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The
Top 10 Things To Know About Professional Virtual Assistants
Originally appeared
on www.topten.org in
January, 2002, by Stacy Brice.
It wouldn't take
a lot of energy to look around and find a variety of definitions
of who Virtual Assistants (VAs) are and what they do.
My belief, and
the brand of Virtual Assistance practiced by AssistU trained
and certified Virtual Assistants (VAs), is that the highest
and best for this profession bases the role in partnership
with others - not on piecework, project-work, or overflow-work,
and not on transactional relationships.
Having said that,
here are the top things you need to know about professional
VAs:
- A professional
VA is a micro business owner who provides administrative
and personal support to clients in long-term and deeply collaborative
relationships. A VA frees a client up to do more of what
the client loves and does best.
It's important to know what a VA is, as well as what a VA is *not*. While
there are certainly VAs who offer their clients additional services that
would fall outside the norm of administrative and personal support, Virtual
Assistance is not a catch-all name for any type of virtual professional.
A VA, for instance, is not someone who provides consulting services. That
person is a consultant. A VA isn't someone who only provides bookkeeping
services. That person is a bookkeeper. A VA isn't someone who only provides
marketing support. That person is a marketing consultant or a marketing assistant.
A VA isn't someone who solely books speaking engagements. That person is
an agent. Nor are VAs Tax Advisors, Accountants, Medical Transcriptionists,
Web Designers, or professional business and personal coaches.
What makes a person a VA isn't that the services can be performed at a
distance, but rather that the services that are being performed are administrative
in scale and scope, and are provided with the desire to support the client
across the board, not with just one specific function or task, no matter
how ongoing that might be.
- Most professional
VAs are expatriate administrative and executive assistants
from the corporate world who were tired of being abused,
undervalued, disrespected, and unable to fully contribute.
They come to own their own businesses so that they can reclaim their
lives, control their own destinies, and use all of their vast talents
and skills to support clients they hand pick for themselves.
Unlike the positions they left in the corporate world, there are few
constraints on VAs who own their own businesses, and you'll find that
they are quite proactive rather than just waiting for you to hand them
tasks.
- The advance
of technology has made geographical distances a moot issue,
and opens a talent pool impossible to touch when tapping the local market.
Professional VAs are able to easily support clients who could be down
the street or on the other side of the world.
- Professional
VAs are not employees.
You don't ever "hire" a VA. You work "with" a
VA. You don't have to provide space, equipment, a guarantee
of hours, or benefits. You don't have the employee hassles,
have to pay employment taxes, have to buy additional insurance,
or conform to federal mandates like OSHA or ERISA. One
check, once each month. Simple and hassle-free.
- Professional
VAs bill at rates $30+ per hour.
With the advanced administrative and virtual skills they have, that's
a very fair fee, even perhaps a bit low. When you think about the value
of your own time, and what you could do with more of it, it starts to
look like a heck of a deal.
The more professional, industry-specific education a VA has, more experience
working with virtual clients, the more she can make happen for her clients,
and the more vast her resources, the higher her fee will be. Many VAs
work on a retainer agreement with clients - they block a certain number
of hours per month to be used by a client. The client pays a monthly
fee (a certain number of hours X $/hour = monthly retainer) at the beginning
of each month. Unused hours don't roll over to the next month. Expenses
are additional. The per hour rate on a retainer is usually discounted
by about 10%, in recognition of the client's willingness to buy a block
of time. A retainer relationship comes with a higher level of commitment
to the partnership created - for both people.
In case you wonder - my own VA, Marie, runs my entire life, personal
and professional. When I'm on sabbatical for five weeks every autumn,
she fundamentally runs the whole show. And her invoice every month
rarely exceeds $400. She's quick, bright, knows me and my business
inside and out, makes a HUGE difference in my life, and is wildly
affordable. What's not to love?
- A professional
VA's time is 100% productive time.
With employees you pay for down time, for bathroom and drink
breaks, and for time spent socializing with others, whether or
not you know it. With VAs, you only pay for time spent working
with you, so it always seems that there are more minutes in a
VA's hour.
