Lately I’ve been thinking about what’s different about Outsource Success as opposed to any other virtual assistant companies.

I’ve come up with this;

It’s because my partner Raj (who runs the office in Mauritius) and I are doing the

exact same things that you are wanting to do.

We are creating our own products and marketing them online.

We have the same goals as you:

• To make more money in less time.
• Have a business that run’s on autopilot.
• Increase our exposure.
• Focus on the tasks that we love rather than those that drag us down.
• Live the four hour work week (or as close to it as you want).
• Financial Independence.

The list goes on, I’m sure you’ve got your own personal reasons.

I want to share with you an example of how I’m doing the things that you want to be doing, as it might stir some of you to get moving.

One of my clients is Matt Lovell, he’s the nutritionist for the England Rugby Team (quite a high profile position). A little while back we were talking and he said that he was going to lose 10 lbs before he went on holiday, he’d been working hard and not been able to exercise as much as normal..

I asked him how he was going to do it?

He proceeded to tell me… It was fascinating and I really warmed to his enthusiasm and the approach he outlined. I was already convinced that he knew his stuff.

You don’t have a job with as much responsibility as Matt has without being an expert.

I replied…

OK I’m up for following along and losing 10 lbs myself and why don’t we record everything that we do and make it into a product that we can sell.

Matt replied

‘Sounds like a great idea…’

The first part was easy losing the 10 lbs that only took 2 weeks, I wish I could say that we made the product as quickly.

It took a few months tooing and froing we were interrupted by holidays, Matt being away on tour with the England team etc. All really poor excuses for not cracking on.

Anyway it’s done now and I’ve learnt a lot. I’ll share some of those learnings in a future post.

Let me share with you what we’ve done and how we are marketing Four Week Fat Loss because there are some things you may want to emulate.

We’ve got a 54 page e-book that we are selling for £29.97 ( approx $47US), there is 6 weeks free access to a members only blog with additional videos, content,the ability to ask Matt questions and access to live Q and A calls and a few other goodies you can get the full list on the sales page. It’s great value for what it is.

Here are a couple of screen shots from the book

For the members area blog we are using wordpress and have added WishList Member to run the membership function.

Wishlist member is really cool, firstly it only costs $97 and it’s very straightforward to install.

It took my outsourcer a little bit of poking around to get the paypal payments and automatic password generation all set up but that was just a minor teething problem.

Here’s the members area for you to have a look at http://www.FourWeekFatLoss.com/MembersArea/ there are some posts that are visible, these posts are part of the autoresponder series I have written.

So what’s the marketing process.

We direct people to visit the home page http://www.FourWeekFatLoss.com/ once they have opted in on that page they are then sent to a page that has some good fat loss information and where there is a link to the sales page.

Here’s the sale page…

http://FourWeekFatLoss.com/Order.html

I wrote the sales page myself.

There’s a video on the page of me before and after losing 10 lbs, I’ve had feedback that I looked too fit to begin with and I should replace that video with someone a bit more average looking to begin with! I’ll remove my video as soon as we get some other testimonials.

I’ve also written a series of follow up autoresponder messages that provide extra information and also direct prospects back to the sales page where they can order the package.

The page is converting pretty well at the moment and we have only just started marketing it. I’ll share in another post if you’re interested in how we are actually marketing the program.

My purpose in sharing this post with you is that I and the team at Outsource Success know how to put together and market a product that can sell and make you money.

If you’ve got any ideas you want to talk about or bounce off me send me an e-mail or add me on skype. I’ll be happy to have a quick chat with you.

Gavin

I think this works best for tasks and processes that you have well systematised.

My view is that in your business the more you can get systematised the more likely you are going to be able to free yourself from low productivity tasks.

It is one of the key steps to moving toward thinking like a business owner rather than an employee.

There are some advantages of low touch relationships, you can save yourself time, the tasks can be managed efficiently and you can therefore be more productive.

Depending on where you are with your virtual assistants and outsourcers, you may want to incorporate low touch and high touch, e.g. some tasks that have been completed successfully and you have well systematised can be come low touch and then for other tasks you may want to end up brainstorming ideas

At one end of the spectrum you might want a relationship where you develop a long term relationship, you get to know about the outsourcers’ personal life their family and you become life long friends with them….

At the other end of the continuum you may have the view that the tasks that you want completed are ‘commoditised’ by that I mean you may well have them so well systematised and the processes all mapped out that there is no reason for any interaction between you and the outsourcer. It could be as simple as here are the results and here is the invoice.

Why would you want to have a high touch relationship with an outsourcer?

Some benefits could be

• Loyalty
• Improved response to your requests
• May add more value to your business, coming up with ideas for you to implement
• May be prepared to be more flexible with you.
• Generate ideas that can improve efficiency

Downsides

Invest time in getting to know someone and they end up leaving

Can spend a lot of time getting to know someone, that takes time and there is an opportunity cost associated with that.

Do you really need more friends?

It might be better to distinguish between High Touch and Low Touch Tasks rather than the relationships themselves?

What do you think?