Are you overwhelmed running your business? Are there not enough hours in the day? The more your business grows, the more administrative tasks you have; the more time you spend on administrative tasks, the less time you have to generate new business.
How much is your time really worth? YOUR time is most valuable because it is your responsibility to generate new revenue for your business. Doing small and often trivial administrative chores yourself does not really add value to your business and the sensible solution is to delegate those less profitable tasks by hiring someone more than capable of carrying them out, but whose hourly rate is somewhat less than your real financial worth. So what’s stopping you?
You may have a multitude of reasons that prevent you from hiring a full time personal assistant. You may not need a full time, or even part time employee but just require someone for occasional or limited secretarial services. Then there are the employers responsibilities, employees are entitled to sick pay, maternity leave and paid holiday and often seek generous benefits packages. It is estimated that the true cost of an employee is over double and often up to triple the cost of their annual salary in terms of benefits and liabilities.
Significant for some potential employers is also the loss of privacy and space - are you working from home or have limited office space? You may not want an employee working from your home or simply not have the room for an additional employee in your office or all the equipment they may need.
Wouldn't it be perfect if you had a business assistant that was always ready to work for you, but only when you need them? Providing secretarial services from their own home or office, using their own equipment? Meet the Virtual Assistant (VA), an invaluable new work force that provides a practical solution for small businesses owners. A VA frees up your valuable time so you can concentrate on the important things that only you can do in your business.
There is no need to share office space or even for your VA to live in the same town or city. Work assignments are communicated through email; telephone, fax or post and web-based tools such as instant messengers and online calendars and planners are also often used as a means of keeping in touch.
Because your VA is self-employed, and invoices you only for the actual hours worked or by tasks completed, and is dependent on referrals and steady work flow from existing clients, s/he can be the perfect solution for a busy small business or entrepreneur. When you hire a VA you get all the benefits of outsourcing - no employer liabilities, tax and benefits issues, coupled with the loyalty and steadiness of a company executive PA.
With a VA, you have someone to whom you can delegate. Your VA can return telephone calls, answer e-mails, and draft letters for you. They can run your diary, deal with your post, run your marketing campaign, design your next presentation, book your doctors appointment and even remind you of your spouses birthday and source the perfect gift if necessary! VA’s are already computer trained, and can assist with your specific needs from traditional office support services to highly specialised areas including web site design. You can also equip your VA to go beyond traditional secretarial support to client development and marketing support.
You can easily justify a virtual assistant in terms of your greater productivity and your greater efficiency. You need to be the leader in your business and your VA will insure that you focus on what is important, rather than urgent. Your VA can also lend "size" to your company, which will impress potential clients.
As more and more businesses move their marketing and communications to the Internet, VA’s are becoming the obvious solution to staffing issues. For an hourly fee often less than the cost of temps or the real cost of employees, businesses can take advantage of professional assistance and a variety of skills at the click of a mouse.
Need a Virtual Assistant? Then you’ve come to the right place. We have details of all the best virtual assistants and pa’s in the business so click on the link and start delegating! DIRECTORY OF UK VIRTUAL ASSISTANTS
Are you a Virtual Assistant? Do you want to establish your presence as a professional virtual assistant and become an accredited member of the UK Association of Virtual Assistants? For more information about membership criteria, our CODE OF CONDUCT and how to add yourself to our DIRECTORY OF UK VIRTUAL ASSISTANTS visit our JOIN US section.
When you have filled your virtual assistant business with clients, you will soon run out of time that you can sell to new prospects. After all, you only have so many hours in the day that you can work. So how can you expand and take on more business without the overheads of getting an [...]
When you have filled your virtual assistant business with clients, you will soon run out of time that you can sell to new prospects. After all, you only have so many hours in the day that you can work. So how can you expand and take on more business without the overheads of getting an office and taking on staff?
It’s time to introduce you to the Virtual Assistant Associate.
