Virtual Assistants Help Their Clients Work on Their Business

Virtual Assistance

There are many definitions for what this is. As a virtual assistant (VA), I ‘sweat the small stuff’ for my clients, allowing them to work on their business. But what, exactly, does that mean? Consider the following:

• Clients save money! They do not have to provide a VA with office space, don’t need to insure them, aren’t out of pocket for equipment or software they might use, and only pay for productive time.
• Virtual assistants usually work remotely, from their own home offices.
• A VA will get the work done on schedule, no matter that the client’s time zone.
• Most virtual assistants are multi-talented and very technologically adept.
• Many (most?) virtual assistants have undergone formal training.

I learned my VA craft through an organization called AssistU. But there are many excellent training programs and associations out there, based just about everywhere in North America, Europe, and beyond. It’s wise to have a solid network to rely on, and currently my go-to network is VANetworking. I’ve known the owner, and many other fine virtual assistants there, for years.

Practically speaking, VAs can help their clients with anything from writing (one of my favourite professional activities), to marketing, to answering e-mail messages, to accounting, to … well, you name it. We free up our clients’ time so they can do what’s important to them.

The Most Important Ingredient: Relationships

Business/professional relationships was my biggest take-away from my virtual assistance training. As I said to literally thousands of my college students over the years: anyone can learn tech (one of the subject areas I taught in), but very few can learn how to communicate. Effective communication between a virtual assistant and their client is the bridge to the all-important relationship piece. If things like trust, confidence, mutual sharing — among the many — are part of one’s relationship, and if those things distill to mutual understanding and sharing, then a VA-Client pairing can result in great things.

For New Virtual Assistants (or Those Considering the Field)

I had several years of progressively responsible office experience as an administrative assistant, executive assistant, and even a stint as a communications coordinator before I decided on the virtual assistance field. Even then, I thought: I need to investigate training, and associations that might be helpful. I decided on what was, for me, vital one-to-one training in virtual assistance.  If you’re new to the VA field, or simply need to fill your toolbox with more tools, I highly recommend the upcoming VAvirtuosos.com Online Conference, put on twice annually by the folks at VANetworking. I can speak to this personally, and honestly, having attended and presented for VAVS in the past.

In terms of networking, I welcome your contact. Please drop a line to rob AT successfulmessages DOT com if you’d like to chat up the topic of virtual assistance.