Every now and then I hear from business owners who share their story about a frustrating experience with a Virtual Assistant. It’s normal … and really, it should be expected, after all we’re still learning how to work well together and build great relationships.

However in discussions last week at the Wealthy Thought Leader event, I was absolutely shocked to hear that the reputation of the Virtual Assistant industry is on serious shaky ground.

Are you surprised to hear this? 

Here’s the scoop … business owners do not feel like they are well looked after by their Virtual Assistants. In conversations with different business owners there were some common ‘complaints’ that I was hearing. Things like working with a Virtual Assistant who does not:

• provide timely responses to their clients
• assist with the occasional request that requires quick turn around
• complete tasks before the agreed to deadline
• communicate appropriately or asking questions to clarify details
• pay attention to details - making sloppy errors regularly
• manage the priorities of all their clients well (leaving clients to feel
  their stuff is unimportant and at the bottom of the list)

Enough business owners out there are unhappy in their experience with a Virtual Assistant and they’re talking to each other about it… and this can affect the reputation of the entire industry. Which of course is something that makes me sit up and take notice.

As someone who is passionate about our profession and as an active advocate of this industry I want to look at how we can fix this. I’m a firm believer that when we hear complaints from our clients on a regular basis it is an opp for us to step up and respond.

Of all the complaints I was hearing one that really stood out for me is that clients don’t feel like they are important. They feel like their stuff “doesn’t matter” or “falls to the bottom of the list.” Now I know as a VA that this certainly isn’t our intention! We are working to juggle all our clients and their various projects, and that last thing we want is for them to feel like they don’t matter.

As a starting point I created a checklist of things we CAN do to make sure our clients feel like they are the only ones we work with. It’s usually just simple tweaks that can make all the difference for clients, and make them feel taken care of. How many of these can you check off?

What are some other things we can do to make our clients looked after?  

Enter your name and email address below and get immediate access to the checklist you can use to identify how well you’re looking after your client. 

We’d love to hear from you, please share your comments with us below.

Hundreds of Virtual Assistants joined us for the 1st Virtually Successful Telesummit preview call  on Wednesday. 

Our next call is scheduled for Wednesday, March 31st at 12pm Pacific (3pm Eastern).  We’re going to do something that has never been done.

There’s been a lot of talk about specializing.  On this call, we’re going to chat with a couple of Virtual Assistants who specialize in working with a specific profession.  We’re going to ask them questions that have never been asked before … the questions that YOU want to hear the answers too!

These preview calls have been designed to provide you with a tiny sneak peek of what we’ll be covered in the Telesummit.

Are you missing the first call we hosted on the top trends?  Register and get instant connection to the recording.  

www.VirtuallySuccessfulTelesummit.com

So if you haven’t already signed up for these preview calls, what are you waiting for?  Check out the details at www.VirtuallySuccessfulTelesummit.com. 

And if you don’t want to be left behind in fast moving future of the Virtual Assistant industry, sign up for the Telesummit. 

You don’t need to be an expert writer to be able to help your clients.  By just understanding the basics, and understanding your client, you can support them with all kinds of day-to-day writing tasks ranging from autoresponders, to blog posts to ezine content.

This article was written by Linda Dessau, an editor, ghostwriter and writing coa’ch. Linda is one of our experts in the Virtually Successful Telesummit.

You may not think a lot about it, but writing is a part of your work life as a VA or OBM. Writing issues like grammar errors, procrastination, misused words, typos or readability problems can have a detrimental effect on the success and growth of your business.

Writing is so intertwined with your daily tasks that the work you’ve been so passionate about is turning into an ornery chore.

If that weren’t serious enough, consider this: You are often the last stop between your client’s words and their audience. Are those words put together in
a way that will achieve their intended result?

Here are five signs that your writing skills are limiting your success:

1. You spend a lot of time emailing back and forth with clients and prospective clients.

Whether it’s to hash out times for a meeting, clarify project details or re-explain your terms of service, you could be sending the wrong message—that working with you will be time-consuming or frustrating. People may wonder if you really do know your stuff.

2. When you (or your client) send an offer to your mailing list you get no replies.

A mailing list won’t do you any good if you don’t reach out and offer your help. But if your writing is bland or confusing, your offer won’t do you any good, either. And even a well-worded offer could flop if it’s diluted or masked by competing content.

3. Your mailing list (or your client’s mailing list) is shrinking.

Everyone loses the occasional subscriber, but if new people aren’t discovering you there is no place for your list to go but down. Great written content gets passed around because it is so valuable. Without new content, there are no new reasons for someone to get in touch or stay in touch with you.

4. You spend so much time perfecting your writing that your other work is falling behind.

Whether writing is a struggle or you actually really enjoy it, it’s taking up too much of your precious time. You’re constantly running up against phrases that just don’t look right, but you’re not sure how to fix them.