Working with associates is a very popular business model in several industries as it works in much the same way as working with a virtual assistant. When there is work you don’t have the time to complete, your clients outsource it to you. When you have an excess of client work you don’t have time to complete, you outsource it to an associate.
Associates work at a reduced hourly rate to that you have charged your client, as they have been handed the work ‘on a plate’ without having to do all the marketing and relationship building associated with bringing that client on board.
You also continue to manage the client relationship and invoicing and the client remains a customer of your business, rather than becoming a direct customer of your associate.
It’s imperative to have an Associate Agreement in pace so that everyone understand the boundaries of the relationship. For more information and a selection of templates you can download and adapt for your own business go to:
Our final tip in this series is a short but vital one. Above all, keep marketing as a continual process and recognise that although you may not get clients immediately from you efforts, in time your consistency will pay dividends.
Our final tip in this series is a short but vital one. Above all, keep marketing as a continual process and recognise that although you may not get clients immediately from you efforts, in time your consistency will pay dividends.
When you have decided on your target market, or niche, think about how you can reach them. Do they belong to particular organisations, read certain publications or as is the case with one of my niches, do they all drink on a Thursday afternoon in bars within a square mile of a certain point in [...]
When you have decided on your target market, or niche, think about how you can reach them. Do they belong to particular organisations, read certain publications or as is the case with one of my niches, do they all drink on a Thursday afternoon in bars within a square mile of a certain point in London?
When you know where to find them, consider how you can get your message to them. While advertising in general is expensive and often pointless unless you can afford to take out a run, perhaps you could write an article for a trade publication, or give a presentation at an event your ‘suspects’ will attend. Think outside of the box for some interesting and inexpensive ideas that will have impact on your particular target market and keep you stimulated and motivated.
Next in our serries of Getting Those First Clients – take stock of all the skills you have and the industries you have worked in or that interest you. Consider what services can you offer and to whom? If you have been a book keeper with an IT firm for many years, you are going [...]
Next in our serries of Getting Those First Clients – take stock of all the skills you have and the industries you have worked in or that interest you. Consider what services can you offer and to whom? If you have been a book keeper with an IT firm for many years, you are going to find it far easier to offer your virtual book keeping services to other IT firms as you know something about their market and their ‘language’. If you target an industry or sector you have experience of, you will be seen as the virtual assistant who is an expert in this field and have an advantage over any other VA.
One of the questions I’m asked most often is ‘Where do you get your clients’. Usually the question is asked by new start up virtual assistants, but more recently I’ve been asked by more established VA’s who have started to struggle during the recession. Newbies have generally spent lots of time putting together their business [...]
One of the questions I’m asked most often is ‘Where do you get your clients’. Usually the question is asked by new start up virtual assistants, but more recently I’ve been asked by more established VA’s who have started to struggle during the recession. Newbies have generally spent lots of time putting together their business by purchasing equipment and organising their office, but have forgotten the fundamentals of putting together their marketing plan. Then when they are all set up and ready to go and have opened their virtual doors to the world they find that the phone isn’t ringing and the email Inbox isn’t full of enquiries. More established VA’s, once they have enough clients, put marketing on the back burner until such a time as they need to look for new clients again.
If either of these sounds like you, you need to develop a marketing plan, and fast. Firstly take a long hard look at your contacts and include everyone you’ve ever worked with, all your contacts through previous businesses if appropriate and family and friends. What contacts do you already have that you can ask for referrals? If you are already running a VA business, when did you last ask your clients for referrals? Don’t discount anyone because you think they wouldn’t need your services. They may well know someone who does.
In The News: Virtual Assistant Training – Who Needs It? In The Spotlight: Virtual Assistant Online Course Bundle – Fantastic 3 for 2 Offer and Online Book Keeping With Kashflow – Accounts Made Easy! Read it online at: http://www.ukava.co.uk/html/ukava_news.html
In The News: Virtual Assistant Training – Who Needs It?
