Welcome to another episode of the podcast that teaches you how to be a ridiculously good virtual assistant.
Today is my 100th episode of the podcast! Yay me! And so today I want to talk about something that I think is one of the MOST important things to master in your VA business – Communication.
Today’s Quote: Communication is a skill that you can learn. It’s like riding a bicycle or typing. If you’re willing to work at it, you can rapidly improve the quality of every part of your life. – Brian Tracy
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Connect with Tracey D’Aviero, VA Coach and Trainer
Episode Notes:
First things first… Yes!! Today’s episode is my 100th episode of The Ridiculously Good VA Show and I’m thrilled to be marking this milestone with you!
When I decided to do the podcast back in 2022, I did it so that I would have a central hub of content for my audience of VAs just like you.
I found that I was creating content in about 5 different places and it was hard to keep up, and keep it all fresh and unique.
The podcast serves as a way to share my expertise with you wherever you are, and you can listen to it anywhere you like – on my website or blog, on your favourite podcast service, or on Youtube. It’s not a video podcast, just audio, but I appreciate all of my new Youtube followers and listeners!
I love to do it every week, and I love to hear that you are enjoying it and getting good information from it.
There are very few VAs that I speak with in my cut to the chase calls, or via DM, who have not heard of my podcast, and that’s exactly what I was hoping for.
So, happy 100th episode to me – thank YOU for being here – let’s keep it going together!
Today I want to talk about mastering communication in your business.
Communication is something that I have worked very hard on over the last 25+ years and it’s something that I find myself teaching often, and that’s why I chose it as the topic for this special podcast episode.
Some of the things I’ll talk about today you can also use in your personal life.
But for sure, if you can get better at communication in your business, you will soar high above a lot of other VAs who just aren’t doing it well.
Today we’ll talk about why it’s so important to communicate well – what it impacts in your business (and your client’s business), and some tips to help you do it better if you are challenged by it.
Why is Good Communication So Important?
There is very little that communication doesn’t touch in business. In life, actually, but definitely in business.
When you communicate well, the details are clear, the expectations are clear, and the relationship with your client will flourish.
Good communication is an excellent skill to learn – or master – because it will help everything in your business simply run smoother.
What do we mean by good communication? Being able to describe the details of a task or a situation effectively, without using too many words.
I find that when VAs are struggling with good communication, they use too many words.
When you choose your words effectively, you will naturally use less words – and it makes it much easier to get your point across.
Practicing active listening is a skill that definitely needs to be learned in business. Especially virtual business.
I had to learn this in my corporate job. I was actually told that I didn’t listen well.
I communicated for most of my job and I was shocked when the head of HR told me in my performance evaluation that this was a major flaw in my communication style.
I’m sorry, what?
I was very smart, I knew my job, I knew what I was trying to communicate to the people I was having meetings with – and then I get told that I’m not perfect at it?
She told me that I didn’t actually listen to people when they talked to me (not everyone, but in this circumstance) and she said that while they were talking, I was instead formulating my answer in my head to respond when they stopped talking.
Impossible. Or was it?
She advised me as such: when they stop talking, take a beat, count to two if necessary, and then respond. She said even if you are listening, you are thinking so fast and then you tell them your response before they feel you have even reflected on what they just said.
You may already know what you plan to say, but it will make them feel more heard and feel like you are listening.
Guess what ? I did it and she was absolutely right. I wasn’t listening. Or at least I was thinking too fast. And definitely responding too fast.
So I stopped. I started taking that beat. Really listening to what they said. My response may still have been the same, but I was sure that I was honoring their opinion or feedback, and then making sure that I was actually answering them.
It was amazing. I had no idea I wasn’t doing that until she pointed it out.
There is always room for improvement in our communication.
If you are not active listening to your clients and potential clients, colleagues, or whoever, try it for yourself. It really slows you down and it improves your communication skills dramatically.
Look at me, now I coach for a living! That’s allll about listening.
Good communication puts you leaps and bounds ahead of other VAs who don’t do it well.
A client who feels that you are communicating well with them is a happy client, and that’s what keeps the VA work coming.
How Does Communicating Well Help Your Clients?
So how specifically does it help your clients with their business?
Clear communication helps you manage your scope of work. It’s one of the first things that you and your client discuss, in your discovery call.
Talking about what you can help the client with, specifically, is important. It sets the tone for how you will communicate through your working relationship.
