Virtual Assistant – THE Blog About Our Industry

About the Virtual Assistant industry for VAs and for clients

Monthly Archives: September 2009

Be specific

I love the work I do as a Virtual Assistant but often find that client instructions leave a lot to the imagination.

As VAs we need to help our clients and educate them in the best way of conveying instructions so that the work we carry out for them is done quickly and efficiently and correctly.

There are times when I have to email back the client asking them to be more specific.  If I get an email saying that something isn’t working on their site I need to know specifically which page and what part of that page.  It helps if they give me directions to the part they are commenting about, or even give a snapshot of what they mean.

When you’re giving instructions to your VA make sure they are as clear as can be.  We can’t get inside your heads and cannot see with your eyes, so we need to be put in the picture as much as possible to ensure a good outcome.

To test or not to test?

questionmarkThat is the question.

A discussion at one of the VA forums I belong to raised a query about being ‘tested’ by doing small jobs for free at a site before being accepted as a VA for potential clients.

I find that sometimes clients come via my jobleads request form and attempt to do the same thing. Give 4 or 5 (or more) VAs a small portion of the task to be done just to ‘try them out’ and before you know it, they’ve gotten the whole job done free and not paid anyone.

That’s not on!

As was mentioned at the forum, you don’t tell plumbers or electricians or other tradies that you want to ‘test’ their abilities first before you’ll give them the job.  You expect that they know what they’re doing, you find out their fees and then either accept or find someone else.

The same applies to VAs.  No client or VA membership site should be asking you to do something for free to test your abilities.  There are intern programs out there where new VAs can be taken under the wing of an experienced VA in order to gain knowledge and experience and usually for low payment or in return for training, but otherwise no VA should be expected to do something for free just to show what they’re capable of doing, at the risk of being exploited.  There should be some sort of value returned for the effort the VA has put in.

Do the research and ask questions at forums. Join VA networks or organisations that you know are reputable and if you can’t find that information, then research the founder or owner of the group.  If they’ve been in the industry for a few years they will show up on the web.  Their reputation should speak for itself.

Do you have problems with delegation?

Marcia Hoeck writes a blog called “Breakthrough Business” and she has a lot of really good common sense articles and information.

Her latest post “Are You a Victim of the “Entrepreneurial Curse”?” rang bells for me.  It gives several good reasons why Entrepreneurs need to let go and delegate.  In other words, outsource the things that can be outsourced so you can use your ‘boundless energy’ to be more creative in your business.

If you’d like to know what the Entrepreneurial Curse is, then make sure you pop over and read her article!  And make sure you come back here to find out how you can best utilise a Virtual Assistant.

Dates – write them in full

When dealing with people from other countries via email, make sure you spell dates out in full.

Instead of putting 1/21 or 12/5 why not put 21st January or 5th December?  Or in the case of the second one it could be 12th May, depending on who wrote it and where they live.

datesIn some countries the day is written first and the month second, and in others the month first and then the day.

If dates are important in the communication don’t assume that the recipient is on the same page as you with respect to writing dates. Write them out in full to save confusion and incorrect information being conveyed.

Printing still important

In the past few days I’ve received emails from a couple of VAs who have had computer problems and lost some emails which were important to them. They asked if I could help by resending any emails I’d sent or help locate the person who had contacted them.

They did have their data backed up but not email from what I can gather.  At least not a current version.

Computer problems are going to happen.  Email programs are not 100% robust and they do fail, fall over, and quit when we least expect it.  It is important we have backup systems in place for everything of importance to us, including email programs.

However, I find that printing is still important. Any client instructions I receive, requests for things that I need to action and anything else of importance I still print off and put into the relevant folder I keep for that client or project.  If I can’t get my email program up and running after a crash or, heaven forbid, our power has gone off, at least I can still refer to a print copy and use my cellphone to contact people to advise them of a delay or hiccup in whatever it is I am doing.

As much as we are trying to save paper (and trees) I think perhaps we go too much in the opposite direction at times and depend on files on computers and backup drives but if we can’t access that information for some reason, we can start to stress out big time.  Save yourself some time and give yourself some cheap insurance.  If it’s important – print it and file it.

Bad Behavior has blocked 318 access attempts in the last 7 days.