I recently asked Brian Gladu of LongerDays.com for his best outsourcing advice.  Here's what he had to say.

Get started now: It will never be easier to get the ball rolling than the first few days after signing up for outsourcing help. When you first start working with a virtual assistant, you’ve got momentum and motivation. If you delay getting started, you’ll lose that momentum, and it will take more effort later to regain it. Any time and energy you invest now with training, planning, delegating, etc. will pay dividends later.

Make it easy to delegate: Take a few minutes to streamline your delegation process and make it as convenient as possible. We recommend that clients bookmark our task submission form in their web browser. Another tips would be to add the phone number of the person you are working with into your phone and save them as a contact in your email client. Make delegating tasks as frictionless and natural as possible so that when you remember things you can easily get them off your plate and into the hands of your VA.

Think strategically: The value you get out of outsourcing depends on what you ask your VA to do, so you are in complete control of how much time you save, how much money you make, etc. Spend some time thinking creatively about how you can leverage your outsourcing to produce important results for you.

Align your VA with your goals: One of the best ways to ensure that you get a lot from outsourcing is to assign work that brings you closer to your business or professional goals. If a VA can help you accomplish important results faster and easier, you and your VA will have a good relationship.

Give feedback: The person you are working with is smart, educated, and a quick-learner. They wouldn’t be in the position they are if they weren’t. If something they do for you isn’t quite right or not quite what you expected, it probably reflects a communication problem rather than a lack of ability on their part. By letting them know what wasn’t quite right, they can meet your expectations going forward. Open, honest communication is critical to a productive working relationship - especially when you are working remotely.