Hiring a drop shipping assistant (and training them of course) is one of the most challenging things during a business expansion. Unlike other platforms like Amazon and eBay, different Shopify stores have their internal mechanisms and business models that could the task of finding a suitable virtual assistant a challenging one. Nevertheless, learning from other’s mistakes is one of the best things that you can do to reduce waste and increase your chances of success. Thus, in this post, I would outline some of the important tips that you should remember when hiring a Shopify drop shipping assistant. Before we proceed, I would like to note that these tips are ‘supplementary’ to my previous post entitled A Definitive Guide to Finding the Perfect Overseas Virtual Assistant [2020]. By adding the information that you will get here from my previous post, you can tailor your hiring strategy to maximize your chances of success.
[lwptoc]
Five Tips for Hiring a Drop Shipping Assistant
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Find Someone who is ‘Techie’
Don’t get me wrong – having some knowledge in computers, eCommerce platforms, and other basic IT related stuff is important for any VAs who are working in any marketplace. Whether it be eBay or Amazon, VAs tasks involve a lot of navigating through the platforms to optimize your listing, manage your customer relations, and source your product, among others. Without these basic skills, a VA would not be effective, or even functional to help run your business at all. However, one thing that you have to consider is that your Shopify website would probably require better skills to navigate through the platform, familiarize it, and troubleshoot whenever technical issues arise. Even though there are a lot of forums and excellent customer support, having a VA who can resolve them quickly could save you a lot of time and money especially considering that page speed and downtimes could have a significantly large effect on your website traffic . 
Thus, in my experience, I realized that having virtual assistants that could manage my multiple Shopify stores and perform basic troubleshooting skills without having to rely on external third-party support is best for my traffic and conversion. Thus, after I established Amazon One Step, I made sure that all of our VAs has some knowledge in basic troubleshooting for Shopify sites by giving them a short course on some of the most common Shopify error messages and how to troubleshoot them.
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Hire Someone who has Sales experience [if possible]
The next thing that you have to remember is that it is best to hire a drop shipping assistant who has sales experience if it’s not possible and practical to hire a drop shipping expert at the moment. This is because compared to other platforms that have easier and more convenient mechanisms to make a sale, selling your product in Shopify would require a larger consumer to increase your conversion rates. Thus, by hiring either a drop shipping expert or someone who has sales experience you can take advantage of every consumer interaction and increases the chances of making a sale.
louis aguila; founder, amazon one step
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Find Someone who has Good Marketing Skills
Similar to what I have said before running a Shopify store has its hurdles that you have to overcome for you to succeed. One of these challenges is marketing your product for the following products to (1) increase your consumer base as well as to (2) mitigate the risks of a negative review from your site performance. In one study done by Shopify, they found out that “in 327M visits via social media, about 529k conversions happened”. This is significant considering that Social media marketing is a low-cost and high-efficiency method to obtain conversions. Fortunately, diversity of skills and experience are some of the benefits of hiring a virtual assistant. I’ll discuss how important these things are in increasing your sales conversion. On the one hand, having a VA that has good marketing skills reduces your costs for hiring a social media manager or an email marketing specialist. Some of the VAs that we train for our agency had experience in using Photoshop, Hootsuite, Mailchimp, and other marketing tools since they have worked in a variety of other fields or have acquired such skills when they were in college. I also realized that having a VA that can manage your social media interaction has more in-depth knowledge about how to manage your store as they engage in a two-way ‘learning process’ between them and our customers. On the other hand, a VA with good marketing skills could also reduce the risks of losing your consumer base in case of bad customer reviews. This is important because negative Shopify customer reviews could hurt not only your rankings but also your traffic and conversion rates. Thus, it is essential that you address complaints and issues as soon as they arrive through proper marketing and customer relations management. 
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Create a Non-compete Agreement with your Drop Shipping assistant
Another tip that you have to take into consideration when hiring a drop shipping assistant is that it is best to establish a non-compete agreement to protect your business and your assets. Non-compete agreements are essentially contracting wherein your VA would agree not to imitate your Shopify pricing strategies, resell your products, use your marketing strategy, or engage in any competitive actions after the termination of the contract for a specific period. However, for it to be enforceable you must consider the specific elements that have to be included for it to be valid where the VA is residing. For example, if you are trying to hire Filipino virtual assistants, you should explicitly include the (1) Time, (2) Space, and (3) Trade in your non-compete agreement or your non-involvement clause. Nonetheless, for a general overview of how to create a non-compete agreement, check out this post by Shopify. 
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Look for Someone Willing to Learn
Finally, one of the most obvious yet most challenging things that you have to consider is hiring someone willing to learn. For someone who has years of experience building online businesses, launching products, and training virtual assistants for our clients, I realized that finding VAs who genuinely wants to learn is difficult. For one this is because some of your potential hires might make you think that they are eager to learn by asking questions or engaging in strategic discussions on how to improve your business. However, true learning means the improvement of one’s skill set to apply towards one’s tasks and not merely asking. I once hired VAs who frequently asked questions, not because they want to learn, but because they did not want to exert effort in finding the solutions for themselves. However, finding those who truly want to learn is challenging and difficult. For example, here at Amazon One Step, we take the time to screen our applicants and implement regular evaluation periods to know if the applicants learn something from their past experiences. By doing this, we can assure our clients that their drop shipping assistants are also working hard to constantly improve and move forward for the benefit of everyone.
