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What Is Effective Outsourcing And How To Master It

Clicking to outsourcingEffective outsourcing is part-4 of the second interview from Stefan from Germany, who lives the Four Hour Work Week lifestyle in Thailand.

Click here to read part 3– Virtual assistants’ retention problems 

Summary:

  • Outsourcing itself requires a lot of time investment. If you need something to get done by tomorrow, outsourcing might not be a good solution of your problem.
  • Communication is the most important factor of efficient outsourcing, not only from your assistants, but from you as well.
  • Most of the assistants prefer an hourly rate rather than working on a fixed price job.

Start of the Interview:

Francis
Francis:

I do agree that outsourcing is not the solution of your choice if you have tight time schedule. If you have a work that needs to be done until tomorrow, you shouldn’t outsource it.

It takes longer for someone to hire someone and train him than to do the work yourself if it’s a task which is to do within a few days. 

If it’s a long term project which you have a little control over, for example, write an e-product sell it and you have a few months for that.

Then, I think, outsourcing is still a viable solution for as long as you are disciplined and quick with screening for the right assistant. 

So you tell me that you need to fire people all the time, I think such an example is an extreme example. It shouldn’t happen more than two or three times. 

stefan employer interview
Stefan:

Okay. 

Francis
Francis:

If it happens very often then we have a problem on a different level. If the communication is clear – the expectations is clear – I mean, there can be a misunderstanding one or two times.

The first assistant is not skilled enough, the second assistant is not motivated enough. And after those two feedback loops, your risk should be very small that an assistant is neither skilled enough nor patient enough to do your job. 

If this still happens then you need to work on your communication skills, in my opinion. I propose to you if you have the next job description, whenever this is, you can work together with me and we increase the quality of your job description. And I propose some help with the interview process. 

stefan employer interview
Stefan:

Alright. Okay. 

Francis
Francis:

That would be my proposition.

stefan employer interview
Stefan:

Yes, we can do that.

Francis
Francis:

Okay. I think this whole trust building exercise is a prerequisite before we can continue to work.  

So Stefan, let’s assume that we have started out with a good job description and we have found a good quality candidate with a high level of motivation and skill for the right price.

There has been a little bit of trust building in the first week where you work together. He delivers good work results in the first week and is happy with the payment 

stefan employer interview
Stefan:

Yes.

Francis
Francis:

The payment guarantee comes from oDesk. As long as he works within the guidelines in an hourly contract, he will automatically be paid. 

stefan employer interview
Stefan:

You’re talking about hourly based.

Francis
Francis:

That is correct. 

stefan employer interview
Stefan:

And why not fixed price? You wouldn’t recommend a fixed price at all?

Francis
Francis:

I have had a sub-section in my site where I discussed fixed price versus hourly pay. The bottom-line is fixed price is much more interesting to many assistants. All assistants I’ve asked prefer hourly pay because with fixed price, there is a risk. We tell them, “After you done the job, I pay you $20.” You have the freedom within the oDesk guidelines to not pay them because you say you are not happy.    

So if this happens then the virtual assistant has no money. In other words, the risk is with his side. So he will often not be motivated to do the job. With the hourly pay, he will always be paid as long as he, for example, doesn’t surf on Facebook all the time and you end the contract because of that. 

stefan employer interview
Stefan:

Well, what I don’t like about hourly pay that’s why I changed that a little bit in the past from hourly paid to, what I used in the last time, fixed price is that in the end I have absolutely no guarantee that I would have a result at all. I could pay hundreds or thousands of dollars and have nothing in the end. That is totally my risk. 

Continue reading part 5 – Effective email communication with virtual assistants

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Effective Email Communication With Your VAs From Day 1

Clicking an email icon with fingerEffective email communication is part-5 of the second interview from Stefan from Germany, who lives the Four Hour Work Week lifestyle in Thailand.

Click here to read part 4 – Mastering the art of effective outsourcing

Summary:

  • Whether it’s hourly paid or a fixed price job – you absolutely need daily communication with your virtual assistant.
  • For a productive email communication with your assistant, you can either use Skype or you can have him write daily emails.
  • My assistant makes a daily Google presentation with illustrations and bullet points of all the work he does during that day and it worked out really well for me.

Start of the Interview:

Francis
Francis:

That is true. The risk is on your end. It’s more on your end and your managing skills are needed so that the money losing risk is little. So my proposition to keep that risk as little as possible is to have a clear daily communication with your assistant.

Then the risk of losing money is very small because if an assistant works 8 hours then the most you can lose is 8 hours of work where he does nothing effective until there’s the next communication exchange.

