Blog – Page 10 – Virtual Assistant Success Strategies

Wil Hart on September 22, 2011

Marketing Mentality

Take a look at your client load right now. Are you satisfied with the number of clients that you have? If not, why not? The number of clients that you have or do not have is directly related to your level of marketing. Why not examine all of your marketing activities and strategies and measure how well they are working for you.

Developing the marketing mentality will help you to focus on opportunities that come your way. Additionally, this mindset will motivate you to set up systems to support each of your marketing strategies. Take as an example, networking. What is your system for meeting new people, gathering business cards, and following up? When you follow up, do you send one email or make one phone call? Or do you attempt to contact the person until you get an answer.

Think about reaching out to your warm market. That is the group of people who already know, trust and like you. To some extent they even know the level of skill and knowledge that you bring to the table as a service provider. So, do all of these people know about your Virtual Assistance company? If not, send them a professionally written letter that details the important information about your company. Tell them about the services that you provide, the target market that you serve, the problems that you solve and the benefits that clients receive from working with you.

If you develop and maintain the marketing state of mind, you will see plenty of opportunity that surrounds you every single day. So, start reaching out to the people that you know you need to contact. Follow up and make your voice heard. There are a lot of people who need the services that you are offering. Use these two marketing strategies immediately. They are free and easy to implement.

Wil Hart on September 21, 2011

Be Honest

How important is honesty to you? I hope that you are not a person who would get involved with shady business dealings. If honesty is not very important to you, then be sure to make it important to your business. You want to have a great deal of integrity when dealing with clients, colleagues, vendors, strategic partners and everyone else with whom you come into contact.

An elementary topic? Indeed. Vital for long-term success? Oh yeah!

Have you ever seen a dishonest person get away untarnished from underhanded activity? At the very least, his conscience will be damaged. How can you be honest in your business dealings? The key is to avoid lying in any way. If you have an interview with a prospective client who needs a skill that you do not have, would you say that you can accomplish that requested task in order to obtain the contract? Maybe a person in that situation could reason, “I will simply learn the skill and then get the work done.” This is dangerous for her reputation and business.

How much better would it be to tell the prospect, “Well, I don’t have any experience in that, but I am willing to learn it on my own time.” Your prospect will have a great deal of respect for you because of your honesty and straightforwardness.

Thinking long-term about your business has to include a mindfulness towards integrity in all of your work. This is a sure way to build a lasting business. One lie could lead to the downfall of a business!

Wil Hart on September 20, 2011

EAT MY DUST!

You are unique mainly because you are a human. No other person in the past, present or future will ever duplicate your fingerprints or dental impressions. I mean NO ONE!

But, what sets you apart as a Virtual Assistant. Why should I partner with you instead of the seven other Virtual Assistants that I have interviewed? Whew! I’m so glad that I don’t have to answer that question. I will, however, have to make a decision that is best for my business, my goals and my investment.

What skills, personality traits or knowledge do you have that sets you apart from the pack of client-hungry Virtual Assistants? If you make those points stand out to your prospective clients, you will have a full practice of clients. Your competition will have not choice but to eat your dust!

Wil Hart on September 19, 2011

Are YOU Afraid of Success?

If your Virtual Assistance business is not yet successful, what is the reason? Think about how long you have been in business. What are your responses to the following:

1) I have been in business for ___ years (or months).

2) I (have/have not) reached the level of success that I envisioned when starting my business.

3) ______ is holding me back from reaching my definition of success.

When it comes to running your own business you either will or will not accomplish your goals. No matter the outcome it is really easy to track your level of accomplishment or lack thereof. So, whether you have reached your goal or not, determine what has prevented you and GO GET’EM!

FEAR of success might be a major factor for unsuccessful people. Here are a few reasons why many people are afraid of being successful:

1. It takes a lot of hard work. (Or, “I want success to be easy.”)

2. Some may be concerned about other people viewing their success negatively.

3. Fear of failure.

4. Fear of more responsibility.

5. They don’t feel comfortable being in the spotlight.

There is a plethora of reasons and excuses that people have for being afraid of having a successful business. If you are afraid of being successful, I challenge you to dig deep inside your mind and find the reasons.

Whatever you learn about yourself and your own mindset issues if perfectly fine. Believe me, it is okay! But, would you not rather know why you have such fear so that you can make the choice to either stay in a place of fear or actually conquer it?

The choice is yours. I wish you MUCH SUCCESS!

Wil Hart on September 18, 2011

Be More Productive and Make More Money with Supportive Technology

Working as efficiently as possible will save your clients mo.ney, help you to develop stronger relationships with them and allow you to create a highly profitable business.

