Welcome to another episode of the podcast that teaches you how to be a ridiculously good virtual assistant.
Today we are going to talk creating a strategy for you to get the best VA clients for your business.
Today’s Quote: We are what we repeatedly go. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. – Aristotle
Click the play button above to tune in, or choose your favourite podcast player below:
Connect with Tracey D’Aviero, VA Coach and Trainer
Episode Notes:
Where did you get your first client?
If you’re like me, you likely started doing VA work for your old boss.
A lot of us start out that way, and it’s awesome.
We start our business, we have work immediately.
This is going to be great, we think.
Then maybe we find another client as we start to talk about our business to people we know. Awesome!
But at some point, our immediate contacts will run dry and we are left wondering what to do to get new clients.
That’s why creating a strategy to get clients is so important.
It’s okay if you don’t know how to do it – there are all kinds of people out there who want to teach you about how to get them.
For me, the strategy of getting clients is pretty simple.
Find your ideal clients and spend time with them.
But that’s not quite enough.
You need to do a few others things that will help people see your expertise.
A basic strategy is: choose the services you want to market, choose a target market to focus on, create content that shows them how you help your clients, and then connect and have conversations with them.
That’s still quite vague though, and the details of it all will be quite different from VA to VA.
So your strategy needs to be specific to your VA business. And yes, you might need to some help to devise your strategy. I know that i needed the help of a coach to do it.
Some VAs don’t, but if you really want your VA business to succeed and you don’t know what you are doing, you should really consider investing in coaching to get your strategy in place and working for you. It’s the fastest path to clients.
Here are the things you need to focus on to create your perfect client getting strategy:
1. Choose your services
While you may feel like you can help anyone with anything, marketing dictates that the most specific you can be about that, the more effective it will be.
Marketing needs to be very specific in order for it to work. We tell you that you can successfully market your VA business in 20 minutes a day and that’s very true, but you have to be very specific with what you are doing and what you are putting out there.
We want our marketing to work for us – so we need to spend time determining what we are going to put out there, where we are going to put it, and what our goal is.
Choose your services that you want to market means picking the things that your people will notice, that they will respond to and interact with. You can’t expect to talk about 20 services and have anyone think you will be their expert. You need to choose – one service, two? three? Probably max.
When you get that specific, your content and conversations will rotate around the things that your clients need help with right now.
2. Choose a target market
The amount of pushback I get on this when I tell VAs to choose a target market is crazy.
I remember getting started and thinking I could help everyone. I still can help everyone, 25+ years later. But choosing a target market is one of the most important things you can do to get clients easily.
The VAs that I see struggling are the ones that are way too general, too broad. Not in the services they are offering, but in who needs them.
Think about it this way: if you can talk to speakers and specifically what they need support with in their business, they will hear you much more clearly than if you say you are a VA who provides general admin services for entrepreneurs.
Will some understand that you can help them? Sure they will, but you want ALL of them to understand.
I help speakers find gigs, manage speaking requests, coordinate interviews and engagements, organize events, book travel, create and distribute promo materials, manage correspondence and invoices and payments.
See how things are so much clearer when you can talk about the actual tasks you help your clients with?
3. Creating Content
When you are really clear on what you do and who you help, the content is so much easier to create.
Look to that speaker example I just gave you above.
So many VAs I talk to can’t tell me why the client should work with them.
But when you get really clear on what you are doing for them, that becomes easier to do.
How does it help a speaker to have you find them speaking gigs? Well, it gets them the revenue they need to be a speaker, for one. It also helps them find new audiences to get in front of. It certainly saves them time (if you have ever reached out to people for speaking gigs, you know there is a lot of connections that go nowhere, and others that take a lot of back and forth). The speaker only needs to connect with those that say YES if you do the research for them.. You get the idea.
This is what you can talk about. The more detail you have about why it’s important for a speaker to get help with those things, the easier you can create content that supports it.
When you are actively networking and marketing your VA services, people will go and check you out online so having content out there that is cohesive with what you are saying and doing is really important.
