationship. I would recommend business owners to begin with a small task so they can assess the quality of work before assigning a big project to their new VA.

Lastly, I would encourage business owners to strike a proper balance between cost and quality when hiring a Virtual Assistant. In this global marketplace, some entrepreneurs focus too much on the cost-savings of hiring a more reasonable VA at the expense of quality of the VA’s work and experience and their fit for the project at hand. It is important to consider both project fit and budget when hiring a new VA.

This is excellent advice. Thank you very much, Craig

You’re welcome.

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