10 Qualities Clients Love in Virtual Assistants

Working hard and receiving praise for it is one of the best compliments you can get. Everyone likes to hear when they've done a good job and the fact is, it doesn't happen often enough.

Here are 10 ways to earn compliments and provide the best work from a VA possible:

1.   Care about your client’s com­pany as if it were your own. This isn’t always easy because you’re not an employee who is vested in the retire­ment plan. In fact, you’re an inde­pen­dent con­trac­tor who can be fired at a moment’s notice. How­ever car­ing for your client’s com­pany in sub­tle, but impor­tant ways builds trust, which is vital to the long term VA-Client relationship.

2.   Take Ini­tia­tive. It’s easy to fall into the trap of being the “assis­tant” and just sit­ting back and wait­ing to be told what to do, espe­cially when you have other clients to help out, or your own work to do. But remind­ing your client that you are there to help, prompt­ing them for tasks that are com­ing due, and remind­ing them when you don’t hear back from them are all ways that you show your client that you “have their back.”

3.   Bring Ideas to the Table. Clients often have set ways of doing things, but you, as a VA with many clients, can bring alter­nate ideas for your client to con­sider (with­out breech­ing client con­fi­den­tial­i­ties). Stay on top of tech­no­log­i­cal advances, try free tri­als of inno­v­a­tive new sys­tems, and sug­gest them to your client as ways to improve the bot­tom line or stay ahead of the competition.

4.   Be Flex­i­ble. When I first started out as a VA, I had rigid stan­dards such as inflex­i­ble busi­ness hours. Although I still pre­fer to take Friday’s off, in today’s econ­omy and the real­i­ties of the 24/7 inter­net, work­ing the occa­sional late night or doing a week­end check-in becomes nec­es­sary. Clients really appre­ci­ate this flex­i­bil­ity. For me, the key is mutual respect with a client. If you’re work­ing with an ideal client, then being taken advan­tage of won’t be an issue.

5.  Own Mis­takes. Mis­takes do hap­pen, and we hate it when they do, but they are inevitable as hard as we try. Recently, a client and I were scram­bling to fin­ish an ebook with a com­ple­tion dead­line, and mean­while, I was head­ing out of town for a mini-vacation. I fin­ished the last edits and sent the file to my client and I was happy and care­free, that is, until I real­ized that I had sent the wrong file and couldn’t make it right from my remote loca­tion. Ugh. My fault. I owned it, apol­o­gized, and made it right my knock­ing some time off my bill. It was the right thing to do.

6.  Don’t take crit­i­cism per­son­ally. This one may be trite, but it is impor­tant. A lot of us VAs, let’s face it, are per­fec­tion­ist peo­ple pleasers. When we do some­thing wrong, we dwell, and not in a good way, and we don’t even need the client to get mad because we feel bad enough as it is. Get over it! Grow up and stop tak­ing feed­back in a per­sonal way. Look at it this way… if a client is tak­ing the time to tell you what they don’t like and what they pre­fer, then they are tak­ing the time to groom you into a bet­ter VA for them. That’s a good thing.

7.  Make clients feel like they are your only client. You clients know that you have other clients, but don’t remind them of it con­stantly by ignor­ing their emails and phone calls and requir­ing long lead times for projects. Instead, don’t over­book your­self and be respon­sive. Even if you are over­loaded when a client email comes in, some­times just let­ting them know that you received their request and that you’re on it will be a relief to them.

8.  Invoice Fairly. If you clock your time hourly, you know that some­times tasks take way longer than they should for unfore­seen rea­sons. The inter­net slows down, you have unex­pected error mes­sages occur, a pro­gram isn’t work­ing, or maybe you just had a real bad night’s sleep and you’re a lit­tle foggy. Although none of these are your fault, your client doesn’t want to pay for them either. If you con­tin­u­ally ask your­self, if I were a small busi­ness owner (which you prob­a­bly are!), how much would you be will­ing to pay for this activ­ity and bill accordingly.

9.  Be a Prob­lem Solver. Ulti­mately, you are there for your client to solve prob­lems. When an obsta­cle emerges, don’t just con­tact your client with the stated prob­lem and ask what to do. Instead, inform your client that XYZ hap­pened and you see three pos­si­ble workarounds. Select a rec­om­men­da­tion and say why, and then ask your client which she prefers. Make life for your client as easy as possible.

10. Bring Humor. Some client-VA rela­tion­ships are strictly busi­ness, but that’s not the kind of rela­tion­ship that I pre­fer. I share cer­tain parts of my per­sonal life (where I’m going on vaca­tion, that I’m mar­ried with a dog, and that the fur­nace is on the fritz), but I don’t share my per­sonal prob­lems. Instead, I infuse humor, light­ness, and a pos­i­tive out­look when­ever I can. Plus, I com­pli­ment what I see that my client is doing well in her business.

By making these 10 tips a regular practice you should be able to earn long term client's and referrals as well.

What actions do you take to showcase your skills as a virtual assistant?

Article Source: It's Virtually Done

Image Source: Pat (Cletch) Williams on Flickr

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