It helps you to take charge of the work scope – you aren’t an employee, so the client can tell you what they would like help with, but you ultimately get to say yes to this and no to that if you like.
The scope of work gets detailed in your contract and you can use that to stay on track and proactive as the VA.
Clear expectations are a direct result of good communication.
One of the things that we struggle with our clients about is one person thinking one thing will happen and the other person thinking that something else will happen.
This might occur through trying to meet a deadline, when the client needs to provide certain things for you to do the task. If they don’t provide those things on time, the project can get behind. If there is a lot of back and forth that can also put you behind.
I had a client who I told I needed 24 hours of lead time for her newsletter.
She would routinely send it to me exactly 24 hours before she wanted it to go out. Sometimes it was a Tuesday, sometimes it was a Friday.
That wasn’t really what I meant. Sure, she was giving me enough notice, but if I didn’t know the newsletter was coming that day, what if I already had my day planned? She would send it on a Wednesday at 3 and say it needed to go out by Thursday at 3.
The policy was there but it didn’t always work.
It’s up to you to make sure things work – that you are managing expectations properly for both of you.
When I was providing client care for my clients, that means checking their inboxes and responding to their clients.
I charged one of them an average of 15 minutes a day for that task. They ran a coaching business, and sold mainly digital programs.
There was an email inbox for client care, and would check it every morning and respond to anyone who needed help.
He has a good system and an automated ecommerce service so there were not always questions, but if there were any I would answer them with our canned responses.
I only needed to log in once a day because I did it every morning. If there was nothing in the morning, I might check again later that day. But I was never really spending more than 15 minutes to process was came in.
That client used 10 hours a month from me, and 5.5 hours of it was keeping an eye on his inbox. He knew that his clients would get a response every 24 hours, that he didn’t need to pay me to check it 4x a day.
And because we had the canned responses, I knew what to respond in most circumstances, so it was a pretty simple task.
His expectations were met and we did it with a very lean budget. We can communicate these things to our clients in a way that it is a win win for both of us.
I was able to provide that service to 8 of my clients at that time. I billed more than 40 hours a month by checking emails once a day. My clients knew that their inbox was checked daily. Win win.
Managing expectation of the work being done is an excellent skill to learn. your clients don’t want to be looking over your shoulder all the time, especially for routine or everyday stuff. Make it easy for them to trust you to provide a service like this.
Of course we can’t talk about communication without talking about conflict.
It is the most needed skill when things go wrong.
My theory is always to set things up so that as little as possible goes wrong, but sometimes it happens.
So we need to use communication to fix it. How?
First, we need to assess the situation. What should have happened? Who should have done what?
Is any blame ours? if so, how can we fix it now? How can we fix it for next time?
Is any blame our client’s? If so, how can we fix it now? How can we fix it for next time?
We create policies in our business when things go wrong. It’s the only reason anyone creates rules for stuff, I think. They want to avoid the same situation in the future.
When we are trying to resolve conflict, we need to look only at the professional aspect. Keep your personal feelings out of it.
If a client pays us late, we are hurt. We are mad. We leap to our VA communities to bitch about it.
It’s hard not to take it personally. But in business you have to.
What is your payment policy? Mine used to be payable on receipt – on the 1st, and I would send it out on the first. And some of my clients didn’t pay me that day, and I’d get upset. Ummmmm, how does that make sense? We all get busy – although my client knew that the invoice was due the 1st, if I only sent it to them that day, and they were away, or it was a weekend, or a holiday, or even if they were just busy, and didn’t have time to pay it for a few days, that’s not really their fault.
One of my VAs used to send me my invoice on the 20th, to be paid on the 1st. That makes so much more sense to me. We need to give people time to pay us on time. She did that. I never did that, but I do wish I had.
Of course that can only be done with retainers, but you see what I mean.
So if your clients consistently pay you late, you need not take offence, maybe you just need to change your billing practice or policy.
See how it makes a difference? It’s not personal, it’s just business.
We tend to take things personally when we don’t need to.
What’s another example?
A client gives us last minute work all the time.
We have told them that we can’t do last minute work, but they still send it.
And we do it, but we’re angry when we do it. We dread seeing their name in our inbox because we know it’s going to be something we have to drop everything else for.
Guess what? We are teaching them how to treat us by actually doing it.
Don’t do it. Once. Tell them you can’t, and they will understand. Late or rush work does not get done. Clearly state your new lead times for that type of task and hold to it.