So when the initial trust has been built and the start of the work has started – hourly paid or fixed price doesn’t matter – you absolutely need daily communication. How you do it, it’s up to you. You can Skype with your assistant. You can have him write daily emails.  

as an effective email communication, I prefer them on bullet point format for easy reading for me. Or, as my assistant does it right now, he makes a daily Google documents presentation with screenshots and bullet points of his questions, updates of what he works on, etc.

This is addition of checking up on your oDesk screenshots what your assistant does, will make sure that he doesn’t work for nothing for long time. 

stefan employer interview
Stefan:

Yes, that’s true.

Francis
Francis:

I agree that this is an additional time investment on your end. But if you don’t do it you, as you say, risks losing hundreds of dollars. 

stefan employer interview
Stefan:

Yup. But the problem is that it just takes away time. Because imagine I have a new job, let’s say, a design for a flyer. Or a cover or whatever and I don’t have a specific idea of what I want. 

I just want a few proposals from a graphic designer and I’m willing to pay, let’s say, $30 for that or $40. So that could translate into 10 hours of work. Or a fixed price where I have guaranteed something in the hands at the end or I don’t have anything and I don’t have to pay. 

On the other hand, if I let him make some work for 10 hours and he just gives me 15 proposals but they are all crap; I have to pay him. 

Francis
Francis:

It’s true.

stefan employer interview
Stefan:

So it’s guaranteed. And most of the time as I’ve said earlier, in the past I have never had a good result in the first work batch.

Francis
Francis:

Okay.

stefan employer interview
Stefan:

I never experienced that I give him a job, the first milestone, the first assignment and that was completely perfect 100%. That has never happened to me.  

Francis
Francis:

That’s also not very unrealistic.

stefan employer interview
Stefan:

Yes, it’s not. But I want that. I’m not going to pay 10 hours for $40 and not have my cover design done when I could have a fixed price for $40. And I’m only paying that $40 when the job is done. Not before. 

Are you getting my point?      

Francis
Francis:

Okay, That is acceptable to me. So in this specific situation where it’s a design job, I have to say I have not much experience doing designer jobs via oDesk.

In my opinion, there are specialized services for graphics design which are much more appropriate for designer jobs than oDesk. 

stefan employer interview
Stefan:

They’re way more expensive.

Francis
Francis:

Yeah, not if you take into account the time training and hiring, etc. The least expensive method to find a basic graphic design which sometimes is surprisingly good quality is to use Fiverr. 

stefan employer interview
Stefan:

Okay.

Francis
Francis:

Do you know this service?

stefan employer interview
Stefan:

Yeah, I know Fiverr.

Francis
Francis:

If you have Fiverr, you can invest $5 to have roughly what you want. And then you can use this in your job description to say, “Okay, I have a basic design which is like that. I want it much better.” 

Continue reading part 6 – Asking your virtual assistants for previous work samples

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Seven Reasons The Dropbox Is A Must Have Tool For Outsourcing!

Dropbox - Your Ultimate Online StorageIf you are serious with outsourcing your work to virtual assistants, you will need three things

  1. A Dropbox
  2. A screen recording software
  3. And an account with odesk

1. Real-time synchronization of your files with all your team members

When you cooperate online, you need a reliable system that synchronizes your files with everyone involved and who is working on the same files.

I have found it very useful to create one Dropbox folder with each team member I was working with. Then, I just dropped in the files they needed and they dropped in the results they worked on in the respective folders.

Because this approach is similar to working on your computer and your own folders, it is very intuitive. Because it’s intuitive, you don’t need to explain much to your virtual assistants and they can just continue working as usual.

2. Its easy to expand your storage size

Your free account comes with 2 gigabytes of free online storage space. For most private persons this is largely enough. But even if you need bigger storage space it is easy to expand it.

Please also read my post where I outsourced expanding my Dropbox for $5 with great results.

I also did this for a good friend of mine and interviewed him about the results. It works!

A nice side effect if you work with virtual assistants is that when you explain to them that you will share your files via Dropbox, you can simply send them your referral link.

Every co-worker that will sign up and install their online storage will give you free additional storage space.

Way to profit twice from the same service!

3. It is the most popular online storage service for a reason

The Best Online File Sharing Service

Because this service is so simple, intuitive and easy, many people are already using it. So if you ask your virtual assistant to join your shared folders they won’t need many instructions to start working together with you right away.

