How to hire a VA for lead generation: the UK guide
Lead generation is the hire with the clearest scoreboard and the highest failure rate. This guide covers what a lead generation VA does, how to test one, what to ask and what it costs.
What a lead generation VA actually takes off your plate
The job is the top of your pipeline: finding the right people, reaching them in your voice, and keeping the record straight. Six tasks account for most of it.
Prospect research
Researches and qualifies leads against your ideal customer profile, sourced from LinkedIn, industry databases and your existing CRM.
Cold email outreach
Runs multi-step email sequences in your tools and your messaging, measured on replies rather than volume sent.
LinkedIn prospecting
Sends connection requests and follow-ups, and engages with prospects' content to warm them up before outreach.
CRM hygiene
Keeps the pipeline accurate: contact details updated, activities logged, deals moved between stages, duplicates removed.
Discovery call booking
Manages your booking link, qualifies interested prospects, sends prep materials and confirms attendance so the calls you take are worth taking.
Lead nurturing
Re-engages cold and dormant leads with sequenced follow-ups so opportunities do not fall through the cracks.
Before you hire, write down your ideal customer profile in one paragraph and the three reasons your last five customers bought. If you cannot, the first two weeks of the engagement will be spent working that out, and that is fine, but it should be planned rather than discovered.
Skills and tools to look for in a lead generation VA
Prospecting is judged on the quality of the conversations it produces. Test for the habits that produce quality.
Research that reads like a reason. Give a candidate your ideal customer profile and ask for ten prospects with one line each on why they fit. The line is the test. "Marketing director at a SaaS company" is a title; "runs a 12-person team that just posted three sales roles" is a reason.
Writing that sounds like a person. Ask for a first cold email to one of those ten prospects, in your voice, under 120 words. Read it as the recipient. If you would delete it, so would they.
Tool fluency in at least one stack. A CRM such as HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce or Zoho; an outreach platform such as Apollo, Lemlist, Mailshake or Instantly; LinkedIn Sales Navigator and a finder such as Hunter.io. A candidate does not need all of them, but should have run a sequence end to end and be able to describe the numbers: sent, opened, replied, booked.
Record discipline. Every touch logged, every stage moved, no duplicates. Ask how they kept a CRM clean last time and what they did when the data they inherited was a mess.
Judgement about targeting. The best lead gen VAs push back on a list that is too broad. Ask what they would do if the reply rate was low after two weeks. The right answer is about the targeting and the message, not about sending more.
What to ask before you hire a lead generation VA
Four questions, asked of a freelancer, an agency candidate or a managed provider, expose the difference between someone who has built pipeline and someone who has built lists.
Which of these tasks have you owned before, and in which tools?
Ask for the business, the tools, the volumes and the outcome: how many prospects a week, what reply rate, how many meetings booked. Then ask what did not work. A prospector with no story about a sequence that flopped has not run one.
How do you report what you did each day or week?
You want a short weekly number set: prospects added, touches sent, replies, meetings booked, and what they changed as a result. A good answer names the numbers and the day. A vague one means you will be inside the CRM working it out yourself.
What happens when something is outside your scope?
In lead generation the edge of scope is a live prospect asking a question only you can answer, or a pricing conversation. The right answer is a handover rule: the prospect gets a same-day reply saying you will follow up, you get the context written up, and the VA does not improvise an answer.
How do you handle access, passwords and customer data?
Lead gen VAs work inside your CRM and your email domain, and the data they build is your asset. Listen for a password manager, comfort with an NDA and a data-processing agreement, and an understanding that lists, sequences and contacts stay in your accounts, not theirs.
If you are hiring through a managed provider, ask the provider the same four questions about the assistant they propose, with the assistant's name attached.
What a lead generation VA costs
The model sets the price more than the task does. A UK-based sales development hire, employed or through an agency, costs what a UK salary costs plus employer National Insurance, pension, holiday, a desk, the tool licences and your management time. A freelancer's hourly rate looks lower until you add the hours you spend recruiting, briefing and rebuilding the process each time they move on.
A managed lead generation VA from Ant Assist starts at £5 per hour on the entry rate: the first 6 months on the Entry tier, 3 months on Mid, 1 month on Expert. After the promotion, the lead generation rate card applies: £5.50 per hour full time on the Entry tier (160 hours a month, £880) or £6.50 per hour part time (80 hours a month, £520), with Mid at £6.33 and Expert at £6.88 per hour full time for assistants with longer experience. There are no platform fees on top, and the rate includes the assistant's time, our office facilities in Cairo, and the supervision and management that keep quality up. Your outreach and CRM tools are yours and stay in your name. For the comparison against a UK employee, line by line, read how much a virtual assistant costs in the UK or put your own hours into the calculator.
What the £5/hour entry rate includes
- Dedicated VA, never shared
- UK-hour aligned support
- Management and supervision included
- Recruitment and onboarding included
- Office infrastructure included
- VA replacement available
- No NI, pension, or holiday costs
- No long-term contract, rolling monthly
The first 30 days: onboarding a lead generation VA
Most clients have their VA active within 5 to 7 working days of signing up, and a lead generation VA typically reaches full productivity within the first two weeks after that. The four weeks after go-live decide whether the pipeline fills.
Before day one. Agree the ideal customer profile in writing and the targeting criteria your VA will use; you approve them before any prospecting starts. Set up CRM and outreach access through a password manager, never by sharing credentials in a message. If you do not have a CRM yet, a basic one is set up during onboarding so the VA owns it from day one.
Week one: research and the first list. Your VA builds the first prospect list against the profile, with a reason on every row, and drafts the first sequence in your voice. You approve both. Nothing is sent yet.
Week two: the first sequence live. Outreach starts at a controlled volume. Every touch is logged. The weekly number set starts: added, sent, replied, booked. Replies with questions are handed to you with context the same day.
Weeks three and four: refine and own. Targeting and messaging change based on the reply data, with you in the loop. LinkedIn warming runs alongside email. Dormant leads get a nurture sequence. Discovery calls appear in your diary with prep notes attached. You keep one weekly review slot on the numbers, because that slot is what turns activity into pipeline.
At Ant Assist a UK team supervises quality alongside you throughout, reviews the numbers with your VA, and refines the targeting with you based on response rates. If the fit is wrong, we replace the VA and carry the handover, with no re-recruitment and no restart from zero.
Common questions about hiring a lead generation VA
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Related guides and services
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