The Filipino VA Advantage
Talk about being the right person, in the right place, at the right time. Story of my life.
In particular though, one thing lately has definitely shown to be true in that case… setting up a Virtual Staffing business with talent from the Philippines.
To recap the origin story, I went to the Philippines to set up a training company for the booming call center industry there. I ended up doing that very successfully, but along the way I stumbled into an even bigger opportunity. Hiring mostly former call center agents to work from home as virtual assistants for American small and medium businesses.
First let me share with you some of the typical reason you see such a large % of virtual assistants (and call center agents for that matter), hailing from the Philippines.
1. English Skills
2. Adaptability
3. A Culture of Respect
4. Work Experience
5. Cost
Let me keep the history lesson short, the Philippines used to be an American colony. During that time the education system was modeled in a way to have an American style of English taught as a subject from grade school through college.
The Philippines has had a complicated relationship with other countries, have been a colony of Spain and Japan as well. And now it has been developing very close ties to China and many countries across SE Asia. In addition, you might have noticed the high % of 1–800 calls you make end up being taken by a Filipino or if you’ve take a cruise, most of the staff are from the Philippines. They are as a people, very adaptable and go where the work is.
Like most Asian countries, the Philippines has developed a culture of respect for authority, for following the rules, for being good team players, etc. They say the Filipinos are the happiest people on the planet and their official tourism motto is even Its More Fun in the Philippines.
A very high % of Filipinos attend college. You will find that many virtual assistants have at least a 4-year degree and significant work experience in traditional office jobs. It’s rare to find such a professional workforce where the biggest avenue for employment are either abroad or working in outsourcing.
And of course, for many the most important reason why the Philippines, is the cost. In general, you can find a Filipino VA, with a college degree and valuable work experience, who will do the job for between 1/3 to 1/4 of what you paid for the equivalent pedigree in the U.S. Its just a reality of the global economics.
Those are great points to consider but let me explain to you a little more why I’ve been so successful with growing my own business.
1. Hire Employees, Not Temp Help
2. Go Vertical, Before Horizontal
3. Over Communicate Upfront
I only hire employees. I don’t take on short term project work and I stay away from clients who don’t see a VA as a long-term part of their business. I provide my team with healthcare, paid time off and other perks once they pass the mandated six-month probationary period. This makes my VAs very sticky. They don’t ghost. We have a single digit attrition rate, which in unheard of in the outsourcing space.
Another hack to success is to fight the urge to offload everything to a VA. You have a much higher degree of success by having them master one thing and then adding another as opposed to overwhelming them with a laundry list of to do. You will get their overtime, if you space out the new learnings. If you throw too much at them, you will fail.
And finally, over communicate at first. Once they get into a routine, things will be more automatic. There are weeks where I go with just a few quick chats with my team via Messenger. But you have to invest in being patient, being available and having plan upfront. Again, do it right and enjoy massive success. Do it wrong and you will walk away from using a VA having lost a huge opportunity to multiply your productivity.
If you make the effort to do these things, your success rate is going to be close to 100%, which is drastically better than the 50/50 chance you get using Upwork, Fiverr or any other Freelance work platform.
The Sonic VA motto is, “Focus on what you do best, hire for all the rest.” We have this figured out for you. We manage all the backend things like payroll, HR and time off. Using a Filipino VA should improve your business, working with a Sonic VA, will absolutely get you to where you want to be with your business.
If you liked this post, check out the video version here:
Daniel Meyer heads both Sonic Analytics and Sonic Virtual Staffing, sister companies that deliver both data analytics solutions and virtual staffing to businesses in the United States and the Philippines. With over 20 years in Big Data and Virtual Staffing, Dan is one of the most sought-after public speakers in Asia and offers big data coaching and analytics training seminars on both sides of the Pacific.
Sonic Analytics(www.sonicanalytics.com) brings big data analytics solutions like business intelligence, business dashboards and data storytelling to small and medium sized organizations looking to enhance their data-driven decision-making capabilities.
Sonic Virtual Staffing (www.sonicva.com) brings virtual staffing solutions like graphic design, social media management, bookkeeping and specialized virtual assistants for authors and professional speakers to small and medium sized organizations looking to scale on a budget and looking for 24/7 staffing options.
When not training current and future analysts, you can find Dan championing the use of analytics to empower data-driven citizenship by volunteering his expertise with schools and non-profits dedicated to evidence-based social progress.