You can even use it to share files with your friends and family. The Dropbox service is not limited to use for work. You can use it for everything. Even if you find someone who hasn’t heard about this service yet, share it with him and grow your free space at the same time.

4. Excellent backup to secure your files and your outsourcing results

There is nothing more horrible than a computer crash where you lose all your files. Especially if your team of outsourcing assistants has worked day and night to create this data. Even if they have some copies left, putting them together via email, sending them forth and back will be nerve wrecking.

Luckily, putting files into the Dropbox is also an excellent way for save them for backup and against crashes. Since they are shared online in a cloud, they will always be a backup copy available for you.

5. Oh no! I need an old version of my file!

No problem!

A genius feature which comes with this service is that all files are saved redundantly. Each save and over-write of the same file is shared separately. You can use it as a “time machine” to protect any old version of the same document you might have made in the recent past.

Anyone who has ever worked on a big report, especially with several people working on it, knows how crucial it is to be able to look into older versions of the same document!

6. Easy sharing and organizing of all files in one simple system

Share your files from anywhere to your virtual assistants

You could of course use different approaches to share your files with your different providers. Some of would use Google docs, while others share them via private email with you. A third part of your work force might send their results through an attachment to you within, for example, the oDesk message system.

Why make your life complicated by trying to follow three services at once? You can simply use one service to put all files into and have everything ordered right at a glance.

Also, it’s great that you can see changes in real time with little pop-up notices that appear on your desktop when others are working on shared folders. This way you have the progress of your outsourcing projects and the work of everyone right at your fingertips on your desktop.

7. Mobile access to your files and to those of your co-workers

One last advantage of using the Dropbox for working together with your virtual assistants might be the most important one. If you are travelling and do not have access to your personal computer, how can you go into your files and send your virtual assistant this one crucial file that he needs to continue working?

If you have put it into your Dropbox beforehand, you can access it via their website anytime you want. You can get the files of all your co-workers too, if they are in the shared folders.

If you want to live a lifestyle like it is described in the “Four Hour Work Week“ and want to monitor the progress of your outsourced work while sitting at a beach and browsing with your laptop or your mobile phone, then using this service is the way to go.

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Disadvantages of Outsourcing – What You Have to Know

Having virtual assistants working for you at low costs is effective and fun. However, there are some disadvantages of outsourcing work to foreign countries. If you are aware of those outsourcing disadvantages, your business will be that much more successful.

Language barrier

Language barrier between you and your virtual assistant

English is the most common language a must have skill for any kind of outsourcing work.

For example, if a virtual assistant only speaks Spanish , the majority of the employers will not be able to work with him.

Outsourcing is not effective if the freelancer

  • can’t talk English properly
  • can’t express or elaborate well in English
  • can’t understand instructions
  • and can’t give proper feedback about his work.

The minimal requirement to a freelancer is that he can speak, understand and communicate in English.

Notes to Virtual Assistants having trouble with English:

  • If you can’t express yourself well in English, working satisfactory will be hard.
  • English skills still can either be learned with free materials on the internet.
  • Also, ask your boss to give you extremely clear instructions, so that you can learn one task at a time.

If you were to choose to outsource work to one provider today, I wish you three things:

  1. You treat your provider with respect.
  2. You don’t get screwed over.
  3. You a freelancer who knows English well and is bright.

Everything else is totally optional!

Exception: If you need a specialist

If you are looking for a specialist, perhaps a programmer , you cannot start with a newbie with only English skills. For this you will just have to pay more. There is always a price of high quality.

Look for the optimal freelancer for everything else:

But if you have a specific, private task, you only need a guy or a girl who

  • knows English
  • is quick with answering
  • responsible
  • and honest

Then you can do anything.

Finding the right VA needs experience

Choosing the best virtual assistant

One of the bigger disadvantages of outsourcing is that you have to learn it, just like any other skill. The tips on ideal-helper, which come from years of real-life experience from both the employer and freelancer points of view, will help you with that.

And if you want to make your life easier, be sure to choose the right outsourcing company for your needs. My choice lies with Odesk.

Outsourcing work costs you money

This is on of the disadvantages of outsourcing that goes without saying. Still, you should calculate your budget before starting to work with a freelancer. It would be frustrating for him, too, if you were to fire your assistant because you run out of funds.

Fortunately, if you know how to hire a virtual assistant at the right place, you can keep costs extremely low, down to 1$/hour.

What tasks can’t you outsource?

Bruce Tulgan's famous quotationOne of the smaller disadvantages of outsourcing is that even if you are hooked on the concept, there are things which your Indian personal assistant cannot do for you, even if he wanted to.

