Virtual assistants are remote professionals. That helps businesses with specific tasks to get more things done. One particular VA responsible for building a more efficient sales process. It is called a Virtual Sales Assistant.
Virtual sales assistants are outsourced to do sales process tasks and can be hired as a contractor overseas.
What’s great about VAs is that hiring them is a lot more cost-effective than hiring an in-house local employee. When you have the right team of VAs, they can become your business’s biggest asset.
So to help you get started, here are the important things you should consider before building your own team of virtual sales assistants.
Treat Your VAs as Your Regular Team Member
Just because most VAs come from different locations, offer cheap labor, have English as a second language (ESL), and work remotely doesn’t mean people can treat them differently from in-house local employers.
They are hardworking people who work for their families and are open to learning. Give them the right opportunities and you’ll see amazing results from them. They can also be your greatest and most loyal allies if you treat them with respect and fairness.
Learn More About Your VAs
The simplest way to learn more about your VAs is to create a quick survey form for them to fill out. In this way, you’ll know more of their strengths and weaknesses as well as their skills, experiences, passion, and even their core values. You will also be able to fill in the gaps to allow them to learn new skills and to increase effectiveness while decreasing the cost per lead.
Teach Your VAs About Your Business’ Intricacies
Make sure that you are all on the same page. So when you and your VAs are working on a new project, you can complete it smoothly.
In the initial stage, allow your VAs to learn about your company and why it exists in the first place. Teach them through training or onboarding procedures. Make sure they are able to go through the general info about your company.
As you add more members, don’t get tired of answering simple questions. Remind them of the whys of your business and allow them to have judgment calls. For you to not go over this process again and again. You can create company documentation so you can share it with them and with the new members as well.
How You Can Manage a Team of Virtual Sales Assistants
Once you have your team of VAs and your projects have already started, you need to make sure that you have a solid framework of how you will effectively manage your team.
Since they are remotely working online, you need to establish great communication and collaboration tools to solidify your working relationship and to help you manage your tasks efficiently. Of course, there will be mistakes along the way, so be patient and focus on making the process better without you micromanaging your team members. Here are some other ways you can manage your VA team.
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Promote the Leader
When you already have a leader, then make that leader responsible for the whole team’s output and become a consistent contributor to all the projects. You should then promote that leader by doubling their rates and adding the extra responsibilities that entail their new job. The additional responsibilities may include:
- Grading efforts of team members
- Managing the project deadlines
- Creating reports
You should also have a meeting with all the VAs so if they have questions, you can personally answer them before distributing their tasks through your team leader.
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Use the Start/Stop/Continue Strategy
This strategy is super simple so you can continue giving your feedback on a weekly basis by:
- Start doing these tasks.
- Stop doing the other tasks.
- Continue doing these tasks.
This means that each team member is getting constructive feedback together with positive affirmations every week. So, it’s not always negative or too many praises but a balance of both to increase morale and eliminate problems on their weekly tasks.
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Require Consistent Work Hours
When you work within the same time frame. You all get the job done faster and you get to communicate more during those hours. This also allows you to predict the completion dates. so you can all be reassured that you’re working on the same page and pace.
Conclusion
Building your own team of virtual sales assistants is never easy, but the benefits that you will get in terms of sales, camaraderie, and loyalty from your team members are priceless. All of these will help scale and grow your members. You can also rest assured that you have a team of VA you can trust.
RepStack is an on-demand virtual sales rep that can help you overload your sales pipeline and give you the best results that you want in order to grow your business. If you are saying yes to more sales. Contact us today to learn more about how other small businesses are doing it!
