Avoiding the "Wrong" Clients
As a Virtual Assistant, the only thing worse than firing a client is working with a client who makes your life miserable. In this episode of The RocketGirl Show, I'll talk about avoiding the "wrong" clients.
TRANSCRIPT
My name is Belinda was also known as Rocket Girl Today. We're going to talk about avoiding the wrong clients.
When you're a Virtual Assistant every once in a while, you'll have to fire a client and I have to say the only thing worse than that is working with the client. That's the wrong client for you. So, today we're gonna talk about some tips and tricks for how to make sure you don't get hired by the people who are not the best fit for you.
I call these red flags. This is probably a phrase you've heard in the potential client is that the number one thing that they are focused on is how much is going to cost. The reason that this is a red flag is because in my experience when people lead with money and not the value or the experience they're looking for or even the result, money is typically part of the conversation. All the time these are clients who will comment repeatedly about how much the project is costing them. So that is a red flag for me.
The other red flag is they want to be convinced they're not really sure they think they might need help. Bad idea because my experience is if you have to convince someone once you're going to have to convince them over and over and over and that is not a job that you want to have.
Another red flag is I don't feel like they're really listening to me, you know they're running kind of their own agenda and they're talking over me and I don't feel like they're listening now. Let me tell you why some of these are so important. The thirty-minute consultation when you're talking to someone to find out if they're the right client for you. This is where you're gonna use these tips and that's kind of like a first date and think about it on a first day of everyone's hair is combed everyone's looking good. They've got their special shoes on right, so if during this date for your business, these things are happening. It's only gonna get worse because people relax and get more comfortable right and they become more of themselves.
The other thing that is a giant red flag is they are in an emergency and so let's talk about this for a couple of minutes. This is the trap that I've fallen into a few too. Many times someone comes to me and it's even worse when you know them when they're a friend or you know, you know them in some way they come to you. They're on fire. They have a big emergency and they need you to help them so this happened to me probably about three or 4 months ago and what happened was, I said sure I would be happy to help you and then I explained how my pricing worked. They would need to buy 5 hours because I don't waiver no matter what on how my pricing works and I never heard from them again. So someone who isn't an emergency typically doesn't have the time to take to you know be rolled properly into your business and that's not a good idea.
The other thing is we're training our clients. How we work and how everything will work you know the best and if I start the relationship by solving an emergency. I have a feeling that might be a lifestyle choice for that particular client and that they are having emergencies all the time. so that's become a red flag for me.
The last thing is probably sounds kind of funny. They don't work at a desk for my particular Virtual Assistant business RocketGirl solutions. I prefer to work with solo professionals who are at their desk and we're working. It doesn't have to be all you know all day long, but I found that people who are owners of small businesses and they're driving a truck delivering things all day are not a good fit. A couple of others are with real estate agents while I love them love them, they're not always a good fit for my business because a lot of what it takes for me to support them is some back and forth and if they're not routinely at their desk, it's hard for us to get momentum.
Now, these are my red flags. You're going to have your whole different own set of flags and how I suggest that you make them is when you know when a situation comes up that is not ideal for you just jot it down. That's what I did. I just kept you know sort of keep track and that's how I came up with the one about people who don't work at a desk. I didn't come out of the gate with that after a while, I just kept thinking you know, I don't think I help them as much as I wanted to and then I started to see the trend and then I realized, Oh they're not working at a desk.
So look at the things you know that are in your life that are red flags and also when you have a client that leaves or a client that you decide that you're going to fire look back because I promise red flags were there and you just weren't aware of them or weren't listening to them. For lots of reasons we all do it. So please take some time and think about your red flag for avoiding the wrong clients so that you can get the clients that you wanna work with and the clients that you deserve.
So before we leave, I just want to take a minute and invite you over to my free online class. It's called The Virtual Assistant Connection and you can find us on Facebook by typing The Virtual Assistant Connection in the search bar at the top. We have a huge community if there's over 9000 people all either VAs or thinking about becoming a VA. It's growing quickly and there's tons and tons of information just like this over there available for you at your fingertips. We're streaming right now across Facebook, Periscope and the YouTube and so if you're on YouTube, please subscribe to our channel. You'll be notified when we go live again. This is Belinda Wasser RocketGirl signing off. until next time. Buh bye.
