April Tara » virtual assistant

Virtually Successful

April — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 04:04:52 +0000

Just a few short months after starting my VA business I started getting emails and private messages on forums asking me one of two questions:

1) Are you hiring?

2) How can I start my own VA business?

While I was flattered that someone thought, at that stage, that I was successful enough to answer those questions, I was also baffled because I just didn’t know how to answer them.

Now if someone were to ask me that today, I would know exactly what to tell them: Buy a copy of Cindy Greenway’s Virtually Successful: 8 Simple Ways for Virtual Assistants to Find (and Keep) Clients.

First, let me tell you a bit about Cindy. She’s been a virtual assistant since 2003 when she launched Victoria Business Solutions. Since then, she has grown her business to the point where she’s been able to work with just a few select clients and still have the time to support others who want to develop a successful VA business.

In her book, she addresses the two most common questions new VAs have – how do I find clients and how do I keep them? But rather than just give you a bunch of lists and general concepts, Cindy walks you through various exercises, beginning with finding your niche and your target market and ending with effectively communicating with clients and maintaining a successful working relationship with them. She also covers some of the more technical aspects of running a VA business like creating a work agreement/contract and setting up payment processing.

Throughout this book, Cindy includes numerous resources, checklists and exercises and relates her own personal experiences with the various issues you’ll face as your business builds.

If you’re still in the research and planning phase of starting a VA business, Virtually Successful: 8 Simple Ways for Virtual Assistants to Find (and Keep) Clients will provide you with the knowledge and tools you need to get your VA business off to a great start. If you’ve already started working as a virtual assistant but you’re struggling with taking it to the next level, Cindy’s book can provide you with the solutions to help you overcome those obstacles standing in your way along the road to success.

Purchase your copy of Virtually Successful: 8 Simple Ways for Virtual Assistants to Find (and Keep) Clients at Amazon.com.

Managing a virtual team

April — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:28:44 +0000

Over the past few years, many business owners and entrepreneurs have discovered the value and importance of outsourcing various aspects of running their business. I’ve spoken to many successful entrepreneurs in a variety of fields – coaching, Internet marketing, blogging – who have all said the same thing: outsourcing was the best investment they’ve made in their business.

If you’ve experienced firsthand the benefits of outsourcing, you may have found yourself in a position where you don’t just have a virtual assistant, you have a virtual TEAM. You may have a VA to take care of your administrative tasks, a ghostwriter to help create your newsletters and blog posts, a tech person who keeps your website and business software up to date, and a graphic artist to create covers for your info products.

Congratulations! Doesn’t it feel good to have a great team put together to keep things running smoothly AND to know that you are successful enough that you can afford to have such a team? You’ve worked hard to get to this point so reward yourself for it!

But now its time to ask yourself another question: How much time is spent on delegating projects and tasks to your team, coordinating due dates to make sure no one is sitting around waiting on something from someone else, and then following up to make sure its all getting done on time?

Rather than finding yourself bogged down with the management side of your business, hand it over. Find someone you can trust, someone with experience managing others who isn’t afraid to crack the proverbial whip, someone who can keep your business running like a well-oiled machine even if you decide to take a week off to take the family to Disneyland.

Contact Advantage Online Solutions for a consultation. Let us know more about your business and about your virtual team. If you don’t have a reliable team, we can help you put one together. In addition to our own services – everything from setting up new blogs or sales pages to writing powerful press releases – we have access to talented people in various fields.

We’re here to help. We want to put your mind at ease and give you that extra time you need to develop new products or schedule more coaching sessions.

The 3 Rs – Referrals, References and Resumes

April — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 05:13:23 +0000

You’ve already heard about the advantages and benefits of working with a Virtual Assistant but there are also some drawbacks.

When you’re working with people online, whether its a coach or consultant, a blog designer, a virtual assistant, or a JV (joint venture) partnership, you don’t always have the benefit of meeting them in person. Without that opportunity to talk face to face, you’ll need to rely on other methods of deciding if this person is someone with whom you want to work.

Referrals

If you’re searching for a virtual assistant, blog designer or a freelance writer, ask your friends or members of a forum or network – maybe even Twitter – for a recommendation. When someone you trust has experience working with someone and the experience was a positive one, it may put your mind at ease to know that the quality of their work can be verified by a reputable source.

References

The next best thing to getting a referral from a friend or colleague is asking the potential contractor or consultant for references. Any experienced virtual worker will have at least one – preferably three – current or former clients for you to contact. In addition to my portfolio, I have several clients who would be willing to vouch for me and I try to match the reference to the type of service being requested. For example, if someone is asking about my blog design services, I will put them in touch with someone for whom I’ve done a blog design. If its an inquiry about my press release writing, I’ll give them contact information to someone for whom I’ve written a press release. I also like to give my clients a little “heads up” if I’m using them for a reference. I do this for two reasons: 1) so that they will be expecting an email rather than deleting it because they don’t recognize the name and 2) if they’re going to be unavailable I can find someone else so that I’m not disrupting their busy schedule nor making the potential client wait.

Resumés

Asking an independent contractor such as a virtual assistant or blog designer for a resumé is a bit of a controversial topic. While some virtual workers, especially those who are new to working online and may not have an established client base, won’t mind giving you a copy of their resumé, many will scoff at the idea and will politely refuse to provide you with one. The reasoning behind this is that some virtual assistants see providing a resumé as something a potential employee would do. When hiring someone who is self-employed and works as an independent contractor, its more appropriate to ask for references.

