As a small business owner, outsourcing work to Virtual Assistants is fast becoming a popular and intelligent decision. The business owner saves enormous amounts of money by cutting
costs of offices and equipment overhead as well as expensive benefits packages.The ‘Virtual Office’ creates an enormous amount of personal freedom and independence for both small business owner and virtual workers. The dedication and commitment that virtual workers demonstrate testifies to satisfaction derived from a home office setting.
Being on cutting edge of this profession offers tremendous opportunity for technical savvy entrepreneurs to secure a viable and stable home business opportunity. A good business plan and well thought out marketing campaigns are crucial to organized success of a Virtual Assistant in both securing enough clients and/or work to meet their budget goal as well as adequately being able to balance clients and deadlines.
Virtual Assistant’s actually would be well advised to embrace a business partner or utilize a team of trusted colleagues to entrust overflow work to. The standards of a good Virtual Assistant aren’t easily met and establishing a virtual network of quality workers isn’t an easy task. Any overflow work that you outsource must exemplify same care and quality as your own or you stand chance of alienating your clients.
As owner of a home business resource specifically geared toward professional mothers seeking home based work, I am often approached for advice on how to become a Virtual Assistant and also receive many inquiries about what skills are required to be successful in field.
To gain and retain clients, my main advice is to maintain your professionalism in all of your interactions with your client. As much as it is a leap for you to give up ‘security’ of working in a corporate office, it is also a very new concept for business owners to outsource their work to a team of ‘Virtual Workers’ who they may likely never even see face-to-face. There is a great level of trust employed in this relationship and your professionalism in correspondence and phone calls will go a long way in securing their trust. Furthermore, I advise you to pay great attention to your accuracy and final product that you submit to your clients. Meet all of your deadlines, and know at least two days ahead of time if you are not going to be able to meet them. Communicate that to your client before project is late and keep in communication on a daily basis from beginning to end of all projects with brief status reports.
