Educating the Virtual Assistant Marketplace

I had a wonderful phone conversation with a prospective client today. Unfortunately, even though we seemed such a good fit otherwise, I may not be able to work with him due to an after hours access issue.

As an entrepreneur, I often work many - and odd - hours. As a small business owner and service provider to a number of clients however, I have set office hours M-F. If clients call or email outside these hours, they don't expect to hear from me until the next business day.

Can you imagine the chaos otherwise? What if several had after hours emergencies at the same time and had come to expect me to be on call 24/7? Who gets first dibs? I decided early on that I do and my family does.

So while this prospect and I talked 'round and 'round it, in the end I could not give him the answer he wanted to hear. I'm true to my word and do not set expectations that I'm not prepared to meet or exceed.

Later, a post by Danielle Keister, aka "The Gritty VA", really spoke to me. We have a responsibility in the virtual assistant industry to listen, educate, and be truthful about what we can and cannot (or won't) do.

Here is an excerpt and link to the full post.

clipped from www.grittyva.com

Thar's Gold in That There Client Feedback

One of the things I educated him about was that trying to make an employee out of a Virtual Assistant just never works. You have to take the on-demand stuff off the table and out of the expectations. Even if a Virtual Assistant (who is usually green) takes that work on, eventually as her practice grows, it will become more and more difficult, and eventually impossible, for her to sustain the ability to work together in that capacity. Virtual Assistance is about leverage, not replacing the need for employees.