When you choose a target market, you learn about what they do in their business – how they find their clients, how they work with their clients, and what kinds of things they need help with in their business. After learning the ins and outs of what they do, you can speak very clearly about how your services will support them.
We are back with another VA Snapshot episode of The Ridiculously Good VA Show, where we talk about the specific services that Virtual Assistants can offer different target markets.
Choosing a target market helps you learn about what they do in their business – how they find their clients, how they work with their clients, and what kinds of things they need help with in their business. After learning the ins and outs of what they do, you can speak much more clearly about how your can support them with your services.
Why is this essential? Because you truly understand how their business runs, and what you can do to help them keep it running smoothly and growing.
That’s the key to working with a target market. That you find large groups of clients that all need the same services and support – it makes getting lots of great clients so much easier.
I am Tracey DAviero, Virtual Assistant Coach and Trainer and in this series, we are going to dive into 25 or 30 different industries and professions that use Virtual Assistants, and I’ll share what kinds of tasks you can do for them.
Then you just need to decide who you can best support, and start connecting with them!
In this episode we will be talking about startups.
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:
In this series we are talking about how to think about your services from the perspective of you clients.
It’s easy enough to say that you provide email support, but how do your clients think about that?
How much importance do they place on that thing?
Why is it important for them to get help with a particular service?
And how do they actually use that service, or describe it?
When you really look at things like your clients do, your messaging will be so clear to them that they will know you understand their needs. And… they will want to work with you!
We are talking today about business coaches.
That was my niche way back in the day, whenever I was working solely as a virtual assistant and there are lots and lots of business coaches out there who need the help from virtual assistants.
So let’s think for a minute about why a business coach should use a VA in their business.
Cost effectiveness. Naturally, when we are working with any of our clients, it’s cost effective.
They don’t have to hire a full time employee. They don’t have to pay for benefits and salaries and all those kinds of things. They basically pay for the time that you are doing the work for them.
Increased productivity is another huge benefit because they’re delegating the things that they need to get done in their business, but really aren’t a good use of their time.
So they can focus on high value activities. I like to call these revenue generating ones. Why? Because when they make money. That’s when their business starts to grow and be successful. And so it is really important if they’re focusing their energy on things like that and getting new clients, revising their service offerings and that kind of thing.
And of course, customer acquisition really, really important to be able to get more done through the use of a VA as opposed to them doing all of the things in their business and probably carving out a lot less time for bringing in new clients than they should be.
Flexibility is a huge thing. Working hours and availability. We work on our own schedule and so we’re allowing them more time in their day because we can get things done possibly simultaneously at the same time as they are doing things as well.
Many VAs are voracious learners. I know I love to learn still, and so we’re always expanding our service offerings and the things that we know how to do. And that comes to another benefit, which is access to specialized skills. I think it’s really important to know that some of the things that we do are specialized and we are constantly getting training for, and keeping on top of trends that are that are happening in marketing and are in customer service or graphics tech, social media.
Just about everything we do, saves our clients time. And I think that that’s always an important thing to talk about. But I think we really want to be clear on the fact that we are giving them more time. Maybe a little bit less than saving them time and I always try to talk about it in that way, because if they’re not doing things currently in their business that they should be doing, we can give them that time into their calendar by doing those things for them (not so much saving it if they’re not doing it on their own.)
So those are some reasons that a business coach should be working with a virtual assistant. And of course, we know that we are very capable of helping them with a lot of different things.
I like to talk about some specifics because each target market that we talk about has specific needs and some of them are the same as other markets.
But when you can speak really clearly to a business coach and say this is what I can help you with and they know that that’s very relevant to their business.
That’s a conversation that’s going to really open up and you’re going to be able to have a lot more conversation about what it is that they need, not just trying to sell them something that you think they need, but what they really place value on.
I always say, your clients are going to pay for what they place value on and sometimes it’s not what we think it is.
Email and Calendar Management
So we can do things like administrative tasks for them. Of course, e-mail management and calendar management. These are really big things in the coaching industry because lots of of coaches are coming into contact with a lot of different people and they are going to be coming into their business as clients, but also probably as contacts from events that they attend or host.
With coaching, scheduling appointments is very important because we have to keep their calendar flowing and their calendar full of potential new customers.
Client Onboarding
Client onboarding is always very important. I know whenever I was working with my business coaches, we had a beautiful onboarding process and that didn’t have to go through the coach. It was something that I could do and I filled in the the gap to to make sure that we got all the contracts signed and we got the money taken care of and then we got the appointments and we follow up and any questions there was. I call it client care, and it’s really important to manage the expectations of the clients well.
I worked with six and seven figure business coaches and so the expectations were high. The clients were spending a lot of money to work with the coaches and it was really important that that was seamless.
Marketing Support
Marketing support. Social media content creation, and so on. I’m not particularly creative, so I left the creation part to my clients but I could do the writing. You will choose what you can do.
Email management. Things like e-mail campaign creation, list management, tracking, seeing who’s opening what. All of those kinds of things are really important marketing pieces too.
Coaches are a serviced based business like VAs. So it’s important to have marketing that is consistent and speaks to their clients as well.
Client Communication and Payments
Communication and handling inquiries is another very important service for coaches, as well as helping them with financial tasks, invoicing, collecting the payments, or tracking them.
I maintained a tracking sheet so that we knew what was supposed to come in, and then we verified that it came in a lot of recurring payments.
Tech Assistance
You don’t need to be a tech wiz to help a business coach with their website.
There is a lot of maintenance involved – publishing blog posts, event calendars, making sure that the information that people are going to find on their website is up to date.
Scheduling tools, if they use a coaching platform. There lots of different things that we can help with that aren’t really heavily technical, but they need to be done.
Event Coordination
As I mentioned right off the top, lots of business coaches will either host events or they will attend events to network with people and get clients.
Asking them where they get their clients can let you know whether they host or attend attends, and give you some insight into how you can help them.
Perhaps you can help them organize workshops, webinars, anything like that.
You can also talk about travel arranagements and personal tasks too.
Training Program Support
If they are trainers as well, they may have online courses or a website where they host their trainings for people – as well as the support materials that go with their programs.
There’s certainly some very specific things that business coaches will work with.
I think I’ve given you a lot of things to consider.
So much stuff we can help them with – talk about it!
If you have any of these skills and you want to start putting them together for business coaches, that’s awesome.
Then all you have to do is start to connect with them. There are so many of them online!
I think it’s a great market to go after. Obviously like I said, I built a great VA business, working with them myself.
I highly recommend them and the other little caveat, which is pretty cool, is you get to learn from them too. And I think that that is something that virtual assistants always like to do.
I always say when you’re choosing a target market, consider what they do or the end result that they get with their clients – the transformation.
If that’s something you feel good about, it can make your daily work even better.
So …I’m going to leave it there for today and I would love to hear your comments and feedback. So let me know what you think and let me know if you are working with business coaches would love.
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.
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.