4 Steps to New Clients
As a Virtual Assistant, having a steady flow of new clients can be a challenge. In this episode of The RocketGirl Show, I'll share four ideas to get a flow of clients coming your way and have more than enough work.
Transcript
I'm Belinda Wasser also known as RocketGirl today we're going to talk about four steps you can take to get new clients.
One of the tricky parts of being a Virtual Assistant is making sure that you have a steady stream of clients so that you always have enough work and enough money coming in. And while it seems like that can be really difficult, I'm going to tell you today four surefire ways to make that happen.
The first thing is you want to be crystal clear about the work you do when someone asks you what do you do for work I suggest that you come up with something ahead of time and not treat it like a trick question like a lot of us do. So here's what I say I say I'm a Virtual Assistant I work with solo professionals people who work on their own and I take care of all their administrative work things like updating their websites Powerpoint presentations and calendar management and then I stopped talking.
The reason you want to keep it simple and the reason that you want to practice ahead of time is you want it to be very smooth how to roll off your tongue. And when we wait until the moment that someone asks us to figure out what we're going to say. What happens is we talk talk talk talk talk talk. We confuse the other person they have no idea what we do and they're not able to remember. Number one they're also not able to refer you to other people. So you want to be really really clear about it.
The second thing you want to do is spread the word far and wide. So tell everybody what you're doing send out an email, send people to your website, update your Linkedin profile, text messages. You know, any way you can think to tell people about this new exciting um business that you're in you want to do that.
And I find that if you first get that one sentence down really crystal clear and then you start spreading the word. People will not be able to not hire you. You'll see it's crazy. It's crazy.
The next barrier that we tend to put in our way is not being clear about how much we charge. So when someone asks you and you're sort of you know thinking and you're not really sure. It kind of tells them that you're not in business for real. You know that you're because you're not sure. So pick an hourly rate. Get comfortable with it. Practice saying it again.
The practice, you know, so that you're so that it feels comfortable for everyone because talking about money is can be uncomfortable. Just naturally, so you want to make sure that you know you're really on top of it, and when someone asks you about your pricing what I usually say is I have a really simple approach here's how it works. And I just explain it. So keep it simple, don't make it complicated. One, hourly rate, you know, pretty much for everything you're doing. So it's easy to track and get clear about it and and practice talking about it.
The other thing about pricing is, as your skills increase you can raise your rates on new clients. And that's a good way to test. You know where you are in the market. So you can have your current clients where you know at the price they're at now. Raise the price on new ones and then eventually over time you can raise the rates on your old clients as well. That's a really nice way to do it. So you're not at risk of losing your old clients until you have more revenue coming in.
All right so the fourth thing is to get clear on how to get started. So I learned this from my own experience. When clients, when I decided to work with new clients you know and I'd say, "Sure I'd love to work with you,". They would say, "What's next?". And I would think, well we just start working. But they wanted a little bit something else. So what I did was I say to them, "Okay, you know you buy some of my time because for those of you who have been around me at all.
People pre-pay my time, my clients in five or ten hour chunks. And that's how I get paid and I work until the time is gone. And then they reload those hours. I call it the RocketGirl Debit Card System. So, what I'll say to them is, "I'll send you a link to purchase your first chunk of hours and then watch your email because I'll send you an email on how we can get started".
In that email it talks about the pricing again. It tells them when I'll be at my desk working. It tells them things like you know, "I'm constantly watching my email but for emergencies and quick requests But I might not you know get back to you within you know a couple of hours."
If I'm working on something but I'll certainly circle back around within 24 hours. So whatever your guidelines are for working together, that's what I suggest that you send them now. I wrote this email a few years ago I had it professionally edited because writing is not a strength of mine and I use the same one every time. I don't keep changing it and updating it and moving it around it's just sort of it's done because I don't want to spend a lot of time like that okay so be clear about what you do.
Spread the word. Nail the pricing and let your client your potential clients know the next steps. So that they are crystal clear how to start working with you.
All right well before we leave today, I just want to take a minute and make sure because we are broadcasting all over Facebook. We're also on periscope, Youtube channel and later this will be posted to Linkedin. So no matter where you're watching from I want to make sure that you know about my free online classroom we are located on Facebook.
The way to find it, is to go over to Facebook and type in the search bar at the top, "The Virtual Assistant Connection." Click the join button and I'd love to have you. We have close to 9 000 members in the group right now. It's growing very fast. It's a lot of fun, tons of community, tons of friendships are being formed and there's also a ton of information. There's probably close to 80 videos just like this one in addition to articles and you know freebies and down you know all kinds of downloadable things that can help you no matter where you are in your journey, whether you're just starting out as a Virtual Assistant or you've been one for a really long time like me. So please come on over and join us until next time I'm Belinda Wasser signing off bye-bye.