5. You’re embarrassed to send people to your website because it doesn’t reflect the quality of your work.

Maybe you’d rather talk than write, so your website features audio, video, presentations, you name it! But there are still some basic details that people want to read on your website. Beyond the basics, you’re missing countless opportunities to draw your reader in and encourage them to take action.

If you see any of these signs in your business life, take the steps now to address your writing skills. You can take a class or check online for resources—and don’t forget about the library or bookstore. If you’re willing, you will find lots of help out there. Your clients will thank you, your business will thank you, and your old English teacher will finally stop haunting you.

Linda Dessau, CPCC, is an editor, ghostwriter and writing coach. She is the author of The Customizable Style Guide for Coaches Who Write, and the editor of VOICE, the newsletter of the International Association of Coaching. Linda has been writing for the web since 2003, and created “You Talk, I’ll Write” in July 2005 to combine her passion for coaching with her gift for writing.

It was a couple of years ago that Tina and Andrea emailed me saying “Cindy, we need something from you that business owners can use to help identify how they can build their business with the help of a Virtual Assistant.  And by the way … we need it tomorrow because we’re leaving for the live conference in the evening.”

Anyone that knows me even just a little bit knows that I work best (unfortunately) under a little bit of pressure.

Off I went … within 3 hours, I had a list of just over 100 ways business owners could boost business with a Virtual Assistant.

The report was a huge success … both business owners and Virtual Assistants requested to use it in their own work.

Well guess what … it’s been updated and now includes 200+ ways that Virtual Assistants can help business owners.  Remember, business owners, really can’t make it all happen and achieve success without all of us and our expertise!

Curious what’s in there?  Take a second to fill out the form below and download it immediately.

Now there’s a cautionary note I’d like to add.  While these are all ways Virtual Assistants CAN help clients, in no way is it to set the expectation that as a Virtual Assistant you need to know how to do ALL these things.  Don’t let yourself get overwhelmed with feeling you need to do it all.

While I love to share this with you … there are two things I’d like to have you share with me in the comments section of this blog post:

1. Your feedback on the updated report “200+ Ways to Boost Business With a Virtual Assistant” and
2. Your thoughts on additional tasks that can be added to this document. 

Can we get it to 500+ ways or even 1000+ ways?  I’d love and could use your help.  I’ll take care of updating the document, if you provide me with your insight.

Just post your comments/additions at the bottom of this blog post … can’t wait to hear from you!

>>> Download the newly revised “200+ Ways to Boost Business With a Virtual Assistant” by completing the form below:

Tina Forsyth and I have had the priveledge of speaking to hundreds of business owners over the last several years. These discussions have lead to critical points of informaton we’ve shared with virtual support professionals to help them provide exactly the kind of support business owners are really looking for from them.  

One of the most critical components of an online based business is ECOMMERCE and it’s one of the areas that many business owners have shared concern about.   It’s absolutely essential that Virtual Assistants who work with online businesses fully understand and can implement various strategies and technology to support the ecommerce side of the business.

Unfortunately there are several key areas in the ecommerce area that are being done incorrectly and serious mistakes are being made. As a result, business owners are missing out on potential revenue, clients and overall business growth. 

How do you avoid this?  How do you know if you’re making these mistakes?

Join us on Tuesday, March 2nd at 12pm Pacific (3pm Eastern) for a FREE call and learn whether you’re making the top “7 Mistakes Virtual Assistants Make In Ecommerce”.   We’re going to share what business owners are telling us, as well as other mistakes we see are being made over and over again.

The time or date not work for you?  No problem, register anyways as we’ll be sending the mp3recording link out after the live call. 

Topic:  7 Mistakes Virtual Assistant Make in Ecommerce
Date:  Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
Time:  12pm Pacific / 3pm Eastern

Register below to save your spot!

As you know, one of our favourite things to do is hop on a call with all of you and share/discuss all the great things about working virtually.   In turn, we hope a few things will impact you significantly enough to where you’ll implement and make positive changes for you and your business.

So for January, we’re hosting not one, but TWO fr’ee calls that I’m pretty sure you’ll be interested in:

It’s not enough to dabble in a few pieces here and there that you get from the experts out there … generating publicity requires a strategy and realistically, a VA who has received the right kind of training, CAN help their client implement the pieces to create a great plan and therefore  generate publicity.

Now, none of us at VirtuallySuccessful.com are publicity specialists, and so we’ve asked Diana Ennen, Publicity Expert, to join us for a f’ree call on Tuesday, January 19th  at 1pm Eastern / 10am Pacific to share the 7 Mistakes Virtual Assistants are Making when it comes to building publicity.  This information is relevant to your own business as well as your clients so please do make a point to attend. 

To make this even more fun, we encourage you to share your own questions or strategies you have used to support your clients in generating publicity. 

