Just wanted to share my experience about the REVA (Real Estate Virtual Assistant) I am currently working with to help others not make the same mistake. I made sure to ask when interviewing VA’s how many clients they have and how many they will take to avoid being overlooked. My REVA said she only works with 10 clients and had 9 at the time, therefore appearing to manage her workload.
I have been let down as she over promises and under delivers repeatedly. If she would just communicate with me the status on the project and not give me false expectations, I wouldn’t wonder what’s being done. I don’t feel she is overbooked with me, just needs to work on putting herself in the client’s shoe and communicate better. I truly hope this helps build better relationships between VA’s and their clients.

Thanks for the opportunity to share!

It’s interesting to read Lauren’s post because from my standpoint, VAs taking on too much work IS becoming a problem. In fact, it’s becoming so much a problem that many of my entrepreneur peers regularly discuss “alternatives” to VAs, such as students. Why? Because many of us shell out a substantial amount of money each month to a VA and then not have things done. Firing VAs is commonplace, and going thru several VAs happens more often than not.

For my part, I’m sad to see this. I love the idea of VAs. I’m not a micromanager so the idea of having an admin team virtually based who simply get things done without me managing them is wonderful. But I too am hesitant about hiring more VAs because I’ve seen too many of my peers have problems.

However, the good news is this is still fixable. I don’t think the VA reputation has been tarnished beyond repair, just a couple of easily fixable dings. Even though we talk and look for VA alternatives, we still consider VAs for our teams.

But I do think this is enough of a problem that as a VA you should be aware of. We hire VAs because we have all these pesky tasks on our plate we neither have the time nor the inclination to do. But they need to be done. And we also don’t have time to constantly check up on you to see if those tasks have gotten done, we want VAs who when they tell us it will be done, it’s as good as done.

I hope this is helpful. Like I said, I firmly believe in VAs — i regularly talk about hiring VAs in my articles and have an article devoted to why entreprenuers should hire a VA. So if this post can serve as a wake up call for VAs to seriously consider how much is too much work, then that will make my day.

If this capacity issue is truly a problem in the VA industry, it’s because some VAs are being too greedy. I can’t think of any other reason you would do this. You only have so many hours in your day or week. If you want to keep adding new clients, you need to add more staff, find reliable, good quality subs, or clone yourself. haha. If you don’t want to be managing staff or subs, you’re going to have to limit your clients or put them on a waiting list.

Katie, I haven’t heard from clients that this is a big problem in the industry. I will certainly follow this thread with interest though.

Lauren Hidden