Should the first 15 hours a week go to prospecting or to the admin that's drowning me?

Question

I'm still working out what the first deal costs me, and one of the line items I keep moving around is a part time VA. Budget is about $700 a month, so 15 hours a week at agency rates. The question is what those hours do.

Case for prospecting. Nothing happens until leads exist. If the VA is pulling lists, skip tracing, and doing first touch, the hours are pointed at the only thing that generates revenue, and I can measure it directly. Every hour spent on my inbox is an hour that produces nothing on its own.

Case for admin. My follow up is the actual leak. I've got leads from six weeks ago I never called twice. If the VA handles the CRM, the scheduling, the document chasing, and keeps my day clear, I do more of the high value conversations myself and I convert what I already have. Cheaper than buying more leads I'd also drop.

The wrinkle is that prospecting work is exactly the category people say AI is eating, and if that's right then buying human hours for it is buying a shrinking thing. But my inbox isn't getting automated any time soon.

I can see both. Curious how people actually spent their first VA hours and whether they'd spend them the same way again.

sonia_alvarez · Accepted Answer

Admin, and the six week old leads you mentioned settle it. You've already paid for those. Spending the first 15 hours generating more of something you're not working is buying inventory you can't process.

The cleaner way to think about it is which constraint binds. If you had 200 fresh leads tomorrow, would you call them all? On your own description, no. So leads aren't the constraint, your available hours are, and admin hours buy those back directly. Prospecting hours buy more of the thing already piling up.

Where I'd disagree with the pure admin answer is scope. Don't give the VA your whole inbox on day one, because triaging email requires knowing your business and she won't for two months. Give her the mechanical pieces first, calendar, CRM data entry, follow up sequences that already exist, document chasing. Those have right answers you can check. Then widen it.

On your AI point, I'd be careful about the framing. List pulling and skip tracing are getting automated fast and I'd rather buy those as software than as hours. First touch calling is somewhere in between, plenty of people run it with a bot now and plenty still run it with a person. Follow up on a lead you've already talked to is the part where a human still clearly wins, and that's the admin side anyway.

laurenkim53 · Answer

Rural markets so my answer's probably useless to you, but prospecting for me, because there's no list to buy and no data source worth the money. Somebody has to actually call the county and read the plat book. That's a person, not a tool, and 15 hours a week of it moved more for me than a tidy calendar would have. If you're in a market with clean data I'd go tender's way.

Should the first 15 hours a week go to prospecting or to the admin that's drowning me?

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