Keep in mind that when you are hiring someone to be a part of your team or part of the process of developing your online business, they will have access to many aspects of your business. Because of this, trust is essential. I have experienced firsthand, in my own business and those of some of my clients, situations where ideas were stolen, websites were held “hostage”, and complete strangers with very little experience have solicited unnecessary services. Also, don’t rely on certifications or badges as verification, particularly in the Virtual Assistant industry. The VA industry does not have legalized standards, does not require any kind of license and is not regulated by any agency. This means that there are some excellent VAs who may not have pursued any kind of certification and there are some unprofessional, unreliable VAs who have spent the money on obtaining several different badges for their website.

The bottom line is to be cautious when you’re making the decision to work with someone online. Take some time to verify the information they have given you and pay close attention to any red flags or gut feelings you may have.

“Paralegal” makes the list

April — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 04:11:00 +0000

Today on Yahoo’s Front Page was an article entitled “Fast Growing Careers with High Salaries” and Paralegal made the list.

From the article:

Paralegals
Paralegals provide critical support to attorneys, law offices, corporate legal departments, courts, and government agencies. The Department of Labor predicts brisk growth in the field, especially for graduates of paralegal courses offered through online paralegal degree programs.

The national salary range for entry level paralegals is from $36,641 to $49,754, however, paralegals with eight years experience may earn upwards of $86,666.

Now that’s a lot of money! But if you’ve checked out the VA calculator on my website then you already know that you don’t have to spend that much. Hiring Advantage Virtual Assistant can save you approximately 50% depending on the level of services your firm needs. For example, with Advantage, if the amount of work you need done only amounts to 30 hours instead of a full 40 hours per week and you’re paying a Paralegal $25 an hour, that’s a savings of $1,000 a month! Add the expense of a workstation including computer, phone line, and office supplies and you’re saving hundreds more. And one of the biggest differences between an in-house Paralegal and a VA is that you don’t pay benefit expenses such as insurance, sick leave, holiday pay, and 401k.

So take some time to try out the VA calculator and calculate your savings.

Who knows, maybe next year Virtual Assistant will make the list!

VA Calculator – see just how much you can save

April — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 01:29:26 +0000

To see just how much money you and your business can save, visit the VA Calculator and then contact Advantage Virtual Assistant to get a more detailed, customized quote to suit your specific needs.

Why every lawyer needs a virtual assistant

April — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 17:58:29 +0000

I ran across this article from Law Practice Today that was published in July 2007 about why every lawyer needs a Virtual Assistant. And now one year later, its even more true! They also explain how to find and choose a VA, how to utilize a VA, and what a VA can do for you.

Before you read the article in its entirety, here are a few key points:

“The VA can be a life-saver, and can relieve the stress of ballooning workflow. An established VA relationship will ensure more consistent full-time, part-time, temporary or supplementary help, and will reduce the high cost of hiring and instructing short-term and temporary staffing solutions. You will be working in the crisis with someone who has an existing working relationship with you. Appropriately assigned work sent to a VA can help both you, and any in-office legal assistant, to handle successfully the work load variables with ultimate flexibility. You have spontaneous additional help without the overhead costs, and without the hassle of orientation of temps.”

“Lawyers told us that a good VA saves time and money, and can be a tremendous asset. For the larger firms, VA’s can provide additional support at peak times without need to pay for temp services, and can avoid the time and cost to orient personnel to the firm layout, equipment, systems and procedures. The overhead cost of a VA is based on use, and that means overhead then more closely follows the billable work product.”

Specifically, the article explains:

How do I find VA services?
How do I choose the right VA for me?
What technology do I need to work with a VA?
How do I explain the task to my VA?
What can the VA do for me?
What tasks can I assign to my VA?

The original article is located at http://www.abanet.org/lpm/lpt/articles/tch07071.shtml

Once you’ve read the article and are considering hiring your own VA, contact Advantage Virtual Assistant, a VA specializing in the legal field, to have your questions answered and to get a service rate quote based upon your individual needs.

What IS a Virtual Assistant anyway?

April — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 19:41:57 +0000

If the concept of employing a virtual assistant (VA) is new to you, you may be wondering just what a virtual assistant does and how they differ from an in-office administrative assistant.

Perhaps the biggest difference between a VA and an in-office assistant is that a VA is a self-employed independent contractor. Rather than the VA being an employee of your company, you are the VA’s client. This alters the dynamic of the working relationship. Like you, the VA is a business owner and it is their goal to work with you and making sure that your administrative needs are fulfilled. And as a business owner, they value your satisfaction and understand that it is vital to your business as well as their own.

The other major difference between the two is that, as the title implies, a virtual assistant works from outside of the office. Using technology like the Internet, cell phones or Blackberry/SmartPhone, fax machines, e-mail, etc. allows a VA to serve clients all over the country.

Virtual assistants typically have diverse backgrounds which means they can specialize in certain areas – law, real estate, medical – and may have specific skills such as desktop publishing, marketing, or web design. This gives you, as the client, the opportunity to hire a VA whose training and experience best suits your needs.

While the hourly rate for hiring a VA is usually higher than that of having an in-office assistant, clients will actually save money. Clients are only paying for the actual time that the VA spends on the assigned duties or project as opposed to paying for a flat 40-hour work week without regard to how much time is spent on each task. VAs also provide their own equipment, office supplies, and services. This relieves clients of the costs of computers and software, phone and fax lines, office supplies and other expenses associated with providing office space. In addition, clients who hire a virtual assistant will not be responsible for providing sick pay, holiday pay, 401k plans, insurance and other benefits.

If you’re considering hiring a virtual assistant, take the time to consider the advantages and remember that you and your VA have the same goal in mind which is to help your business grow and succeed. If you have more questions about how a VA can help you, please feel free to contact April via email at April@AdvantageVirtualAssistant.com.