One of the keys to doing this is to use technology to assist you with your workload. Likely, it is your goal to build a business that serves several clients at the same time. How will you manage working with them all in systematic way? As a Virtual Assistant, you are receiving emails, phone calls and voicemails at different times regarding a variety of projects and tasks. How can you maintain your productivity and sanity?

That is the question of the day. The solution is not far off! A collaborative tool like Central Desktop can save you from a lot of wasted time, lost information and lost business. The days of writing notes on tiny pieces of scratch paper and losing them are OVER! No more accidentally deleting client voice mails that have important instructions on them? Now, you can capture notes, instructions and updates all in the same place without ever leaving a voice mail or sending an email.

Using a collaboration platform will improve your productivity tenfold. Tools such as Central Desktop allow you to manage people, projects and documents in a centralized location. (There are similar platforms such as Basecamp, but we prefer CD.)

Central Desktop is like sharing one computer among multiple users. For example, using a collaboration platform would allow you and me to seamlessly co-write this article. If we worked together through Central Desktop, I could make changes and save them. Afterwards, you can be notified via email regarding the changes and any notes that I want you to see. Isn’t that cool?

Now, think back to the scenario that we mentioned earlier. Let’s say that you work with seven clients. With each of those clients you concurrently work on 3 projects and other tasks. From the standpoint of the projects alone, there are twenty-one different matters that clamor for your attention. How do you track it all?

In Central Desktop, you can create a separate workspace for each of your clients. What is more, you can manage an unlimited number projects, tasks and milestones for each client. This gets even more exciting! When you or your client make any updates to a project or task, you both can be notified immediately. All notes and updates stay within the collaboration tool. That means you do not have to worry about picking up the phone every time you have a question or need more information. This takes a lot of stress off of your brain and records your most important business matters in one location.

Think about how well you collaborate with your clients and colleagues presently. Do you find this a great challenge? Consider leveraging supportive technology that will improve collaboration, decrease stress and increase your productivity!

Wil Hart on September 2, 2011

What Activity is Most Important to YOUR Business?

The misuse of your time is probably the greatest disservice to your as a business owner. How do you manage yourself within the time that is afforded you? Just like me, you have 24 hours every single day. Time is just like money, the way you spend it proves what activities are important to you.

I am sure that you engage in different activities every day. But, are those activities your MOST important ones? Are your activities building the business of your dreams or tearing it down? I will put you to a time challenge and ask you to track the time that you spend every day. Keeping this simple log will show you exactly why your business is in its current condition. Now, I want to assist you a bit further in analyzing how you spend this precious commodity.

Subtract 9 Hours

Right off the top, I will shave off nine hours for your sleep. If you do not sleep well, it does not matter how you spend your time because you will not be able to put forth your best effort anyway. That leaves you with 15 hours.

Subtract 5 Hours

I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say that you are a person who loves to spend time with your family and friends. You also deserve some personal time each day so that you can reflect on your life as to what you have done and what matter you still need to care for. This time slot will also give you some time for personal care. You have 10 hours left.

Subtract 2 Hours

Likely you will need to run errands and care for other matters that pertain to your business or personal life. This is a giveaway of time that may be planned or unexpected. These two hours may or may not benefit your business but will certainly vary from day to day. Now, are you ready to get your business day started? You have 8 hours left.

Subtract 8 Hours – Time is UP!

In this very important time slot, you must decide how best to build your business. There are two very important activities that will boost your income. That is client work and marketing. There is so much that is involved with both of these activities. How are you spending your stipend of time? How many clients do you now have? How many of your hours each day are allotted to each client? After you have done the math on that, you need to wisely consider how you will shell out the remaining hours.

If you do not have a full practice of clients, it only makes sense to spend as much time as possible on marketing your business. Your marketing efforts today may not produce results until three or more months from now. Consistent marketing is imperative! You never know when your marketing efforts will yield results. The worst time to do marketing is when you are thirst for clients

I ask you, on what activities are you spending your TIME?

Wil Hart on August 19, 2011

How to Take Care of Your Best Client…You!

There are a lot of moving parts to running a successful virtual assistant business. Because of that sometimes, it can be easy to forget about your most important client. That client is YOU! I want to make sure that you are not neglecting your greatest business asset which is your whole person. That includes your mental clarity, creativity, physical strength and energy level. How can you make sure that you have a healthy body and mind so that your business supports your lifestyle?

Here are a few important points to consider:

Exercise

When you exercise, your body thanks you for it. Moving around and getting your metabolism sped up is one of the best things that you can do for your body. It does not matter what fitness level you are in currently. You can simply start by taking walks, even if it’s just 20-30 minutes. Put on some comfy shoes and get to stepping! Walk so that you break a sweat and feel alive.