In The Spotlight: Virtual Assistant Online Course Bundle – Fantastic 3 for 2 Offer and Online Book Keeping With Kashflow – Accounts Made Easy!
When starting your virtual assistant business, after getting together all you equipment, getting excited over your business cards and web site, there comes the sudden realisation that here you are, all ready to go and there isn’t actually a queue of people knocking down your door to work with you. Yikes! Over the next couple [...]
When starting your virtual assistant business, after getting together all you equipment, getting excited over your business cards and web site, there comes the sudden realisation that here you are, all ready to go and there isn’t actually a queue of people knocking down your door to work with you. Yikes!
Over the next couple of weeks we’ll be looking at some tips to getting your first clients.
Keep on networking This is often the first thing that gets dropped when you become busy with clients work. I know; I am guilty of it myself. But when you suddenly disappear from groups in you have been a regular, the assumption can be that you are no longer in business. Accept that networking is [...]
Keep on networking This is often the first thing that gets dropped when you become busy with clients work. I know; I am guilty of it myself. But when you suddenly disappear from groups in you have been a regular, the assumption can be that you are no longer in business. Accept that networking is part of the ongoing development of your business, choose one or two groups in which you will remain a regular, and keep going. Even if you are not looking for more clients, you will still establish relationships from which you will benefit later on.
About the Author:
Justine Curtis is the director of her own successful virtual assistant business My Virtual Assistant Limited http://www.my-va.com which is now recruiting a team of virtual assistant licensees and founder of The UK Association of Virtual Assistants (UKAVA) which offers free resources and information to its subscribers. Justine is the author of Setting Yourself Up As A Virtual Assistant and is proud to be able to pass on the benefits of her vast experience of the VA role to aspiring and progressive virtual PAs as a co-founder of the VA Success Group. If you are thinking about starting a virtual assistant business, visit http://vasuccessgroup.co.uk
Happy New Year! A very apt tip for the New Year today. All about reviewing and setting your activites for the coming year. Review your marketing activities Set aside time each month to review your marketing activities. How many enquiries have you had in the previous month and from where have they come? Have a [...]
Happy New Year!
A very apt tip for the New Year today. All about reviewing and setting your activites for the coming year.
Review your marketing activities Set aside time each month to review your marketing activities. How many enquiries have you had in the previous month and from where have they come? Have a look at what is working for you and what could be improved.
Social networking If you have a profile on sites such as Ecademy and LinkedIn, it is easy to spend hours each day responding to requests to link. Set aside some time each week for social networking and respond to invitations then. Also, use this time to seek out new connections of your own, join and [...]
Social networking If you have a profile on sites such as Ecademy and LinkedIn, it is easy to spend hours each day responding to requests to link. Set aside some time each week for social networking and respond to invitations then. Also, use this time to seek out new connections of your own, join and post to groups, etc.
One of the downsides to working virtually with clients is that it can be a little more difficult to build effective working relationships with clients and team members. From the client’s perspective, one thing that is sometimes difficult to understand is how work is progressing. One way to combat this is to keep [...]
One of the downsides to working virtually with clients is that it can be a little more difficult to build effective working relationships with clients and team members.
From the client’s perspective, one thing that is sometimes difficult to understand is how work is progressing.
One way to combat this is to keep in regular communication with the client and let them know how you are getting on with tasks given.
Send a weekly activity report and detail what tasks have been completed, what hours have been used and any comments so that the client is fully informed.
Once you have set up your blog, the next stage is to decide how you will use it to promote your business. Here are a few tips to get you started: 1. Define your audience. Have a good think about who you want to be reading your blog. This is easier if you have [...]
Once you have set up your blog, the next stage is to decide how you will use it to promote your business. Here are a few tips to get you started:
1. Define your audience.
Have a good think about who you want to be reading your blog. This is easier if you have a niche market because you will have a clear idea of who your customers are. If you do not have a particular niche, think about what your clients have in common.
