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Hiring an Assistant
Do You Need an Assistant?
Hiring an assistant is a major move for most salespeople and professionals. Unless you have more money than you know
what to do with, taking on an assistant is a frightening proposition. What if your business doesn’t grow to fully accommodate
the need for an assistant? What if the economy slows? What the heck are you going to have an assistant do, anyway?
If you are to the point of thinking about hiring an assistant, consider:
- An assistant isn’t to make your life easier: Hiring an assistant isn’t supposed to make your life easier; rather it is supposed to give you more time to concentrate on bringing in more business. If your goal is to make your life easier, then possibly your priorities aren’t business growth, but personal freedom, which is a valid reason for many. However, if that is your reason, much of the following won’t apply. Our discussion will assume a desire to grow your business as your reasoning for hiring an assistant.
- An assistant should support your more mundane tasks: Generally, the most effective assistant will take over many of your mundane tasks—, which may or may not be those tasks you don’t enjoy doing. Many hire an assistant to take over major, business producing tasks that they should be doing themselves, but that they don’t like doing. Again, the assistant’s primary purpose should be to give you more time to do the business building tasks—even those you don’t like doing. Your assistant can focus on paperwork, scheduling, customer service and other time consuming tasks that take you away from growing the business.
- An assistant must add value to your business: If your goal is business building, then you must be sure that adding an assistant will in fact help grow the business. If you are not sure you can or will capitalize on having additional time to grow your business, think twice about hiring an assistant.
- An assistant will hurt before they help: Each salesperson and professional has a unique way they do things. Your assistant, even if experienced in your industry, is going to have to learn how you do things and how you want things. You must allow a ramp-up period for them to come up to speed with your particular business. Consequently, you must plan to see your business slow somewhat during this ramp-up period. Expect and budget for your income to decrease for a short period of time when you first acquire an assistant. A combination of now having a payroll and having to spend time training the assistant is going to eat into your cash flow. There simply isn’t any way around it.
- An assistant is going to screw up: You must trust your assistant to make some independent decisions; otherwise, you’re going to spend all of your time micro managing them. This means that you must be willing to allow them to screw up at times. Over time as they learn more about how you do business, you can give them more and more authority. Nevertheless, each time you allow them to take on more authority and responsibility, you will risk them making bigger and bigger mistakes. This, unfortunately, is the nature of dealing with human beings. If you aren’t mentally and emotionally prepared to relinquish some decision-making and responsibility, you’re not ready for an assistant. Accepting that they will make mistakes doesn’t mean that you don’t replace them if they make too many or major mistakes, but you must be willing to give authority and then live with the consequences if an assistant is to be of real value.
When Should You Hire an Assistant?
As your business grows, you’ll find that you spend more and more time doing administrative tasks and less and less time
actually doing those things that grow your business. You’ll come to a point in time when you realize that you really can’t take
on any more business unless you either hire an assistant or find a better way of doing things.
At first, you can alleviate some this restriction on growth by finding more efficient ways of doing the things you need to do. But
there will come a time when the only real solution is another individual to assume some of the burden.
Unfortunately, salespeople tend to wait until the situation is critical before they finally breakdown and hire an assistant.
However, hiring an assistant only when it has become a small crisis will bring your business to a screeching halt. If you are so
busy that you absolutely must have help, what are you going to do when you finally hire the help—and then have to train them?
On the job training is time consuming for both you and your new assistant. You must go over the same processes several
times—much more slowly than when doing it yourself. Tasks can take two or even three time longer than normal. In addition,
remember, you’re already under pressure because you waited until the last possible second to hire.
Consequently, the time to hire an assistant is when it is still going to cause some financial hurt. When you have reached a
point where you are 90% full—that is you are on the brink of not being able to handle your business, but still have things under
control, is the time to hire.
If you hire too soon, you risk having a significant drain on your income for a relatively extended period of time. If you wait too
long, you’re risking losing business due to the chaos of working at or beyond 100% capacity and trying to train an assistant.
This is obviously a fine balance. There are some things that you can take into consideration to help make the decision:
- How fast is your business growing? If you’re at 90% but don’t envision reaching 100% for a matter of months, you can forego until closer to the 100% point.
