A Virtual Assistant is a business owner. As a result, they understand many of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs.  They not only share but clearly comprehend and relate to critical factors that can be the difference between success and failure. Cost, quality, customer service, time constraints, professionalism and follow through are examples.

2. Overhead – or lack thereof

Virtual Assistants own and maintain their own office space, computer and office equipment that are needed to get the job done.  If a client has a specific need, he/she may provide the materials or equipment required.  In general, however, a virtual assistant will market to and accept clients that have needs which can be fulfilled using the VA’s existing resources.

3. No Benefits

Not having to pay for benefits saves a business owner 30% right from the start as compared to hiring a full-time equivalent.  The business owner is not responsible for providing paid vacations, breaks, sick days, or healthcare.  A client only pays a virtual assistant for time actually spent working on projects specific to his/her business.

4. Growth and Money

Hiring a virtual assistant aligns a business owner with a professional business partner who can manage multiple tasks for his/her business without direct supervision.  Whether a VA is needed to maintain office administrative processes, provide customer service or assist in marketing efforts – just to name a few – the result is to give the business owner more time to focus on opportunities for growth and revenue generating activities.

5. Peace of Mind

Having a VA in your corner means having someone available to maintain important aspects of your business with consistency and proficiency.  A competent Virtual Business Assistant will quickly become knowledgeable about the client’s business.  In addition, a professional VA will not only learn how to complete the necessary tasks but will take initiative to offer suggestions for improvement on how those tasks are performed.   The ultimate purpose of a virtual assistant is to make things easier for the business owner and with that comes peace of mind.

***AUTHOR BIO***

Katie Bauer is the owner of Effective Virtual Assistance and TheVAResource.com.  E.V.A. partners with small businesses locally and nationally giving business owners the time they need to focus on core business and revenue generating activities.  With a firm belief that the success of a client is our success, we are highly motivated to go above and beyond with each and every project.

The VA Resource is the best place on the web to find essential business documents and templates that will create a SOLID foundation for your virtual assistant business.  You will not find a collection of templates and tools that you can put to use immediately anywhere else on the web, and at an incredibly affordable price!

Websites: http://www.effectiveva.com and http://www.thevaresource.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/effectiveva and http://ow.ly/50flf

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/katiebva

Copyright ©2012 – Effective Virtual Assistance, LLC. All right reserved.

Today I’d like to present business challenge #2 - 5 Simple Steps to Networking Success.  This easy to implement plan is a great way to make the most of your networking efforts.

All the best!

Katie

I break it down into one task each day that will energize your business but allow plenty of time to get your client work done.   Keep in mind that not every task will be necessary or applicable, but most virtual assistant businesses will find value in nearly all of the challenges.  From marketing to networking to planning and inspiration, I hope you actually have fun while focusing on the growth and success of your business.

Have a success-filled day!

***AUTHOR BIO***

Katie Bauer is the owner of Effective Virtual Assistance and TheVAResource.com.  E.V.A. partners with small businesses locally and nationally giving business owners the time they need to focus on core business and revenue generating activities.  With a firm belief that the success of a client is our success, we are highly motivated to go above and beyond with each and every project.

The VA Resource is the best place on the web to find essential business documents and templates that will create a SOLID foundation for your virtual assistant business.  You will not find a collection of templates and tools that you can put to use immediately anywhere else on the web, and at an incredibly affordable price!

Websites: http://www.effectiveva.com and http://www.thevaresource.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/effectiveva and http://ow.ly/50flf

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/katiebva

Just head back to the VAResource home page and select “Buy Now” under the VA Biz Essentials logo.   Enter the code “17Patty” at checkout. The discount is only good through this Sunday so don’t miss out!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Katie

***AUTHOR BIO***

Katie Bauer is the owner of Effective Virtual Assistance and TheVAResource.com.  E.V.A. partners with small businesses locally and nationally giving business owners the time they need to focus on core business and revenue generating activities.  With a firm belief that the success of a client is our success, we are highly motivated to go above and beyond with each and every project.

The VA Resource is the best place on the web to find essential business documents and templates that will create a SOLID foundation for your virtual assistant business.  You will not find a collection of templates and tools that you can put to use immediately anywhere else on the web, and at an incredibly affordable price!

Websites: http://www.effectiveva.com and http://www.thevaresource.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/effectiveva and http://ow.ly/50flf

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/katiebva

I first met with an employee at my local SBA office about a month after I officially opened my doors for business in early 2008.  I had done a lot of reading, networking with other VAs and research as I went through the process to start my business.  I had a business plan, I had filed all the necessary paperwork, I had designed my website and I had joined my local Chamber of Commerce.  I was excited and I felt good about my new venture, but I knew I could use a professional’s perspective on whether I had done everything right so far and to tell me I wasn’t crazy for thinking I could make this work!

My first meeting with my local rep was terrific.  He was a wealth of information.  We reviewed all the legal items, went through my business plan and brainstormed ideas for marketing my business locally.  It was a relief to confirm my paperwork was in order and I was headed in the right direction.  He offered insight into the local market, suggested resources I had never thought of and had a thorough and clear answer to all of my questions.  I wanted to look into business insurance and he had several suggestions along with the names and numbers of local insurance contacts who would give me free and honest advice – which they did.

Since that time I have reached out to my SBA contact several times via phone and email.  Whether I have a quick question or need some advice on a more serious matter, he has been extremely helpful.  His office hosts a variety of free classes aimed at small businesses and I even get a Christmas card each year!  The bottom line is they demonstrate a vested interest in my success, provide sound and thorough advice and provide what I have found to be a truly valuable service.