Do you know that you want to get into shape but do not know where to start? Consider working with a personal trainer. Check out a local gym and see what kind of professional guidance will suit you. If you are concerned about costs, think about how much time, money and missed opportunity it’s costing you to not take care of yourself. You’ll likely find that investing in yourself is a smart decision!

Exercising regularly will help you to enjoy:

Increased energy: We would all love to add a few more hours to each day. I’m still trying to figure out a way to make that happen for you. So, in the meantime, try a different strategy by increasing your energy so that you can get more done in the time that you do have.

Mental clarity: Exercising has a magical way of helping us to clear our mind. When you do cardio or weight training, you have an outlet for relieving stress and worry. You may even find that some of your best business ideas will come to you at these moments of clarity. I often do!

Strength: Your body has so many different systems, cardiovascular, muscular and skeletal just to name a few. An exercise program strengthens your whole body. This will give you greater endurance when you are home working diligently on serving your clients and growing your business.

Take Breaks

It is a disservice to you to sit in front of the computer all day. You owe it to yourself to get away from your computer and office for a while to get some peace of mind. If you are not careful, your home based business will become an uncontrollable beast! Believe me, I know from experience. I have a tendency to work too much. I have to work hard to detach myself from my desk several times a day. But I can also tell you that my absolute best efforts result when I set aside time for breaks.

Eat Well

It is so easy to get into the rut of awakening from sleep, starting work and going full throttle until you mentally and physically crash. That is not a healthy way to run a business. So, your first break of the day should be ‘breakfast’. You have been sleeping and thus fasting all night. When you wake up it is time to eat. This will provide the fuel you need to do great work for yourself and your clients. Be sure to schedule your second and third meals as it is appropriate for you.

Make no mistake about it; you are the greatest asset to your business. That means you are responsible for taking care of your family, your company and YOURSELF! If you are strong, vibrant and healthy, that will translate to you having a strong and thriving business. Take great care of yourself!

Wil Hart on August 12, 2011

Four Ways to Take Action NOW to Build a Successful Business

Once you setup your business and start moving out of “start-up” mode, you’ll want to turn your attention to “building” mode. Yes, you WANT a long-term sustainable business. You BELIEVE you can create success for years to come. Remember this quote: “There is something more important than believing; ACTION! The world is full of dreamers. Those who are successful will move ahead and begin to take concrete steps to ACTUALIZE their vision” (- Unknown).

The first step in doing so is to define what success means for you. You want to get to that place and stay there. As an executive or admin assistant, you likely started out as a newbie in the corporate world. Over the years you found yourself going from supporting entry level personnel to C-Level executives. In that world, supporting the highest level executives may have been considered by you as “Success Status”. You want to reach that same level, but this time it will be created by you in your own business.

Building your business and growing it to support the lifestyle you want is the whole point of becoming an entrepreneur. In order to build your business, you will need to do a few things very well:

Market Consistently: In our recent article on marketing, you learned how to reach out to your warm market. That is the group of people who already know, like and trust you. They are your family, friends and former colleagues. Congratulations if you have received clients in this way! Now it is time to step up your marketing. You need to know who your target market is and who your ideal client is.

Your target market is the industry or profession on which you focus your marketing efforts. For instance, if you decided that you want to focus on working with fitness professionals. That would be your target market. Now you can focus all of your marketing attention on that specific group. You can easily find networking events where fitness professionals spend time. They will be at conferences that you can attend. Your marketing collateral will speak directly to this group. It will help them to see that you are the expert who can help them to solve their specific problems.

Your ideal client is the one type of person in that target market that you are best suited to work with. This person has traits that inspire you to do your best work. Being clear on your ideal client will assist you in ALL of the marketing that you do going forward. It will affect where you direct your speaking engagements, social media marketing, blog writing, networking and everything else.

Your marketing efforts will be focused, consistent and effective when you follow this sound piece of advice.

Set Up Systems: Installing systems in your business will allow you to dramatically build your business. It will save you time, energy and resources. Why? It is because you will know exactly what steps to take when you perform any task in your business. This includes billing and receiving payments, enrolling new clients, dumping less than ideal clients, working with sub-contractor VAs, managing business cards that you collect when networking, knowing what to say when following up with prospects, closing new deals and the list goes on and on. All repetitive activity in your business deserves to have a system set up to make your life and that of your clients much more enjoyable.
Upgrade Your Skill Set: What got you HERE, won’t get you THERE. No doubt you were a sharp corporate employee. The skills you possessed are what allowed you to create your business in the first place. Now that you are growing your business, your fee structure should be commensurate with your skill set and the solutions you offer to your clients. When you worked as an EA, you likely had a yearly review. Your manager expressed to you whether you met the expectations for the position or not. That meeting likely determined if you received a raise or not.