What about the client that phones you all the time, or texts you instead of emailing you a work request?
Well, how are you responding? Are you answering the call? Don’t. Are you answering that text? Don’t. Use your channels to respond. I would email my clients to say ‘got your voicemail/text, here’s what I suggest’. I told my clients they were welcome to call me an leave a voicemail if that was convenient for them, but I would respond via email. or we could book a meeting which was of course billable time.
When you let your clients cross boundaries, it makes things so frustrating.
I hear VAs say ‘My client needs to meet with me every day’ No they don’t. They need to communicate their needs in a way that you can take that information and do your work. Or ‘My client meeting went on for 2 hours’ There is no need for that. Get the information about what they need, clarify the deadline and lead time, and then get to work.
Meetings are the biggest time waster in corporate and in contractor work. Meetings are useful to clarify details, but a two hour meeting is never necessary. How to improve meeting communication? Agenda! Create it, use it, stick to it.
If you think you need 2 hours meetings. let’s chat. You tell me about your most recent two hour meeting and I’ll tell you how it could have been 30 minutes or less. 🙂 And yes, I’ll active listen to you1
The last way good communication helps your clients in their business is through feedback.
Ask for feedback, give feedback.
Everyone is different and we all have different work styles, work pace, work personalities.
Check in – ask your clients if there is something you can do better or differently. Tell your clients when you think there is a better way to do something.
You are working collaboratively – separately – and there is always room for improvement.
Feedback – keep it constructive and it can help so much.
Tips to Help You Communicate Better
My number one way to improve your communication in your VA business is to use production meetings.
Book a weekly meeting with your clients. Create a standard agenda of what you will cover on those calls.
One of my clients had 4 main things we talked about every week: Money, Clients, This Week, and New Business.
She was a 6 figure business coach and was very busy. Our weekly production meeting lasted no longer than 20 minutes every Monday, and we communicated the rest of the week via email or project management system.
We talked about money – what came in, any issue with what didn’t come in, and what to do about it.
We talked about clients – new clients, existing clients, any unusual issues to address.
We talked about what needed to be done this week – emails to go out, documents to be prepared, events that we were being held, etc.
And then we talked about what was coming up. When, what, where, so I could get the details set up in our project management system.
Make your meetings productive (I call them production meetings for a reason!), and they will work so well for you.
After your meeting, go and update your project management system with the details and move your communication there for the rest of the week.
Do NOT open your PM system on a client call and go over every last thing, that’s not productive. High level overview only!
Make sure your PM system is detailed enough to answer the questions your client might have. Status, details, outstanding pieces, etc. It’s so easy.
Take the personal out of it. You are working together. Your client is not trying to upset you. If they are questioning your understanding of something, or if something goes wrong, go back to expectations.
Go back to clarity of what should have happened.
Communication is not hard, but it’s hard to manage if you don’t do it well.
My advice is to learn to do it well. Learn to do it better.
Look at it from a linear perspective… For this to happen, these things need to be done. Simple.
Get detailed. Keep everyone on task and on deadline.
If you don’t allow enough time this time, make it longer next time.
Strive to do better every time.
If my clients who were 6 and 7 figure coaches can keep organized in 15 to 30 minutes once a week, you can too.
And now we circle back to todays quote: Communication is a skill that you can learn. It’s like riding a bicycle or typing. If you’re willing to work at it, you can rapidly improve the quality of every part of your life.
Brian Tracy is so brilliant, and he nails it here.
Communication IS a skill, it can be learned, it takes practice, and it can rapidly improve everything.
Trust me. It will absolutely elevate you to elite status as a VA.
And that’s why I wanted to talk about communication on my 100th episode. It is the one thing that can change so much in your business right now. Quickly.
I’m going to leave it off here for this week.
Do You Need Help?
If you need help mastering your communication, get in touch with me. I’m here to help. It’s the only reason I’m here at all, as you know. To help you become a ridiculously good VA.
I have helped hundreds of VAs who are stuck get moving through private coaching, group coaching, and live and self study trainings. If you want to talk about how we can work together, let’s connect on a Cut to the Chase call. You can book yours at YourVAMentor.com/chase
Thanks for tuning in this week! I’ll see you next time!
What You Need to Do Next:
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.
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Click here for more tips to help you with your productivity and time management in your Virtual Assistant business.
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