2. Define your content.
Once you have decided who you want to reach, think about what information would interest them. Your blog is not a platform for you to continually trumpet your services and remind readers how great you are; it is an opportunity to provide useful information for your readers.
3. Set you posting rate.
A blog is for life, not just for Christmas! A blog takes commitment and is very interactive. Your readers will expect regular new content, so think about how often you want to post. I would recommend at least twice a week.
Part one of this article looked at what your clients like about your service, and how these associations affect what they think about your business as a whole. It is also important to look at what they do not like about your service. What weaknesses can you see? Some weaknesses may be related to [...]
Part one of this article looked at what your clients like about your service, and how these associations affect what they think about your business as a whole. It is also important to look at what they do not like about your service.
What weaknesses can you see?
Some weaknesses may be related to the industry as a whole. For example, it may be that as you work remotely you cannot make the coffee. However, be aware if things crop up that you can do something about. Perhaps you have missed deadlines or you are not up to speed with particular software that your clients use. Think about how you can improve on these in the future.
How can you ‘delight the customer?’
Years ago I used to work for a holiday company that used the line ‘delight the customer’. The idea was that you do not want the customer just to be satisfied with what you have produced for them. In order to get them singing your praises you really need to ‘delight’ them. So, what can you do to delight your clients? Where can you add that little bit of extra value or really show some initiative? If you are seen to be going that extra mile, your clients will love you for it, and that is when they start to become your raving fans and tell everyone how great you are.
Better than advertising
As you can see, creating your brand or the ‘image’ for your company is not about expensive graphic designers or advertising experts. It is about identifying what is great about your business and communicating that in a clear and consistent way. If you can turn your clients into raving fans, they will not only stick with you through these turbulent times, but they will also recommend you to others. That has got to be better than spending a fortune on advertising!
One of the most common questions I get asked by aspiring Virtual Assistants is: “What skills do I need to start my own business?” Here are the top skills you need to run a successful virtual assistant business: Organisation As a VA, you will be working with a range of clients providing different [...]
One of the most common questions I get asked by aspiring Virtual Assistants is: “What skills do I need to start my own business?”
Here are the top skills you need to run a successful virtual assistant business:
Organisation
As a VA, you will be working with a range of clients providing different types of support to each client. It is therefore imperative that you are an organised person who is able to switch between different tasks and work within different situations regularly.
Self Motivation
You are now your own boss. This brings a whole host of positive points, but also means that you no longer have a boss to issue instructions, motivate and encourage you… or breathe down your neck! You need to consider if you will be able to motivate yourself each day to get the job done, even if you are yet to secure your first client.
Relevant Work Experience
As a Virtual Assistant, you are charging for the experience and skills that you have gained and honed during your career. As you are charging for your skills, these need to be of an exceptionally high standard.
High Ethics
Again, you are charging for your time, so high ethics and honesty are essential. Your clients have to trust you to do their work and believe what you report back to them. You need to be completely honest with clients and work to high standards.
Task Orientation
The work of a Virtual Assistant is very task-oriented – but for other people. It is a juggling act and you need to make sure that all your work is accurate and on time. If you don’t like doing some mundane tasks, then the role of a Virtual Assistant is probably not for you.
Software Skills
Virtual Assistants are renowned for their excellent software skills. Some VAs even offer software training as part of their services to clients. Make sure that you are experienced in a particular software package if you are going to offer it as a service to paying clients. For example, it wouldn’t be right to offer to produce high-quality presentations if you don’t know PowerPoint.
We all hear about branding and how important it is to your business. But branding is not just about your web site or logo, it is also about the associations your clients hold with you and your company name. The more positive that association, the more likely they may be to remain loyal to you [...]
We all hear about branding and how important it is to your business. But branding is not just about your web site or logo, it is also about the associations your clients hold with you and your company name. The more positive that association, the more likely they may be to remain loyal to you when times get hard and competitors start slashing their prices.
So, how do you know how you are perceived by your clients and prospects, and how can you set about improving or building on your brand?
What do your existing clients think of you?
