I feel the excitement beginning to mount as VAs around Australia anticipate meeting one another face-to-face - many for the first time. Our colleagues in the US, Canada and elsewhere I know want to join us and hopefully they can for the next one. I believe we might even have a visitor from Turkey - a lady who contacted me some weeks ago about attending and she needed to organise a Visa. You can find out who's coming by going to that page at the AustralianVAConference website. Many of the … [Read more...]
Marketing – make sure you’re ethical
On a VA forum recently one of the members mentioned she'd discovered that another VA business was using the name of her business in their Google Adwords. She has requested they take them down immediately and several other members came back with messages of support. While I do also support the concern of this VA I wanted to let her know how I had inadvertently done a similar thing only a couple of years ago. Here is my story: That's not good but it can happen accidentally too, believe it or … [Read more...]
Making the customer wait
I posted a new job lead to my team of VAs and one of the responses I got both surprised me but also made me realise that perhaps some VAs (particularly newer ones) probably thought it was ok to do this. Make the client wait. The response was: Could you kindly forward on his details to me and I will contact him within 24 hours. My reply to her was: I strongly suggest you reply to him today, sooner rather than later. Clients will rarely wait 24 hours before hearing back from someone - … [Read more...]
My celebration but you get the gifts
Next month (24th) marks the 16th anniversary of my business "A Clayton's Secretary". It's no co-incidence that the Australian VA Conference is being run next month as well - I like to have something special happening around the anniversary of my business. But I want to make sure that others are benefiting from my celebrations too, so I have a number of gifts available to my readers. 1. Double the affiliate payment for the top affiliate in March 2010. Why not sign up today so you can get set … [Read more...]
Agency VA or Self-Employed VA?
Saw a comment recently on a well-known blog post about the use of Virtual Assistants. Perhaps the biggest problem with them was that after putting in my dues to get acquainted with the VA and 'training' them appropriately, they got promoted or reallocated and I had to start from scratch. This happened at least 3 times in a less than 3 months. Unfortunately, I can see that happening at other firms as well. It might be tough, but see if you can ask your VA company to commit to the same VA for some … [Read more...]
Join an active VA community
The Virtual Assistants International Group (VAIG) has been an active VA community forum since 1998. It was shifted around a bit to find the right place to host the group and we eventually settled at yahoogroups in 2003. The group is like one big family - many of the core or regular contributors treat each other like sisters and brothers, or perhaps really close friends. Yes, we occasionally have heated discussions but for the most part we're about sharing information, sharing ideas and … [Read more...]
Using networking tools for VAs
At one of the VA forums I belong to a member asked if someone could explain how a small home transcription business can grow their business using Facebook, Linked-in or Twitter or is it more for the merchant business? My answer was brief - there's a lot to cover for each of these tools, but hopefully this will help answer it for others thinking the same thing. Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter work quite differently but often with similar results. I'll try to explain briefly here: Facebook helps … [Read more...]
VA Project – Who have you helped this week?
This week the recipient of my help was not a VA but rather a professor from a university in India. He'd approached me to write some articles for their publication on the topic of Virtual Assistance for their students. I felt honoured to be asked. However, I did find his initial email to me rather confusing and I had to read it several times to really understand his request, or rather it seemed like a demand. Instead of ignoring it or getting annoyed by the email, as I sometimes might do, I … [Read more...]
When you are cold calling…
I know that many decide to cold call to get extra business, or even just to start out. Personally I've found that a very disheartening way to do things but I know that some really do excel at this type of communication and successfully achieve their objectives. So, if you're considering using cold calling as a form of drumming up business, may I suggest you learn from the following? I just had a phone call from a guy (whose accent was difficult to understand and he spoke way too fast) wanting … [Read more...]
