How to Delegate Tasks to Your Virtual Assistant
The number one reason I lose clients is because they don’t know how to delegate tasks. It truly has nothing to do with my abilities or my service, or even their business; they simply do not know how to delegate tasks to another person.
Running your own business is hard work and it’s scary to think about someone else working in your business and doing things that you are used to doing (i.e. things that you have to do to make sure your business runs smoothly). Handing those things over is difficult for sure. I know because I’ve done it.
If you’re someone who struggles to ask for help or hand things over to other people, then hiring a virtual assistant will be difficult for you, but not impossible.
Here are some tips to help you delegate tasks to a virtual assistant while still keeping your business yours and keeping your sanity.
Choose a virtual assistant you can trust.
If you can’t trust your virtual assistant, you can’t give her tasks to do. There are many ways that you can build a trustful relationship with your virtual assistant. I would start with getting to know her as a person and learning more about what she does and does not like to do. This makes your virtual assistant personable and relatable. You can trust someone who you feel like you know.
Another way to build trust with your virtual assistant is to give her tasks slowly. Have her start with something that is low pressure, like your social media posts or email organization. If she does well with that, you can move on to bookkeeping or something with a little more importance or pressure to be right.
2. Go through your to-do list with your virtual assistant
Ask your virtual assistant to sit down with you and go through your to-do list together. Have her point out things she likes to do, things she can do, things she doesn’t like to do, and things she can’t do. This will give you a great idea of what you can and can’t give to your virtual assistant. You’ll want to give her a mix of things she loves to do and things she can do well. Be sure to never give your virtual assistant something she doesn’t know how to do without the proper training beforehand.
3. Make a list of your tasks
Make a list of all the tasks you do in a day or in a week. Similar to your to-do list. But this time, you are going to color code the list based on what you love to do, what you like to do, what you tolerate doing, and what you hate doing. Anything you hate or tolerate doing, you are going to give to your virtual assistant. This sounds like a lot of upfront work, and it is, but you have to do the work to get the peace of mind that delegating tasks will give you.
4. Have procedures in place for your processes
This will make delegating so much easier. Basically, you want to have SOP (standard operating procedures) in place for anything that you do on a regular basis. How do you check your emails? What does your process look like? How do you decide which emails to archive and which emails to save or classify? This sounds tedious, and a VA can certainly help you set all this stuff up, but doing it ahead of time makes handing the process over to a VA much easier. Need more information on SOPs? Check out this blog post I wrote about writing SOPs.
This is not an exhaustive list and frankly, as I work with more and more clients I see things that they do that make them successful in delegating tasks. This list is definitely the biggest things I see clients doing that makes delegating tasks easy for them. You too can be delegating tasks in no time by implementing just one or two of these strategies. When you’re ready, I’ll be here. You can schedule your free discovery call here.