Recently I have spent a lot of time on SBA.gov for a client who is interested in bidding on government contracts.  Although the process you must go through before you can be considered a vendor for government funded projects is pretty tedious, the information online is thorough and surprisingly more easy to work through than I had expected.  They too offer courses on the contracting with the government.

In previous posts I have suggested SBA.gov as a terrific resource for writing a business plan.  The information is easy to follow and it’s a great place for a small business to start.  I highly encourage you to just take a few minutes to navigate through the website to see what is available.  On the home page you can find local resources.  Develop a relationship with your local office and take advantage of everything they offer!

***AUTHOR BIO***

Katie Bauer is the owner of Effective Virtual Assistance and TheVAResource.com.  E.V.A. partners with small businesses locally and nationally giving business owners the time they need to focus on core business and revenue generating activities.  With a firm belief that the success of a client is our success, we are highly motivated to go above and beyond with each and every project.

The VA Resource is the best place on the web to find essential business documents and templates that will create a SOLID foundation for your virtual assistant business.  You will not find a collection of templates and tools that you can put to use immediately anywhere else on the web, and at an incredibly affordable price!

Websites: http://www.effectiveva.com and http://www.thevaresource.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/effectiveva and http://ow.ly/50flf

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/katiebva

Return on expectations and return on effort are often easier to track and calculate.  First, you will need to develop a social media strategy that outlines your baselines and goals.  Baselines provide a current state for the metrics you plan to track and report on.  Your goals give you a desired target or outcome for your efforts – what needles do you want to see moving as a result of engaging in social media marketing?

In the two years I have been actively utilizing social media marketing, I have yet to see agreement on how to define the metrics often discussed with social media – reach and influence.  Therefore, a good place to start is by defining your own key metrics in a way that makes sense for your business.  For example, what data will you pull to calculate your “reach”?  To help you decide, to do a little research on the values suggested by other social media experts and then select the ones that are most applicable to your business – it isn’t an exact science just yet.

If you plan to calculate ROI, then you will also want to assign dollar values to the effort behind your social media marketing activities.  For example, how much is your time worth?  Did you make any financial investments to create your social media profiles?  How much is a new client worth?

So now that you have a plan, definitions and targets, what do you do with the data?  That’s the question I asked myself about a year ago.  My solution was to create a simple worksheet that tracks not only my baselines, targets and definitions, but also provides a place to input monthly results for all my social media activity – complete with calculations to show month over month change.  The workbook was great for seeing trends, but I needed to tie the data back to the social media metrics that I had decided to report on.  My next step was to develop a dashboard that pulls the raw data and calculates the results of the social media metrics I was tracking.

Remember that in social media, metrics are often intangible.  That does not mean the data is not meaningful.  The expectations you set and the outcomes you see will be a direct result of your efforts, telling a powerful story.  And with social media, you can easily make adjustments and corrections to see how changes impact your results.  Just beware that some social media metrics can take three or more months before data starts to flow.  For example, for a new Facebook business page, until you have a significant number of targeted followers and consistent sharing of valuable information, the engagement on that page may be low.  Makes sense though, right?

You can find the practical tools I use to manage my social media campaigns along with the workbook I developed for tracking and tying results at SocialMediaSavvyVA.com.

You want to start by developing your Business Operations Manual. Make a comprehensive list of your administrative and operational procedures; and then outline what is required to carry out each procedure. Include tasks such as client intake, marketing strategy (both traditional and social media activity), networking, billing, time keeping, back office systems, backup processes (detail on this to follow), vendors and suppliers. As you craft your biz ops manual, imagine a situation where you could hand the manual to someone, and he or she could select any process and carry it out from start to finish based on your documentation. With that in mind, do your best not to leave anything out!

Once you have your systems and procedures documented, you are going to need documents and templates to support them. For example, consultation forms, contracts/agreements, invoices, and time tracking forms should be ready to go before you have your first client interaction. As you take on clients, your documentation should also include step-by-step guides for the support services you provide to those clients. Why? Because having the steps and templates to reference when it comes time to work on a task (especially one you haven’t completed in a while) will ensure you don’t miss anything. You’re saving time and avoiding errors!

Business resources are just as important as business documents. Create and maintain a database to track your system access, memberships, affiliate programs and passwords. Be sure to include the name of the system/organization, URL, login, password, costs and expiration dates. For security reasons it is a good idea to password protect this file.

All of the business documents and templates that have been discussed are essential for managing your business; therefore you need to ensure that you back them up regularly. The system for this does not need to be complicated – a disc with everything on it is an easy solution, but does require you to set a schedule and hold yourself accountable for getting it done. Consider an automatic backup software or cloud storage tool. Just remember that losing your important data means losing billable time for clients as you recreate those critical documents – so don’t skip this one!

Finally, be sure to re-visit and update your systems and processes on a regular basis. In the beginning you may want to do this more often, but once your business is up and running smoothly, yearly reviews will probably suffice. With any luck you’ll create systems that can sustain growth and only need tweaking as your business grows.

One final thought. We all get caught up working “in” our business rather than working “on” it, but developing tools to keep your business organized will not only eliminate some of that tendency, but serve as a skill to attract new clients. Creating systems that are easily repeatable and sustainable as business increases should become a top priority and a best practice.