Virtual Assistant – THE Blog About Our Industry

About the Virtual Assistant industry for VAs and for clients

Monthly Archives: April 2009

Getting back to basics – Becoming a VA

I’ve seen many posts recently via Twitter and forums where people are asking about how to become a Virtual Assistant.

As I haven’t written on that for awhile I thought I’d give an update here.

Providing you have good computer skills and experience in using the web for sharing files, downloading and receiving information and so on, then chances are you are eligible to become a Virtual Assistant.

A Virtual Assistant is someone who provides assistance to others on a virtual basis, be it the Internet (probably the most used medium for this industry), phone, fax, courier and mail.

Originally a Virtual Assistant (or VA) came from the corporate arena having had a secretarial, administrative or similar background but today the service offerings of a VA can be far wider than what the traditional secretary or administrative support person provided.

Services can include:  word-processing, formatting of documents, PowerPoint presentations, data entry, database management, internet research, website maintenance, book-keeping, transcriptions and the list goes on.

But don’t confuse the above list with thinking that all VAs must have all these skillsets.  They usually provide services in what they know and do best otherwise they will struggle to meet all the needs and expectations of clients.  It’s not unusual for a client to have more than one VA, with each providing the services only in their skillset.  When you think about it the same happens in the corporate world – the company employs people to handle the various aspects of the business that they are best suited to, so it makes sense for a client to enage more than one VA to handle several aspects of their business too.

And let’s face it – even business owners are not good at every aspect of their business. That’s why they should do what they do best and outsource the rest!

What you feed grows, what you starve dies

I was just climbing out of my car after visiting my business coach when I heard the final sentence of something on the radio and it caught my attention.  The guy was saying ‘remember, what you feed grows, what you starve dies’.

This is such a profound statement and hit me straight away.  It was very relevant to the plans for my Virtual Assistant business and where I want to take it next, after having been with Stuart for the past hour.  We’d been talking about the progress of my Virtual Assistant Network, the VA coaching, my books, clients and other parts of my business that have developed over the years and what my future plans could hold.  I am beginning to see I can spend more time on marketing, promoting and mixing and mingling with people instead of being in my office fulltime as I have been for the past 15 years.  The thought kind of excites me.

Hearing what the man on the radio had to say made me realise that perhaps my not being out as much as possible in the past doing these things may mean I’d let my ‘marketing’ starve – or at least I hadn’t been feeding it as well as I could have been.  But having been in the office fulltime and supporting clients meant I had fed the ‘client side’ of my business well.  My mind was obviously working on this new thread.

However, as I thought further upon this statement, it also hit me that the above statement works on both a positive and negative level as well, if you think about the negativity that is out there and which often can be pointed towards you – do you feed that negativity by reacting or starve it by ignoring it or being proactive? It kind of depends on the mood I’m in but there are times when I’m more reactive than proactive and perhaps I’ve fed the wrong thing without interntionally doing so.

What about you?  Are you feeding what needs to grow or are you starving it – the parts of your business that need to grow that is?  Or are you feeding the negative things around you, thereby convincing yourself that all is against you?  It’s just possible that you’re feeding the wrong thing!

Email etiquette and autoresponders

As a Virtual Assistant I manage a number of autoresponders, both for my own business and that of my clients, mainly through shoppingcart services such as 1shoppingcart.com.  What amazes me is the number of recipients of these emails who don’t realise that they can update their email address or remove their addresses simply by clicking on one of the two links at the bottom of the emails they receive.

I receive numerous requests, almost on a daily basis, for me to update this person’s email address, or to remove that one and add a new one, etc, etc.

I know we’re told to be careful of spammers and not click on their links as it will verify real email accounts but that doesn’t go for emails that come on a regular basis from different avenues, such as newsletters, online ecourses, a series of how-tos and so on – especially if you’ve signed up for that series of emails.

Is it that people just aren’t thinking because they too are so busy, or do they really not read through to the end of the emails to see that they themselves can manage something that would only take them 30 seconds to do?  If I’m doing it for several people that 30 seconds soon turns into several minutes and much more over time.

I do understand it if it might be a client who is relatively new to email and autoresponders but I don’t understand it when it’s other VAs who should be used to the internet and what’s involved in these systems – especially if they themselves may end up providing a similar service for their own clients.

If you are a recipient of autoresponders, take the time to explore how it’s been put together and look at the very last lines to see the links supplied for updating/changing your email address or preferences.  And if you are someone who is setting up an autoresponder service, test it with another address to make sure it provides the type of system you’d like your subscribers to register with.

A time for getting together

The Virtual Assistant industry has a number of events coming up over the next couple of months.

IVAA has its Summit coming up this month, followed closely by OIVAC in May and then FoVA in June.

Both IVAA Summit and FoVA are onsite events whereas OIVAC is purely virtual – you can attend from your home office.

While it might not be possible for you to attend all three events it would be good for you to make an effort to attend at least one. It’s a great time for getting to know your peers, learn more about this wonderful industry and enhance your skills – perhaps even learn something new.

If you know VAs that aren’t members of the various VA networks then I encourage you to let them know about these events too and if you’re fortunate enough to live in the state/region where a physical VA event is taking place, then take the time to go. You won’t regret it.

For those of you travelling to Canada for FoVA I look forward to meeting you face-to-face – it’s going to be a great event! If you are on Facebook and going to FoVA, you can join the group here.

Keep and eye on the various VA network forums too as different teleseminars, webinars and other events are promoted.

No. 9 Mistake VAs Make

Recently I became aware of a challenge a VA was having and it is something I’ve come across before but had forgotten about it.  It’s an ideal post for this category.

Be clear about your quotes/rates when discussing a job with a client. This VA had quoted a rate which the client accepted but there was a problem. You see the client thought the quote was the total price for the job, whereas the VA was giving a quote… per hour!  She had forgotten to add those very words ‘per hour’ and the end result was a massive difference in what the client thought she was paying and what the VA thought she was getting for her work.  They now have to discuss the matter and try and come to some agreement – not a good situation to be in.

If you’re a VA quoting a client for a job be very specific on how that rate is worked – especially if it’s transcription as there are so many ways it can be quoted for, i.e. per audio hour, per typed hour, per audio minute, per typed line or word and so on.

If you’re a client getting a quote from the VA don’t be afraid to ask specifically how the quote works. Sometimes you might have to ask the same question in 2 or 3 ways – hopefully you won’t get 2 or 3 different answers but the same one.

Being clear in your discussions at the start of the job will help prevent any nasty surprises for both parties when the job has been completed.