4. Find your community
And of course the most important part of your strategy is where you are going to be connecting with people. You can’t be everywhere, and in fact you shouldn’t try to be.
When you choose your target market, you need to know where they are hanging out. Where are they getting support in their business? Where are they learning about how to grow their business? These are the communities that you want to become a part of.
When you find your place and are active in it, you will become known quickly for being helpful and knowledgeable. For lots of people at once! Making your marketing and networking work for you is in the numbers.
So you should be looking to get in front of lots of your target clients regularly – that’s where your place is!
Your strategy will be different than mine, and than that of many other VAs, because of who you target.
Are your people on LinkedIn? In Facebook groups? On Instagram? Local?
Pick 1 to 3 places to really start being active and make them work for you.
When you focus on being present and active, it’s more focused and you will get better results.
5. Connect and follow up
Although it can be really tempting to just post content and hope it works its magic, to get clients you need to connect with your prospects.
The good news is that we already talked about how to do that above – by becoming a part of a community where you can help people and become the expert that everyone knows can help them with their business.
Be real. Show up. Have conversations. Offer advice. Share your expertise. Be the person that helps everyone when they have questions.
I tell the story often of a local ladies FB group I belong to with over 25K members in it. Did you know that there are 3 main VAs that get referred in that group when people are asking for help? THREE!
Why is that? Because they have shown up. They have participated and became a part of the community. The ladies in the group know what they do and they know that they do good work. Many of them have worked with them, so they can refer them easily.
That’s what you want to do.
But before you get to that level, you need to start with connecting and following up. Keep up with who you have connected with, and follow up with them so that you can take the conversation offline when the time is right.
When you are first starting out, reach out to everyone you know but be really clear on those first two things I talked about today – what you do and who you help. Convey that message to everyone you know and you will be on your way to having meaningful conversations and getting clients.
As you find your community, focus on connecting there, and follow up with those people too.
That’s it, that’s all you have to do!
Five pieces to your client getting strategy. It really is that simple, and any coach you work with will tell you that.
Choose your services, choose your target market, create content that showcases your expertise, find your community, and connect and follow up to get sales conversations and therefore clients.
It works. But it doesn’t work as an idea.
You have to take that overall strategy and turn it into daily actions that will help you nurture it so you can reach your goals.
You don’t have to network daily or publish content daily – that’s the beauty of a VA business – you aren’t looking for hundreds of clients, so you can create a daily plan that works with your workload..
The main thing about your daily actions is not to be too lofty with your expectations. Don’t plan to do 2 hours of anything, any day. Do little actions, every day. If you can’t do your plan, it won’t work for you.
Create something manageable that works for you. I promise you if you find your own strategy and keep at it every week and you’ll always have a great pipeline of potential clients to support when you have an opening. Or more than one!
Remember what Aristotle says, that e excellence is not an act, but a habit. Your daily strategy should become a habit, just something you do every day. Like brushing your teeth or starting your day with a coffee.
Think about what your strategy could look like. If you need help, reach out.
What You Need to Do Next:
I want you to know that I can help you do this stuff in your business. That’s literally the reason I am here. To help you become a ridiculously good VA.
I’ve helped hundreds of VAs through challenges just like yours, and got them on their way to growing their business and the lifestyle that they dream of. That you dream of.
I’d love to do the same for you.
Let’s work together privately to get you to your really big goal. It’s the fastest way to get results and we can start right away. Learn more about private coaching here.
The Virtual Circle (TVC) is a monthly mastermind group for Virtual Assistants just like you. We get together 3 times a month for group Zoom sessions to talk about what you are struggling with, working on, or celebrating. It’s a close knit community of your VA colleagues that provides the best kind of support for your VA business. Learn more about TVC here.
My self study program Getting Started as a VA can help you get your VA business started easily and quickly too. You can sign up right away and be on your way to getting clients by the end of the program, with all the right foundations in place. Check out the program here.
Reach out to me if you need to talk about where you are stuck and what the right option might be to get you moving. It’s literally all I’m here to do is help you get to where you want to go. Book a complimentary Cut to the Chase call with me here.