HOW TO HIRE AN AMAZON VIRTUAL ASSISTANT

Is your Amazon business growing and you find yourself:-

• Preparing product feeds of multiple to upload into the system?
• Overwhelmed with customer queries and feedback’s?
• Managing and optimizing product listings?
• Doing product research to look for products that actually sell on Amazon?

If you have answered ‘YES’ to the above, it shows that you as a CEO is getting involved in mundane repetitive tasks and probably ignoring more important and crucial activities that warrant your attention as a CEO.

Let’s admit it, as a business owner you have more important tasks to tend to than having to take care of every menial update and entry in the website.

If you spend your time doing the above you would barely have the time to focus on other high-value tasks like sourcing products in a cost-effective way to sell, negotiating with suppliers, providing strategic analysis, forecasts, and projections for business growth etc.

So what do you do? After all, the tasks mentioned above are also important for sales and revenue generation.

There is a solution: Amazon Virtual Assistant

Amazon Virtual Assistant is somebody who is proficient in Amazon as an eCommerce platform and can provide support to your business from a remote location. They can take mundane tasks off your plate to free up your time so you can concentrate on scaling your business.

Tasks you can outsource to Amazon Virtual Assistant

• Product Listing – Product Listing is an umbrella term that encompasses a wide range of services such as product upload, product data entry, obtaining all mandatory information like product bar codes, shipping label, UPC codes, etc., writing SEO-friendly product descriptions/titles, optimizing product listing, graphic designing services for product images, social media management.

Some of these tasks require specific skills and therefore cannot be performed by a single VA. You may need a team of Amazon Virtual Assistant to manage your Amazon Product Listing completely.

For instance, you would need a digital marketing/social media expert for social media management of your e-store, a web copywriter for writing enticing product descriptions and a professional graphic designer to produce high-quality clear product images.

• Order and inventory management

• – It’s very crucial to maintain the right amount of goods in the inventory to meet market demand as less stock would mean sales failure and the excess stock would mean a lot of money being stuck. Apart from that tracking shipment and delivery is also important to ensure customer satisfaction. This is something that would require constant monitoring and therefore perfect to be outsourced to a VA.
• Product Sourcing – Although you might want to retain product sourcing and negotiating with suppliers in your kitty as an entrepreneur, product sourcing requires considerable research to understand the buying patterns of customers. Apart from that you also need to maintain a database of manufacturers and suppliers with products in your budget. That’s where an Amazon VA can be of great help. He or she can analyse the purchasing behavior of loyal customers to understand what products would work. Also the Amazon VA can build a database of manufacturers and suppliers you can source products from after further negotiation. This would make product sourcing more streamlined and hassle-free.
• Customer Service– As your sales increase, so will customer queries, complaints, and feedback. You would somebody solely dedicated to the role as happy customers would mean positive reviews, more sales, higher rankings and ultimately more revenue. Hiring a Virtual assistant for the task would mean somebody who would solely be responsible for answering customer queries, managing negative feedback’s, timely resolution of customer complaints etc.

Hiring Amazon Virtual Assistant

Now that you’re aware of how Virtual Assistants can help you run your Amazon business successfully, let’s talk about how to go about hiring one.

• Step 1 – Decide on the tasks you want to outsource and create a job posting

First and foremost you need to decide what tasks you want to outsource and what skills you want the VA to have. You don’t want to hire somebody who has no idea about Amazon product descriptions to write descriptions for you.

Make a note of the tasks you would want your VA to do and list of qualities/skills you are looking for. Create a detailed job description with all the information. Be as detailed about the task as possible. This will make your search more targeted.

• Step 2 – Decide where you want to hire from and the pay

One of the major advantages of hiring a remote worker is that you are not limited geographically. You can hire the best talent from around the world. Virtual Assistants work remotely; therefore an American company can hire a VA from India because the cost of an Indian worker is more affordable as compared to that of a local American national.

Pay rates vary geographically. Virtual Assistants from South East Asia are cheaper than their western counterparts. Of course a lot of other factors come into play here like communication skills, English speaking ability, educational background etc. Do your homework before you decide.

• Step 3 – Freelance Virtual Assistant v/s Virtual Assistant Company

Once you have decided you want to hire an Amazon Virtual Assistant, you have two choices: hire a freelance VA or go with a Virtual Assistant company. We’ll talk about hiring a freelance VA first. Obviously both have their own pros and cons. (back-link to blog).

• Step 4 – post your requirement on sites for freelance vaIf you’ve decided to go the freelance route with your VA, you can head over to the freelancing job sites like Upwork, Fiverr, PeoplePerHour etc. All you need to do is register and post your requirement which applicants can see and apply to.
• Step 5 – Filter and shortlistOnce you post your job, applicants will apply to your post. You can then screen, filter and accordingly shortlist candidates as you wish. After initial screening you can ask the candidates to take a short test which will help you see their quality of work and assess their capability. Shortlisted ones can then be called for a final interview or some employers may directly choose to interview and select the final person. It’s entirely up to you and your task requirement.
• Step 6 – Signing up with a Virtual Assistant CompanyHiring a VA through an outsourcing or Virtual Assistant service provider is a lot simpler than hiring a freelancer. There are a number of Virtual Assistant companies providing VA services across categories. You can simply look up the names on the internet, check out the company website and their service offerings, pricing packages etc. Contact the ones you think would best suit your requirement.You will be connected to a client relationship manager who would then discuss your requirement in detail.

  Once they understand your requirement, they would assign a VA to you to start working on your project. It should be noted here that the company would assign a VA or a team of Virtual Assistants depending on your requirement and you are not directly involved in the hiring process. If you feel that the assigned VA is not fit for your task, you can contact the manager and they would be happy to assign a replacement.

Wrapping it up

Hiring a Virtual Assistant for your Amazon business is pretty easy and a rewarding experience if done right. A good VA can prove to be solid support for your eCommerce business and can help you yield profits in no time.

Just be clear with your expectations. Remember a VA is no superman and cannot be expected to do everything from writing to graphic designing to customer service even if they have all the time in the world. They can only be good at certain things.

Bear that in mind while hiring. Hiring multiple Virtual Assistants for specialized tasks if you need to! Trust me the investment will be well worth it!

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