- How long do you think it will take to train an assistant? Typically, you can have an assistant running at close to 100% within 30-60 days. Gage your business needs based on your projections for the coming months.
- What do you anticipate your market to do? If you’re running close to 100% capacity but see signs of a slowdown, forego an assistant until your market settles. On the other hand, if you’re running at 80-85% capacity and see the market warming up, think about hiring early.
- Make a realistic projection of what an assistant means to your business. If you’re running at 90% capacity, but hiring an assistant will only allow you to expand your business by 5%, is it worth it? On the other hand, if you’re at 80% capacities but believe an assistant will allow you to add 30% more business in a reasonable period of time, hire now.
- Starting with a part-time assistant works well for many. However, as dealt with below, once your business grows to the point where you need a full-time assistant, you’ll probably have to train someone new. The advantage of a part-time assistant is it can allow you to work out the specifics of exactly what you want an assistant to do and how you want it done, so when you do bring on your full-time permanent assistant you have all your systems in place.
Experienced or Inexperienced?
Whether you hire an experienced or inexperienced assistant will depend on several
factors:
- The complexity of your business. The more complex, the more you will want an experienced assistant
- Your budget. Naturally, the more experience, the more money you’ll have to pay
- The amount of time you can devote to training. If you have judged correctly and you have a sufficient amount of time to train an inexperienced assistant, you’ll save dollars and have someone you don’t have to worry about having learned bad habits from their previous employment.
- Your patience. Are you patient enough to train an assistant from scratch? If so and you have the time, that is probably your best choice. If not, spend the extra dollars for an experienced assistant where you have to spend less time training.
- Your experience. If you are relatively new to your industry but have found your business taking off, you are better served to hire an assistant experienced in your industry that can act as a buffer to help protect you against mistakes and can help you learn the business quickly.
Compensation:
Compensating an assistant is always something of a sticky question. Compensation methods range from hourly, commission,
to salary, or some combination, sometimes with a monthly bonus based on your sales.
Rather than concentrating on the various forms of payment, the concern should be finding a compensation method that fairly
compensates the assistant for their contribution to your business. Straight hourly gives you a great deal of control over
your budget, but doesn’t incent your assistant. Straight commission is often difficult for an assistant to accept because it
leaves too much to chance in terms of their income. Salary gives both you and the assistant an exact number so there are no
surprises, but again doesn’t incent your assistant.
History indicates that finding a method of compensating an assistant that gives them some assurance of a minimum income
and the opportunity to increase their income on a monthly basis seems to work best. Either an hourly rate or monthly salary
with a commission per closed sale or a percentage based on gross closed volume works well. They know what their minimum
income is and they have a direct interest in seeing that your business grows and that customers are happy. The more you
make, the more they make.
The question of how much you should pay is too difficult as there are too many variables based on industry, complexity of their
duties, region of the country, etc.
The who is a more discernible question. A great variety of people has been tried as assistants and most have their
advantages and disadvantages. I’ve dealt with salespeople and professionals who have hired assistants on a part-time basis
with the hope that they will turn into full-time employees. This seldom works out. Most people looking for a part-time position
don’t want to move into a full-time position. That means college students, part-time working mothers and others may make
great assistants on a part-time basis, but expecting them to grow into full-time assistants probably isn’t realistic.
Yet, starting out with a part-time assistant is the ideal solution for many salespeople and professionals. As mentioned above,
it allows you to perfect your systems and procedures prior to hiring a full-time assistant. But it also gives you the added
support you need while building your business without having a significant monthly financial commitment. Once you have
reached the point where you believe that a part-time assistant will allow you to acquire enough new business to pay their
income, it’s time to hire. If you can make the transition on a wash basis, you can justify the hire and put yourself in a position
to spend significantly more time developing your business.
Will Your Company Help?
Depending on your industry, you may well be able to justify the addition of an assistant that is fully or at least partially paid by
your company. Many companies in such industries such as financial services have defined plans in place that specify when
and to what extent the company will pay for an assistant. Many times it is expect the salesperson supplement the company
paid assistant in some manner.