In your own business, you will need to keep growing in knowledge and skill. One of your clients may want to sell products from their website. One skill you may want to develop is setting up and managing a shopping cart. Some of your clients may need help with managing the distribution of their weekly email newsletter. Therefore, you will want to learn how to utilize a database such as iContact. Make it a priority to look at what services will make your client’s lives easier and then invest in learning the necessary skills to offer those services so that you can increase your value (and your fees).

Build Momentum: There are so many different services that you can provide as a Virtual Assistant. That is why this industry is exploding with opportunity. You have started your business and that is EXCELLENT. Great job! Now is the time to turn up the heat and make your mark as an entrepreneur. If you market your business consistently, set up systems and learn new skills, you will be poised for phenomenal growth. All of this is based on what your level of Success Status means for you. Set your course and shoot for the stars!

We cover these topics in depth in the Successful VA 2.0 Mentoring Program. It is quite a hit with an excited, brand new group of 53 students. If you would like to join us, you still can, just visit www.SuccessfulVA.com to secure your spot and get instant access to the program materials. We look forward to welcoming you!

Wil Hart on August 5, 2011

Five Keys to a Successful Transition to Self Employment

At what phase in your entrepreneurial journey do you find yourself now? Are you researching the opportunity to become a Virtual Assistant? Or, have you already fired your boss and are setting up your home based business? Another phase that comes to mind is the phase where you are working in your business to replace and exceed the income that you once maintained as an employee.

Mental Preparation

If you have not left your place of employment, but yearn to do so, I want to help you make a smooth transition from employee to entrepreneur. Likely, you have a million thoughts and questions running through your mind about how you can build a virtual assistant business from scratch. Continue Reading>>

Wil Hart on July 29, 2011

I Can Help You: Marketing Made Easy

You have started your business. Congratulations!

Now, what is more important than starting a business? STAYING IN BUSINESS!

A few weeks ago, we discussed the importance of having a powerful mindset that will support all of your business and life goals. Here is a mindset to adopt about marketing your business: “if you do not market your skills, knowledge and services, you will not be in business for long.” Attracting clients to your company is how you will thrive in business.

Please decide now what type of business you want to have. Is it a not-for-profit organization? Are you looking forward to running a business that is struggling to stay afloat in the market? Or, do you want a business that is bustling, exciting and providing the lifestyle that you desire?

If you had to choose right now, which of the scenarios above would describe your business goals? The easiest way to create a successful business is to market yourself effectively. Marketing is sharing your knowledge, skills and services with people who are already looking for them. There are companies and solopreneurs in the world who are desperately seeking to find what you have to offer. Marketing effectively is your way of saying, “Here I am. I can help you.” There are hundreds of methods and strategies available for you to share your message with the people who need you most.

I am going to teach you the easiest and least stressful way to attract a few clients when you are first starting out in business. Remember this key point, marketing is simply standing up and saying to the people who are looking for you, “Here I am. I can help you.” If prospective clients are already looking for you, how will you communicate with them? Your message must be crystal clear. So, how do you clarify your ‘here I am, I can help you’ message? You can do so by answering these questions:

What problems do you solve? Every business fills a need. People pay you for a physical product, service rendered or for your consultation. All of these aspects of business solve some sort of problem. It is important that you clearly identify with the problems of those whom you serve.
Whom do you serve? There are a lot of people, businesses and organizations in the world. Define who you specifically work with. This is your target market. When you clearly discuss whom you work with, other people will quickly pinpoint the individuals in their networks that need you. They can refer business to you.
What benefits do they receive? This is the reason satisfied customers will refer you to their friends and colleagues. When you solve their problems they are happy, comfortable and joyful. Define some of the benefits that your clients receive from working with you.

Now, it’s time for the strategy. Your initial marketing strategy should be to make full use of your warm market. This is the group of people whom you already know. They trust you and can vouch for your character and in many cases the work that you produce. Where can you find them? Start with your workmates, family and friends. Any person that knows, trusts, and likes you should be notified about your new business. They may be in a great position to help you.

Marketing becomes quite easy when you have the right mindset towards it. There is no need for you to feel hesitant about reaching out to the people who are already in need of your help. Think back to when you were working for other people. Each time you interviewed for a new J-O-B, the employer was simply asking you, “How can you help our company?” Before you were even offered the interview, they likely needed a piece of paper that listed much of your previous work experience. Your resume was the ticket into an interview. What is a resume? A resume is a marketing document that details reasons why a candidate is a good fit for an employer.

Does that perspective help you with your mindset about marketing? When you market your knowledge, skills and services, you are positioning yourself in front of people who have already been looking for you. They need you. So, stand up and say, “Here I am. I can help you.”

Would you like additional training to learn how to market your business authentically? Join our tele-series where we will teach you our Successful VA System 2.0.

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