A few months ago I wrote to you about my longtime housecleaner retiring, which meant that we needed to replace her. How hard could that be, we thought? 🙂
We brought in someone new and expected her to be able to do things the way our previous cleaner had. But we didn’t help her very much, by giving her clear enough instructions.
I made a strange (I realize now it was strange) assumption that the new girl would be able to seamlessly take over for the other one. She did not. Long story short (you can read it here), it didn’t work out with the new girl.
But the good news is that when I called our old cleaner to get a number for a friend of hers, she had decided that she would try coming back!
She had retired because she had a fall over the winter, and had hurt her back. But in the time that she was away from us – a couple of months – she had made a few changes and had some physiotherapy. She decided she felt well enough to try again. So far so good!
The relief we feel with having her here is noticeable. She hums as she goes about her work and she said just last week, ‘I had some extra time so I did the cupboards. And you need a new mophead before next time.’
Our communication is very good between us. How could it not be though? We have been working together a for a long time!
I recently moved two VA clients on to new VAs, as I focus more on teaching and coaching and the VA associations.
I have also changed up my own team in the last several months.
We have all had our own challenges with the new hires – it is so hard to replace experience and the comfort of working with someone for so long. Good communication is absolutely essential from both sides.
But here are the lessons I have learned through this experience, that hopefully you will find relevant to your business.
1. Keep your clients apprised of what you are working on.
Depending on how much time/how many tasks the client has contracted you for, you should be checking in every day, or as often as necessary. A once a week check in by email is simply not enough, even if it’s a small client. If you are charging the client by the hour, let them know how their time has been used, and if you need additional time, be clear about that.
2. Figure out what you need to do a better job for them every day.
How can you support them better – and grow with them? Do they need more check ins? Do they need better organization? Longer lead times? Better systems? Whatever you can bring into your business relationship to help make things run more smoothly is essential to a long term client relationship.
3. Be responsible for what you say you will do.
Remember that when you take things off of your client’s plate, you are assuming responsibility for it, and so you need to be in charge of it! Keep the client in the loop with status and get it done. On time and on budget!
4. Ask questions. All the time.
Don’t assume that you know what the client is thinking. If you have just started working together, how could you know? Ask and get the right information so that you can make the right decisions. You’ll grow on each other, but in the beginning for sure questions are very important.
5. Identify and use proper procedures – for everything!
The smoother you can make your workflow the more productive you will be. Checklists and step by step procedures are necessary to make sure no steps are missed, and that the client can be confident that things are done the way they should be done. Procedures also help with task times. How long does the client expect something to take you to do? Stay within those timeframes or discuss why they are not accurate!
6. Talk about money when necessary.
Money is often a taboo subject, but when two people are exchanging it, you need to talk about it. If you need to raise a client’s rates, have a discussion with them about it. If you are running out of retainer, let them know so they can manage your task load better. Or if they are not giving you enough work, tell them that too. When they succeed, you succeed.
These are somewhat simple pieces of advice, but I can’t tell you how often VAs do not do these things.
It’s not easy to be a perfect business person out of the gate. Especially if this is your first business.
But it’s easy to give yourself the right tools to do the job well, and get better as you go.
And communication is one of THE most important parts of working virtually.
Make sure you get yours right – and you will have long term clients who you love – and who love you!
If you want some more info about working better with clients, check out my free VA training videos on my Youtube channel.