- Professional
VAs know that they do their best work and create the greatest
value for their clients only when they work in long-term and collaborative
partnerships.
It's not possible to create this type of high value in a series of transactions,
or when doing project-work or piecework.
Let me illustrate:
Imagine that you're on the road, in your hotel, looking over your notes
for an important presentation you'll be making late in the day tomorrow.
You realize that you should have made a PowerPoint presentation for it.
You go to the local phone book, and you find that there's a secretarial
service not too far from where you're staying. You call, and the owner
of the service assures you that if you provide her with the text you
want on the slides, she can create a presentation for you in time for
your presentation. All she requires is a 50% deposit on the work before
she begins, and the content you want turned into the presentation.
You create the content, put it on a floppy, hop in a cab and take it
over to her. You stop at an ATM on the way to get some cash - she doesn't
take checks or credit cards. Arriving at her home office, you gratefully
surrender the floppy, your cell phone number, and pay the requisite deposit.
You leave with her promise to call as soon as the presentation is finished.
The next morning, she calls to let you know you can come collect the
presentation.
You hop back into the cab, go to her office where she quickly shows you
what she's created and gets your approval. It looks great, and you're
delighted. You happily pay the balance due for the project, hop back
into the cab, go back to your hotel where you shower, dress, and then
run off to your presentation, confident that the PowerPoint addition
will cinch the deal.
In the meeting, you start to go through the presentation. When you get
to slide three, you realize there's a mistake on the slide. A huge one.
And it's your fault. You gave the woman who did the presentation the
wrong information.
Wow. A gut-wrenching situation, huh? It's similar to ones we hear of
all the time. And the reason it happens, more times than not, is because
the person doing the work doesn't know you well enough to proactively
support you.
Take the same scenario... but this time, with a twist.
You're in your hotel, you need the PowerPoint presentation done. You
create the content, and email it to your Virtual Assistant, Jane, with
whom you've worked closely for the past six months. Jane acknowledges
her receipt, and that she'll have it done for you soon.
About an hour later, Jane calls. She says, "Henry, I wanted
to talk with you about slide three. There's a bullet-point
that doesn't make sense to me, given what I know of what you're
working toward with this client. And I'm wondering if you can
look it over with me in case there's an error. I would hate
for there to be any problems with this!"
You look at the content you sent her, and sure enough - there's an error.
You correct it with her, then take a minute to look over the rest of
the content, just to be sure there are no others. Off the phone, you
sigh with relief and gratitude.
Wow. How much value has Jane just created for you?
Because she *knows* you, your work, and what you're trying to accomplish,
she can look at what you've given her and recognize challenges, handling
them before they become big problems for you. And, because you work together
in an on-going relationship, there was no rushing, no fussing, no worrying
about stopping to get money to pay her with - she's really your partner
(in the relationship sense, not the legal) for success.
It's true that the tasks of today need to be handled. But the
true value of working with a VA comes as a result of the long-term
and collaborative relationship you create together.
- Professional
VAs want to work virtually.
They like the idea of working without having to see their clients.
Most of them won't ever meet their clients, and of those who
do, most of the meetings will be purely social. If you happen
to live in the same city as your VA, don't expect that she'll
come answer phones for you when someone is out sick, or will
visit once each week to do your paper filing. It's simply not
likely to happen.
- There
are some people who probably shouldn't consider working with
a VA.
If you are controlling, need to micro-manage, have trust issues, aren't
on line, can't understand how or why this would work, live in the urgent,
procrastinate, rush to deadline, aren't organized, want someone at your
beck and call, have a huge ego and can't work in partnership with others,
don't understand the power created in a relationship with a fantastic
assistant, aren't open to learning new ways of working and communicating,
or if you work in a high-pressure field where things run you instead
of the other way around, you probably need an in-person employee, not
a VA.
- Professional
VAs invest heavily in themselves and their businesses, all
for the benefit of their clients.
Professional VAs are life-long learners. They are curious, open, receptive
to new ideas, and they take the time to really hone their craft. Never move
into a relationship with a VA who isn't taking steps to better him/herself.
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