  • Physical work
  • A medical doctor can’t outsource the treatment of his patients.
  • If you are an architect, you can’t hire a virtual worker to carry stones.
  • If you are specialist, such as and scientist, you can’t outsource working e.g. with your expensive microscope.
  • Anything that violates your company’s privacy policy or discloses your company’s confidentiality – don’t leave it to a freelancer.
  • You should never outsource your tax matters.

You can outsource some of the above mentioned tasks if you write up a real contract to respectable outsourcing company. If you take care of all legalities set up an iron-clad NDA , you might be able to make an exception to some of the examples I listed above.

Managing your VA needs time

Invest your time on your VA

Before you start actually saving time by working together with your personal assistant, you need to invest some time training him and adjusting to each other.

Don’t be disillusioned if the first days you pass way more time writing emails and clarifying things when you just wanted to chill out at the beach while someone else works for you.

Here is my method to getting there faster:

Use screen recording software to show him exactly what you want. This goes way faster than writing emails and is actually better suited for training your virtual assistant.

You can’t simply fool around. You now have responsibility for your VA

When you have actually hired a person to work for you, you are in a working relationship. Take it as seriously as your employee takes the money he earns for giving his best for you, and think about some ethics in business basics.

You cannot just abuse the fact that your worker lives in a poor country and consider him a modern slave.

Having responsibility for another person, who probably is looking up to you, is one of the smaller disadvantages of outsourcing. Still, keep it in mind and never take the services of your worker for granted.

Those Outsourcing disadvantages are not much of a problem?

In reality, hiring virtual assistants is easy, fun and effective for almost everyone. Just that many people don’t even consider doing this.

The disadvantages of outsourcing listed on this page are there to help you profit the most from a freelancer when you do hire him. If you keep them in mind, as well as using your common sense, you will be fine.






Do You Know Of Other Disadvantages About Outsourcing?

If you have been involved in outsourcing or not, I am sure you’ll have an opinion.

Please share the problems you think arise when doing outsourcing or giving your work way to people on the other side of the globe.

Join the discussion and build your own page.

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Disadvantages For Employers At Odesk – And How To Prevent Them

Outsourcing to oDesk saves time, is cost efficient and often fun. But what are some disadvantages for employers at oDesk?

And what can you do so that they don’t even apply to you?

Disadvantages for oDesk employers during the hiring process

Sometimes, you encounter problems before even successfully having hired anybody. Doing the hiring process correctly will minimize any risks for you.

Dealing with uncooperative potential employees

Screen your employees before hiring for better results

You may want to pre-screen the applicants by giving them a test or by asking for credentials. Sometimes, all you will get are excuses.

This can drive you mad, because you have no time to listen to excuses.

The solution?

Move on to the next applicant.

Typically, for any well-written job opening, you can get dozens of applicants in one day.

You are not forced to hire any one of them – it’s your money!

If no one is a match for your needs, simply close the job and re-open it a few days later. You’ll be surprised how easily you will find the perfect assistant for you.

Wading through too many contractors when hiring

Taking too much time with unfitting applicants in the hiring process is another disadvantage for employers at oDesk.

The solution?

Pre-screening is everything. Set the bar high and expect the skills you need for your job.

Then, as a principle, only interview the providers that pass all your requirements. Only occasionally, interview interesting exceptions.

Needing to find out the person behind an agency

If an agency applies, you may never find out which person exactly is doing your work. It may be fine for data entry jobs, but not for personal assistant jobs.

The solution?

Set the requirement that you are only looking for individuals, not agencies. Point this out in your job description. Weed out all agencies that apply, if you want to avoid them.

Adapting the budget to the final price/ Cost versus value

Now we are talking money. Your money.

You can do with it as you want. Never feel pressured in spending your hard-earned cash if you don’t want to.

On the other hand, don’t simply go for the cheapest provider, hoping it will save you money.

Good work has his price.

  • Either money, by paying an expert higher rates,
  • or your time (which is money), by training a newbie extensively to suit your needs.

Find the right balance between these two extremes.

Disadvantages for Employers at oDesk after hiring a provider

During your cooperation, things may not go as smooth as you thought. We’ll help you to optimize the “managing-your-freelancers” phase.

Losing time managing providers

One of the biggest disadvantages for Employers at oDesk is that they can lose a lot of time instructing their employees.

Personally, I love my time and am very stingy with it.

The solution:

Speed up your instruction times to the max! The best tool to give instructions the fastest way possible are screen recording software and voice instructions.

