Are You in Business For Real

One of the best things about being a Virtual Assistant is the dress code – or, more accurately, the lack of one. But, that doesn’t mean your business, from top to bottom, doesn’t need to look and feel professional at every turn. Because of that, it’s especially important that you take care of the details which show people that you are a professional with whom they can entrust their business. In this episode of The RocketGirl Show, I'll talk about what you need to be in business "for real".

TRANSCRIPT 

I'm Belinda Wasser, also known as RocketGirl and today I'm going to talk about things that tell people that you are in business for real. 

When you're a Virtual Assistant, there are things clues that we give off that let people know that we're in business for real. And today we're going to talk about six of those that are important to take care of right away.  

Alright number one, even though many of us do not use the phone that much anymore as an actual phone. It's important  that if someone calls youhave a really great voicemail message. Now, what I'm suggesting is mine says something like "You've reached Belinda Wasser at RocketGirl. Please leave a message at the tone and I'll call you back as soon as possible. Thank you."  

Right to the point and it II identify who I am. Now why this is important is how many times have you called the phone number and the voicemail hasn't been set up in a way that they have a personalized greeting. And so it says "You have reached..." and says the number. And then I'm thinking is that  the number I called? I don't even know.  

So don't do that to your people. Have your name, a professional sounding message also don't make your message so long that people are losing their mind just trying to get to the beep. Okay. Make sure your voice set up. Check it from time to time to make sure that you're replying to the people who are calling you because they're just as serious and maybe even more serious than people who are just shooting you emails because they want to talk to you.  

Alright the second thing you wanna do is make sure that you have an email address that matches your website URL. So here's what I mean by that, my email address is  [email protected]. It's not [email protected]. A lot of people have websites and they have their URL. They own it but they're not taking that next step to use a professional email and I really strongly suggest that you do that. 

It tells, that's one of the first things I look  at when someone sends me an email. And if someone has not taken that next step. I wonder if they're in business for real. So do that, if you don't know how it's easy to figure out, call your internet service provider or shoot them an email, look in their tech support stuff, you can do it.

You want to have a professional looking email signature. So my email signature has my logo. It has my name. It has my title. It has my company name and it has my phone number. Phone number is critical. I can't tell you how many times I've set up a meeting up with someone and when it comes time to, I need to call them. I have no idea what their phone number is. So I'm going through emails and seeing when they told me what their phone number was and I just think it's common courtesy to have your phone number and your email signature and you. 

Think that I get a lot of spam calls or you know robocalls as a result of that, but I really don't. So I have the professional email signature. It  just goes to show your professionalism. You know one more step so go ahead and take that time to do that. The other thing about that is because I've done that I've had many clients ask me to take care of their email signature put their logo and their phone number, their name and so forth. So it's not only are you making yourself look more professional, you're showing a potential product that you can service that you can provide for your clients. 

LinkedIn is important. At the bare minimum, you want to have a professional  photograph head shot. And you want to have the details of your Virtual Assistant business having the details of your whole life. You know not your whole life your professional life, it'll show your skills develop over time, but it's not essential but make sure that you list you know your your current position.

What you're focusing on and I really stress that professional head shot or one that is really great. You don't wanna crop a snapshot and put your your face on LinkedIn and have someone click it to enlarge it and you know they can see you .They can see that there's a crowd in the background. So make sure that you do that it's important, very important.

You want to make sure that your website is well organized so that people can see your pricing, your services, how to contact you, what your offering is. So make sure that you put some thought into your website.

The last thing is you want to be able to speak confidently about your pricing. Now, this is not easy and when I set my pricing, I absolutely practice talking out loud so that I would be comfortable and I wouldn't sort of freeze up in the moment that someone said, well, "How does your pricing work?" And I  practice it over and over.

So think about your pricing make it as simple as possible. Check out my Rocket Girl Debit Card system. You can see that at thevaconnection.com under programs, there's a link at the top. I have a whole course on my pricing how it works really simple. And if you do these things I promise people will start taking you more seriously and they'll see that you're a business owner.

Before we leave, I just wanna take a minute to invite you to my free online classroom. It's an online community and right now we have about 9000 members, which is phenomenal, representing over almost fifty countries so come on over you just type The Virtual Assistant Connection in the search bar at the top of Facebook and there you're going to find a wonderful community, lots of videos, tutorials, trainings, all about being a Virtual Assistant.

So please come on over and check us out on Instagram @thevirtualassistantconnection. Until next time, I'm Belinda Wasser was signing off. Buh bye.