As Virtual Assistants, we are in the service industry and pride ourselves on the excellent service we provide to each client. What people don't realize about virtual assisting is that it's an industry that draws individuals that carry “entrepreneurial spirit”.
Entrepreneurial Spirit can be defined as an attitude and approach to thinking that actively seeks out change, building a mindset that embraces critical questioning, innovation, service and continuous improvement.
Being in the Virtual Assisting industry creates the perfect opportunity for those with an entrepreneurial spirit and creative skill set to assist clients (many of whom are business owners and entrepreneurs themselves) in continued sustainable growth by reaching consistent defined goals and objectives.
Some of the ways virtual assistants support growing client success is by:
-Consistent and appropriate social media presence.
-Consistent client contact and follow up.
-Consistent branding (web design, logo creation, etc.)
As a Virtual Assistant one of the keys to increasing overall success is the premise that virtual assisting works, if you work it.
This premise applies not only to the entrepreneurial minded virtual assistant but also to forward thinking clients who decide it's time to hire a virtual assistant.
Wurk, Wuuuuuuurk! (Assistants)
As virtual assistants, we find balance and comfort in the success and delight of our clients. Being the first-hand, go-to person with answers to the questions our clients trust us to give them. It’s how we sleep well at night, and how we are able to claim our growing prestige as a service that is considered indispensable to those we serve. Our status comes with continued process refinement as virtual assistants and as virtual teams.
The best virtual assistants operate with daily written or mental checks/balances that keep them a step ahead of client needs on any given day.
Some areas that virtual assistants monitor are:
-Checking in with clients they have not heard from for 2-3 days.
-Recommending technology or systems to clients when they notice a client is struggling with a specific process or skill.
-Connecting clients that could work well together and create business opportunities for each other.
-Getting to know other virtual assistants who have different skill sets so that they are always able to refer a client in need of additional assistance.
Work By Way of Delegating! (Clients)
Anyone who has ever taken on staff knows how time consuming it can be to train and trust them. What clients love most about working through a platform like cascadevirtual.com is that we vet, background check and interview all virtual assistants before they reach the client, making sure that the final interviews done by the client are all with assistants we believe could be a great fit. All payments and tracked hours/tasks are monitored through the platform taking the guesswork out of monthly billing.
By the time a client has decided it’s time to hire a virtual assistant they are often buried by the necessities required to achieve success or overwhelmed by the amount of work required in comparison to the amount of hours in one day. Either way, you would be surprised to learn that the number one struggle of a client who hires a virtual assistant is learning to delegate. A client's number one duty to themselves, their assistant and their sanity is to find ways to take back their hours by deciding which daily tasks they need to work on and which tasks they can feel free to off load to their virtual assistant. Like anything, in the beginning it can be quite a challenge, but the more you do it, the easier it becomes and the more time clients have for what really matters.
The entrepreneurial ecosystem of clients and virtual assistants is an expanding environment that operates from success upon success, but like anything else, successes that need nurtured, relied on and built over time.