The best place to start is by sending a questionnaire to your existing clients and everyone on your prospect list. It is a good opportunity to ask what they like about your service and what improvements could be made. You should begin to see some similarities in the responses, which will give you an idea of how your brand is perceived.
What do they like?
When you have identified the similarities, have a close look at what your clients and prospects love about you and your service. These are the positive aspects or your brand – the things that you should be communicating in all your marketing information.
They will appreciate it and start talking about it so think about ways you can make your clients feel special. Get more free top tips on creating raving fans for your virtual assistant business at: http://vasuccessgroup.co.uk/virtual-assistant-freebies/10-step-downloads/
They will appreciate it and start talking about it so think about ways you can make your clients feel special.
Communication is key when working with multiple clients as a Virtual Assistant. As you aren’t seeing them face to face every day, like in corporate roles, it is important that you get the communication right so that you get the work done as well as build your growing relationship. Set up a regular [...]
Communication is key when working with multiple clients as a Virtual Assistant.
As you aren’t seeing them face to face every day, like in corporate roles, it is important that you get the communication right so that you get the work done as well as build your growing relationship.
Set up a regular time to talk
Communicating by email is ok, but you need to touch base and talk to your clients on a regular basis to build on the relationship.
You don’t have to meet in person, make use of telephone or video conference facilities.
Have you realised that it is time to add a blog to your website, but are not sure how to go about it? Here are a few tips to help you: 1. Choose an easy platform Choose a platform you are comfortable using and one that is simple and user-friendly. Some people swear by [...]
Have you realised that it is time to add a blog to your website, but are not sure how to go about it? Here are a few tips to help you:
1. Choose an easy platform
Choose a platform you are comfortable using and one that is simple and user-friendly. Some people swear by Typepad; my personal favourite is WordPress.
2. Install it on your web space
Make sure that you can install the software on your own web space – ie, under your domain name. This is important, as search engines like new content, such as that provided by regularly updated blogs, and if it is hosted on the software supplier’s web space but not yours, your website will not benefit.
3. Set up MySQL database
Make sure you have the facility on your hosting package to have a MySQL database. This comes as standard on many, but not all, hosting packages. You will need it in order to install and operate your blog. So, if you do not already have MySQL, ask for it to be installed.
More tips to revamp your virtual assistant business: Join at least one online networking site, which can be a strictly business site like LinkedIn or Ecademy, or more social site (but often equally effective) such as Facebook and Twitter. Don’t forget as a ‘virtual’ worker you can work with anyone, anywhere! Send your existing [...]
More tips to revamp your virtual assistant business:
Join at least one online networking site, which can be a strictly business site like LinkedIn or Ecademy, or more social site (but often equally effective) such as Facebook and Twitter. Don’t forget as a ‘virtual’ worker you can work with anyone, anywhere!
Send your existing clients a questionnaire. Ask them what they like about your service and what they would like to see added. If they are happy clients, ask them for referrals to other potential clients.
Set up a newsletter or Ezine to keep in touch with both clients, prospects and visitors to your website. Start by sending out simple tips that are useful to your target market.
Build your newsletter or Ezine subscriber list, put a sign up box on your web site, include a link to your sign up page in your Twitter updates, Facebook posts, blog posts, etc.
The start up phase of your business is a very exciting time for any business as you get to plan how you want your business to function. However, it can also seem very overwhelming as there are so many tasks that you need to complete. Here we will look at some of the basic points [...]
The start up phase of your business is a very exciting time for any business as you get to plan how you want your business to function. However, it can also seem very overwhelming as there are so many tasks that you need to complete. Here we will look at some of the basic points that you need in order to ‘open your doors’.
Equipment
Some people have commented that you can have a computer and printer and you have a successful Virtual Assistant business! The reality is it is a lot of hard work but very rewarding.
You can start out with some basic equipment and build up your resources over time. Some of the basic items you may want will include:
A PC or Mac computer
Printer
Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and Access (or equivalent)