If you company doesn’t have a defined plan, you may still be able to get company help. Prior to approaching your company for
aid, put together a plan showing not just the cost to the company, but what they will get out of the deal. Make sure your
projections and arguments are well founded. Lay out your case in a reasonable, non-threatening manner and justify your
request based on numbers.
Some companies will not pay the salary but will throw in company benefits. Although not exactly what you wanted, by being in
a position to provide benefits, you will be able to offer a little less in income, saving you some money. Many individuals would
rather give up a little income to get corporate benefits. So, if your company offers, don’t pout and turn it down. Consider how
you and your assistant are getting something out the deal and the company has an interest in keeping you—and your
assistant, happy.
Some Payment Formulas that Have Been Successful
Part-time Assistants:
The good news with a part-time assistant is that the pay structure is usually much less than a full-time assistant is. The bad
news is that it is usually very difficult to find a part-time assistant that has any real experience in your area. Consequently, the
savings is often offset by additional training expense.
Full-time assistants:
Full-time assistants will expect to earn more per hour than a part-time person and may expect benefits also. Many companies
will help pay assistants once you hit certain production levels. This participation varies from providing benefits only, to paying
part of the salary, to completely paying for your assistant.
Flat Hourly or flat salary
A flat hourly payment plan gives your assistant the confidence that they will earn a certain amount for each hour they work.
Under this format, the pay schedule is usually relatively small and varies by area of the country, but typically the hourly pay is in
the $7 to $9 per hour range.
Upside:
- Both you and your assistant know what to expect
- You can budget down to the penny by controlling their hours
- There is no room for disagreement on earned income—number of hours worked times hourly pay—period
Downside:
- Experienced people usually won’t work for this basic pay
- There isn’t an incentive for exceptional work
- Since you probably have a very green assistant, lots of training will be invested
Hourly with bonus per closed sale:
This structure gives your assistant an opportunity to participate in your earnings. The more sales they help you close, the more
money they make. In this structure, the hourly pay is usually the same as with a flat hourly person, but there is a small
incentive attached to each closed sales—either a flat dollar amount—say, $30 per closed sale, or a percentage—2.5 basis
points per closed sale.
Upside:
- Your assistant has a real incentive to get the work out
- You can probably attract a more experience person
- Your assistant still has a “safety net” of a minimum income per hour
Downside:
- Very difficult to budget
- If you make the incentive too large, your assistant’s income can get out of hand
- If you make the incentive too small, there isn’t an incentive—and you look really cheap
Small hourly pay with incentive:
If you close a large number of sales in a month—or if you average sale is very large—giving your assistant a very small hourly
pay with a per closed sale incentive may work well. In this format the hourly pay is at or close to minimum wage, but the
per closed sale incentive is larger than the above formula.
Upside:
- Your assistant can make more money
- They have a serious incentive to help get as many sales as possible closed
- You can attract the best part-time people around
Downside:
- Virtually impossible to budget for unless your monthly production is close to the same every month—month after month
- If you have a bad month, your assistant has a really bad month
Hourly pay with monthly or quarterly bonus:
Under this formula the assistant earns their normal hourly pay and at the end of the period—monthly or quarterly—they are
given a bonus that isn’t tied directly to production but is based on production and performance. This formula is much more
open to dispute since there isn’t an objective format for determining the bonus but is left to your “gut feeling.”
Upside:
- Gives you more control of the dollars
- Gives your assistant an incentive not just on production, but also on their overall performance
- Gives your assistant a known income to budget from, with extra money at the end of the month or quarter
Downside:
- Leaves open for dispute the amount of the bonus
- Makes the bonus based on gut feeling
- May leave your assistant with the feeling that their income is based not on what they do, but on whether you like them or not
100% Incentive based:
Some will pay their assistant strictly based on their closed sales. This format works very well if you always have a large
number of sales that close or if your sales are large. If your business varies too much month to month, this will quickly lead to
your assistant leaving.
Upside:
- You only pay when money is earned
Downside:
- Difficult for your assistant to budget
- Assistant must have great confidence that your business is steady and can be relied on
- Any slowdown in your business may well result in your now trained assistant moving on
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