Get More Clients: Learn How to Talk About What You...

You know how business coaches are always telling you to perfect your “elevator pitch”?  That 30-second description of who you are, what you do and how you benefit your clients and customers?  Well, DO IT!

It’s important to know exactly why someone will benefit from working with you and hiring you on as their virtual assistant before you go off and network or market your business.  The thing is, if you don’t know how to explain what you do, how is anyone going to grow interest in your business?

Because of the nature of our industry, virtual assistance is picking up steam in terms of how well known we are and people are getting an education on what a virtual assistant is and isn’t but it’s still up to you to convey a great message to someone in a short amount of time.

Here’s an example:

I am a virtual assistant.  I work with small business owners, coaches, speakers and internet marketers to streamline their operations and grow their presence on the web through internet marketing, social networking and other current marketing methods.

While that may not suit you per say, it’s important to hone in on your benefit to people rather than just hmm’ing and haa’ing over this mystic world of virtual assistance we’re in.

If you’ve honed in on a message, what is it?  Share it below in the comments!

Are You Pro-Active With Your Client Work?...

One common thread I see amongst really successful virtual assistants is there ability to be pro-active. They encourage their clients to delegate and outsource and they create ideas around their client’s businesses in order to ramp up their own billable hours and get their clients relying more heavily on them.

So, the question is – how pro-active are you?

Being pro-active means:

• Going through your open client projects and making sure you are up-to-date and then going ten steps ahead to see what else you can do for your client
• Doing things that make logical sense to a project but might be things that your client didn’t think of at first
• Thinking outside of the box and offering up new project and task ideas to your clients
• Doing things that your client hasn’t held your hand through

Do you currently do things in your virtual assistance business that is pro-active?  If so, I’d love to hear about it!

Stop the Flow of E-mail People!...

This is a short post but an important reminder. With the influx of e-mail in everyone’s inboxes, it’s super difficult to manage it all.  So, here are some short reminders regarding e-mail.

• Not everything requires a response. If you’re just writing back to say ‘Thanks!’, don’t bother.   I mean that in the nicest way possible!  It’s not required and just causes the person on the other end to go into e-mail overwhelm.
• When setting appointments, be concise and clear. If someone is trying to schedule something with you, tell them an exact time, exact date and say, “If this works, just write back ‘confirmed’ and I’ll call you.  Otherwise, please let me know two or three times that you have open and I’ll match that up with my schedule.”  Or, use a self-scheduling system like mine at www.tungle.com.
• If you’ve e-mailed someone once and they haven’t replied, don’t e-mail them a thousand times. Instead, look up their assistant’s e-mail address, an alternate address on their website, a phone number and use another means of communication.

Help me stop the flow of e-mail.  There is far too much of it floating around cyber-space!