Karen Del’Marmol - Virtual Assistant

A Virtual Assistance colleague of mine was on an online networking forum and she posed a question to the group: What do you know about Virtual Assistants?

A response came from someone who had a remote worker from Team Double-Click (TDC). This person was extremely dissatisfied and because TDC promotes their remote workers as Virtual Assistants, he had a bad impression of Virtual Assistants.

Some of the problems this person had with the remote worker:

• the remote worker was unable to effectively communicate with his clients
• the remote worker didn’t do the work and then lied, saying that she had done the work
• the remote worker was hired to take some of the burden from him and instead he was spending more time on the tasks and getting inferior results to him doing them himself
• the remote worker needed a lot of oversight and was incompetent

Some of the problems this person has with Team Double-Click:

• all of the remote workers are promoted as being able to do anything and everything under the sun from web design to answering the phone
• people in his line of business have had to go through as many as four remote workers
• makes promises that aren’t kept
• analysis of needs is not thorough

Let’s look at these items from the professional Virtual Assistant’s point of view.

• Many Vas offer free consultations so that the business owner and the VA can discuss needs and solutions. The business owner can discern the communication skills of the VA during the consultation.
• A professional VA will likely communicate on a daily basis with their clients, or at least each time the VA completes work for the client.
• This is unconscionable! Professional Virtual Assistants alleviate burdens so that their clients can focus on generating revenue and doing what it is they love. VAs are business owners themselves and understand the mindset of their clients.
• Professional Virtual Assistants need no oversight, are highly competent and have at least five years of high-level administrative background in the corporate world. Most of the VAs I know have ten to thirty years of experience.
• Virtual Assistants are highly skilled in many areas and many VAs are experts in certain areas. No one VA can do everything nor wants to do everything. It’s not profitable - don’t forget that VAs are business owners. A true Virtual Assistant will be honest about what services they offer.
• A Virtual Assistant will conduct a consultation with a prospective client and both the VA and the prospective client will know whether they are a good fit for each other thus eliminating the need to seek a replacement.
• If a professional VA doesn’t keep promises that are made, then that VA is out of business. It’s as simple as that.
• Again, the consultation process can help determine the needs of a prospective client and any good VA will be thorough so as to be able to properly serve the client.

I feel badly for this person who had such a poor experience. I hope I have helped to better define the differences between a remote worker and a Virtual Assistant.

Have you had a bad experience with a remote worker?

A fellow Virtual Assistant posted a question on the VACOC forum today. It went something like this:

My business is growing but I’m overwhelmed with daily requests from clients. I also have a hard time concentrating on larger projects, although they always get done on time.

What do you consider “expedited work” and do you charge more for it?

This is what I said:

When I first started my practice, my policy was a 24- to 48-hour turnaround for work and anything that needed same-day turnaround would be charged at one-and-a-half times the normal rate. Fortunately, I never had to implement those policies because if I had, I would have been pulling out my hair. I’ve learned, in the last year, that there has to be order. I can’t provide order to anything with constant 24- to 48-hour turnaround or same-day delivery policies. Order is a hallmark of virtual assistance.

I’ve also learned that multi-tasking, of which I was so proud to be proficient, doesn’t work for a client-based business owner. The best service I can give my clients is focused time and that doesn’t happen in spurts and starts. Focused intervals of time are scheduled to be at least one hour in length. That’s how I can legitimately charge in 15-minute increments. I don’t bounce from one client’s work to another or try to do both at the same time. That’s not an efficient use of my brain or talent nor is it fair to my clients because it will cost them more money. Efficiency is also a hallmark of virtual assistance.

Concentrated time on a task is more effective because interruptions cause the thought process to break and then it takes 15-20 minutes to recapture the same thought process. I know that wasn’t part of your original question but it goes to the same issue. If you’re allowing clients to interrupt you with same-day requests, you’ll find it increasingly difficult to get those big projects done.

It’s time to set a new policy in motion.

When I decided to start a Virtual Assistance business, I wondered if I could do it. I mean, I knew I could do the work. But could I run a business? See, I’m what is known as a free spirit; in other words, I’m undisciplined and easily distracted. That flies in the face of being very organized, which I am (no wonder the person I fight with the most is me!).

I wrote in my business plan that I would take a project and turn it around in 24-48 hours. Pretty unrealistic plan because what if I got six projects at once? And who knew what the complexity of those projects would be? I had guaranteed failure. So, for months, I was in the frame of mind that if I got a lot of projects to do, I would fail because I couldn’t do them all at once. My subconscious mind was not letting me find clients. Thus my business was failing. I was miserable. During that time I joined the VACOC and subsequently left because I didn’t have time for it. I was too busy failing.

When I came back to the VACOC in October, I decided to purchase their forms. I had to do something besides get a full-time job. Those forms, along with actually participating in the forum this time, has made all the difference. I now realize my limitations are not that I’m undisciplined and can’t run a business. I am running a company and being undisciplined spurs my creativity. My limitation is time and time can be managed. The best way to manage time as a VA is to have retainer clients and the equivalent of one day dedicated to taking care of the business. Take care of the business . . . take care of yourself. They go hand-in-hand.

Two weeks ago I changed my hours from Monday-Friday to Monday-Thursday. Friday belongs to my company. The past two Fridays I haven’t spent a lot of time on the business, per se. What I have done is cleaned out and cleaned up my home. I removed nine large trash bags of clothing and linen, threw out enough stuff to fill three wheeled bins, moved two pieces of furniture to the basement (The cellar will receive the same cleansing at the end of June.). Yesterday I cleaned the house from top to bottom - that was a really good thing because the cat hair was getting kind of thick - lol!

Suzanne Evans of Blueprint Life Coaching started me on this quest. Now I feel so much cleaner, organized, lighter, refreshed. And because I got rid of so much, I have room for those two or three other retainer clients I want.

Have you made room for what you want in your business and your life?