As I mentioned in an earlier post I was privileged to have taken a great Virtual Assistant class over the course of the last eight weeks. I will be sharing with you some of the new skills and insights that I got from the class.
But before I do that I thought it would be a good idea to explain what a virtual assistant is for those of you who are unfamiliar with the term. A virtual assistant is a person who works with businesses that need help with their work flow . Virtual assistant do not actually go to the person’s place of business. All work is done through email, faxes, and telephone. The small business market usually is a good niche to investigate because the average small business owner is wearing multiple caps and would appreciate (and need) help.
When I first came up with the idea of becoming a virtual assistant I labored under the misinformation that I had to set up my pricing like a secretarial service. If you go to my website you’ll see what I mean. . What I’ve taken away after eight weeks is all I need to do is to walk up to small businesses, let them know what I do and tell them my hourly rate. The main difference between the secretarial service model (that I tried to use) and a virtual assistant model is this:
- Secretarial Models are based upon doing piece meal work. For example, a report is $X.XX. A database is $XX.XX. We don’t need to have a relationship with the person who is requesting the work. We just do the work and get paid. It’s a good business, but these days it can be tough to get work since so many people understand the basics of word processing.
- Virtual Assistant are actually consultants for small businesses. We learn what the person needs doing and, in many cases, where they want to take their businesses in the future. In the hourly rate that we quote we can do a variety of things, answering phones, researching, places ads, etc.
Virtual assistants are needed for a variety of jobs including:
- virtual receptionists
- travel arrangements
- customer support
- website design and set up
- appointment reminder calls
- article posting
- bookkeeping
- marketing
- executive-level assistant
- data entry
- cold and warm calling
- meeting arrangements
- mailing preparation and processing
- general administrative assistant
- email screening and processing
- writing, and
- research
Virtual assistants are not employees. We work according to our own schedules and provide services in accordance with our hourly agreement. A virtual assistant becomes the right hand of the people that they work with because they handle the tasks that the business owner does not have the time, and many times, the inclination of handling themselves. And it makes sense. If a business owner is a super salesperson, why should they cut down their time selling goods to customers by going to manage their email accounts?
So that’s the story in a nutshell. Virtual Assistants are the backbone of many businesses these days. We’re the folks in the background that allow the owners to maintain and expand their businesses without having to worry about non-business building tasks.
Pretty cool, huh?