Famous Quotation by Michael LeBoeuf

Setting up the communication right

One of the smaller disadvantages for Employers at oDesk: the oDesk message system is not well suited for day-to-day messaging.

The solution?

Exchange emails ASAP – switch from the oDesk message system to email right away in the first message after hiring someone.

Time inefficient instructions via email

Emails are the most used medium for communication around the globe. Emails also take way too much time to read and to write.

The solution:

Write a few emails at the beginning. Then, inform your employee that you prefer sending voicemail and video instructions. Give your employee all the information needed to deal with those files. Then, gradually write less and less, but speak and record more and more.

Ask your virtual assistant to confirm what he has understood in writing, especially the first few times.

Time difference

There will be time differences when you outsource to the other end of the world. That’s expected and normal.

The solution?

Don’t wait for instant replies to your messages. Expect them only – but also latest – after 24 hours.

Inform your employee that you expect quick replies.

Cultural differences

People from the US and e.g. people from China will think very differently. Sometimes, there are big differences in cultural values.

Don’t get misunderstood over language barrier problems or differences in culture.

The solution?

Be as objective as possible. Ask your employee to confirm your instructions in his own words the first few times.

Re-explain misunderstandings, but stay calm and gentle. Don’t scare your employee, he may simply leave.

(This happened to me once, totally unexpected after months of cooperation.)

Disadvantages after firing an employee

Disadvantages of firing an employee

The only disadvantages for employers at oDesk that exist after you fire a provider is the battle with your conscience and if you get into lengthy discussions.

Let’s avoid that.

Bad conscience and pity party

Former employees might try to get you to pity them. Stay strong. If you have done everything right, the provider has had his chance to redeem his errors.

Make a fired provider feel like you have been just and fair. That will prevent 99% of the discussions.

As for the last 1%…

Bad feedback

If you leave your oDesk provider after a fight, he might be tempted to leave you an unnecessary harsh feedback. That’s bad business ethics on part of the provider.

Prevent it by clearing all unclarities before you fire anybody, including letting him try to make up for any errors at least once.

Keep all critical discussions within the oDesk messaging system.

This way, you can try to get a bad feedback removed if you can prove you have been attacked wrongly.

Do you know more problems with outsourcing to oDesk?

Why it is still worth it to outsource to oDesk

Even if there are disadvantages for employers at oDesk, the *advantages of outsourcing by far outweigh them. It’s just business. An employer has to learn to strategically make the right decisions for his business.

You can’t afford not to outsource.

Fortunately, we provide the best training and information for all sorts of outsourcing services, right from hands-on experience.

[contentblock id=8 img=optin.png]

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Define Productivity: Know When You Are Doing Great

Be productive to meet your goals

True workaholics work and work, without ever being satisfied.

We define productivity as time spent towards your goal.

If you procrastinate, you are not productive, because you are spending time that doesn’t help your goal. Let’s keep this productivity definition in mind.

How do you best determine where you spend your time?

Using a to-do list and checking off finished tasks is one good, old-school way to keep you on track. You’ll know you have been productive when you are done with your list at the end of the day.

Today, there are much better and precise tools available, especially if you are working on a computer.

Measure the productivity of your virtual assistant

When you work with a virtual assistant, it’s important to use some kind of productivity tracking software on the end of the VA.


In case you hire a virtual assistant over oDesk, this is taken care of for you. It’s the best outsourcing company I recommend from personal experience.

When you have employees, it’s your job to stay on track

If you manage a team of workers for your project, it gets harder to clearly define productivity. You’ll need some time to

  • manage your team
  • send your VA’s instructions (the most time efficient way to do this is to use screen recording software)
  • and work out the general strategies for your team.

How do you define productivity as a manager?

Time spent efficiently giving your virtual assistants instructions, so that they can work towards your goal, is defined as being productive.

Time spent implementing strategies, analyzing data and giving feedback to your team for a smooth cooperation is also productive.

What is not productive is to constantly check on your statistics (be it web statistics or the Odesk screenshots of your providers), without doing anything with it. You might feel that you are being productive, but you are wasting time.

I know because I have been guilty of doing this often enough.

Have a road map

When working on a project, take the time to get a 10 000 foot view of everything. Don’t just work short-term on the next actionable step – you might end up in a dead end.

Take the time to define productivity, optimal work output, intermediate steps to your goal. Then, share them with your team of virtual assistants, if you have any.

Franz Kafka's famous saying about productivity

Don’t have any virtual assistants yet?

Then you might be wasting time! Which is not productive at all.

Read more about hiring virtual assistants efficiently