Register for your spot in the form below and please do post your comments in the section at the bottom of the page.

Call #2 - Future of Virtual Assistance Call
What Every Online Business Manager Needs to Know This Year - Top Trends for 2010
Wednesday, January 20th at 3pm Eastern / 12pm Pacific  

The role of Online Business Manager (OBM) is a natural one for many Virtual Assistants and so  that’s why we decided to focus January’s Future of Virtual Assistance call on the top 2010 trends for OBMs.

On Wednesday, January 20th, yours truly, Tina Forsyth, founder of OnlineBusinessManager.com will lead this discussion on:

• How the economy is affecting our clients and what to watch out for

• The best clients who really need your help (and there will be more of them in 2010)

• What is really important to clients right now, and what will make you stand out from the crowd

and much, much more.

>>Sign Up For Your Spot

Do you wish you knew more about how to generate publicity — both for yourself and your clients.

Have you dabbled in it here and there — submitting the odd article or press release, with no serious strategy or model?

Publicity is a critical piece to building a business, yet it’s something that often does not receive the quality attention it needs.  Why?  Because we simply don’t know enough about how to do it properly.  We may hear about a few “must do” strategies from an online expert and we take a stab at implementing the strategy … but really we don’t know what we’re doing. 

Sadly most business owners will seek out the expertise of an expensive Public Relations firm to help them …. only to spend thousands of dollars with little return.

Virtual Assistants CAN help online based business owners build publicity …. IF they know their stuff and know it well.  It’s not enough to just submit articles once in a while. That’s one mistake …

To support both Virtual Assistants and their clients, the team at VirtuallySuccessful.com has invited Publicity Specialist Diana Ennen to join us for a FREE call to share the “Top 7 Publicity Mistakes Virtual Assistants Make“. 

Here are the details:

Date:  Tuesday, January 19th, 2010
Time:  1pm Eastern / 10am Pacific
Duration:  60 minutes

Sign up below to reserve your spot.  We look forward to having you join us!

Just in case you haven’t realized it yet
… we at VirtuallySuccessful.com want you to have a fantastic 2010.

We invited virtual
professionals to join us for a f’ree teleclass on Tuesday, December 15th at noon Pacific / 3pm Eastern as we discussed how to “Get Ready for 2010″.

If you want to:

• find more (or better) clients

• make more money

• create more time to spend on other ‘non-work’ activities

• build your skills and expertise

then you will want to listen to this call.

We’ve seen this over and over and we’ve even done it ourselves (well, Cindy anyhow!), - maybe you can relate …

You get excited about the new year … you write down several goals you want to accomplish … and you’re on track for about the first 6 to 8 weeks and then .. POOOF! 

Before you know it, everything is back to where it was  - you’re busier than ever but not fulfilling what you set out to do for the year.  It’s disappointing.

So let’s make a change for this year. 

Listen to the call below — we’ll help you get going on the right foot … and stay there!

You hear us talk about it all the time … ‘taking inventory’ of your clients so you can better understand their goals and priorities. 

Well this time we want you to take your own inventory.

Every December and January, many of us make a note of goals we want to accomplish for ourselves and our business. Yet, we don’t always consider our current commitments and surroundings and what might need to change in order for us to accomplish these new goals and priorities.

Then before you know it … we continue working away, we get busy, maybe even a little overwhelmed and nothing changes.

It’s time to break the cycle and we’d like to help.

The ‘Taking Inventory’ document has been developed to assist you with:

• identifying your current business commitments  -  the number of clients you have, the number of hours you are committed to etc.
• confirming the amount of revenue you are generating each month versus the number of hours you are working
• uncovering what you really want to accomplish
• recognizing what needs to change in order for you to make the amount of money you want, work with the clients (and number of clients) you want, have the time ‘off’ that you want and still accomplish the goals that are important to you

One of the goals here at VirtuallySuccessful.com is to empower virtual professionals to step up and create the business THEY want … not just support
their clients in building the business they want.

Take a few minutes now to download the Taking Inventory document below and schedule some time in your schedule to take your own inventory.

>>> Download the “Taking Inventory” document

We can’t emphasize it enough … selecting a target market  and fully understanding that target market is ESSENTIAL when it comes to finding great new clients.

In order to really connect with a potential client and have an interactive discussion that captures their attention and makes them think “I DO need this person to help me build my business”, you must understand them and make them feel that you understand them.

How do you do this?  What should you know?

It sounds relatively simple really, but when it comes down to it, ‘knowing’ your client can seem rather daunting, especially when you first start out.   However, it really is quite simple.

To support you in getting underway, we’ve created a simple checklist that you can use to fully educate yourself on your market.  Imagine the connection they will feel when you show them that you’ve taken the time to research and get to know them better so you can best support them! 

Do you know everything you should know about your target market? 

>>> Download the “10 Things You Must Know About Your Target Market”