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Interview: Creating a Virtual Office by Carol

Sue L Canfield — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 22:19:49 +0000

Carol is a student at Sierra College enrolled in the Virtual Office Professional course there. She interviewed me for her final and agreed to allow me to post it here. Here's an excerpt of her final, including our interview.

Three days of cold calling virtual assistants with absolutely no response, I was beginning to feel hopeless in finding someone to interview for our final assignment. Obviously I needed a different strategy.

I would like to introduce Sue and Joel Canfield, co-founders of Chief Virtual Officer. I met Sue and Joel through an online Virtual Assistants Networking Meetup Group that they co-organized. I signed up and participated in their monthly conference call where they share ideas, resources and information with other Virtual Assistants. I informed them that I am a student at Sierra College and that I am taking a class in Creating a Virtual Office. They were so encouraging and offered such insightful information. After the conference call, I began to feel a ray of hope. I quickly exchanged emails with Sue and asked if I could conduct a telephone interview with her as part of my final project. She graciously said yes with no hesitation.

I called her at our scheduled time for the interview and I asked her nine questions from my questionnaire. I told her that I did not want to take more than 10 or 15 minutes of her time because I was aware that her time is very valuable. I began the interview with the clock ticking. Twenty minutes later, I still had a few questions that were unanswered. I brought this to her attention. She was very thoughtful and wanted to continue the interview until she had answered all of my questions. After she answered the last question, I thanked her for providing such valuable information. We ended the call and I immediately began transcribing my notes while they were still fresh in my head. About an hour later, I decided to stop and check my email. To my surprise, Sue had sent me an email thanking me for interviewing her; I was very impressed.

Below, Sue and Joel Canfield answer my questions about starting a virtual business.

Question 1: What is your most effective marketing strategy for starting a virtual business?
Sue Canfield: The marketing strategy that I would recommend is P2P; meeting in person and getting to know your clients and their needs. Also, referring them to others is a good way for them to return as a client.

Question 2: My biggest fears about starting my own virtual business are criminal activity, scams, viruses, data breach, identify thief, etc. Have you ever experienced any of these problems?
Sue Canfield: Absolutely not. For years, my husband and I owned a networking company and we had our own firewall. We never experienced any problems. Of course you always have to be on top of things and use commonsense. You don't want to download everything you see. Always backup your data to a thumb drive. That's what we do in addition to having a backup external drive and we store everything on Amazon s3 Storage. There are all kinds of apps you can use. We use Google Apps to create documents and because we travel so much, we have access anywhere. They also have video and audio tools that I highly recommend.

Question 3: What is your advice on determining rates?
Sue Canfield: Never sell yourself too short. There are a lot of factors to consider when calculating your rates: technical skills, overhead, insurance, etc. Calculate what you will need. Be reasonable and then set your rate. Most likely they will pay. But don't sell yourself short.

Question 4: What is your advice on client contracts and agreements?
Sue Canfield: Keep contracts simple. No more than two pages that outline the specifics, such as: your rate, payment agreement, how and when you can be reached and exactly what the client wants accomplished. You should have a contract for every client so that you can refer back to it just in case the client comes to you later and says this is not what I wanted. Also, I use EchoSign to obtain electronic signatures. I've had contracts signed and returned to me within 45 minutes and it is binding.

Question 5: How do you receive client payments? How do you assure that you will be paid for your services? Do you require a deposit, retainer fee; keep a credit card on file?
Sue Canfield: I get paid by the project and I require a 50% deposit. If there is a retainer, it is discounted for paying up front and when I get close to the end of allotted time, I let them know and they pay for the next 10-20 hours. If they pay by the hour, I have a two hour minimum. I use PayPal to accept payments because it is safe and easy.

Question 6: How do you handle a difficult client that is not satisfied with the service/work you provided no matter how much you have tried to make him/her happy? Especially when you know that you delivered an excellent product?
Sue Canfield: I have had two clients like that and I fired them. With the first client, I tried everything I could think of to make her happy. I finally apologized, letting her know that I could no longer be of assistance to her. I offered to help find someone else that could meet her needs. The second client was slow in giving me the necessary information to complete her projects because she was constantly changing her mind. When she did finally provide the information, the timeframe that she demanded for completion was impossible to meet. She was also very slow to pay for services. I eventually told her that we were just not a good match. If it is appropriate, always offer to help them find someone else that would be a better fit. Be cautious if you do this because you don't want to create another bad situation for a fellow VA. Remember you are the business owner; you are the boss. When you put up with too much grief from one client, your other clients will suffer. Don't keep trying, politely fire them. You and your other clients will be better off.

Question 7: Has the recession helped or hurt your business?
Sue Canfield: We see more and more companies looking for ways to cut costs because they can no longer afford to pay a staff for 40 hours. But we also have clients that can no longer afford a virtual assistant. I think the recession has hurt everyone.

Question 8: What is your opinion on outsourcing? Do you see outsourcing as a growing problem that will be the death of the VOP industry in the United States? Has it created any problems for your business?
Joel Canfield: Actually, I think outsourcing is helping our industry. Clients are finding that they may be able to get their projects done for $4.00, but it takes 40 hours of their time to manage it properly. It's just not worth it for them. Also, we can utilize outsourcing to our advantage. As long as a project is not complicated, it can be worthwhile for us to outsource it.

Question 9: What do you know now that you wish someone would have advised or warned you about before you started your own business venture?
Sue Canfield: It definitely would be the importance of having a business plan. Now one of the first things that I advise anyone to do is to write a business plan. I'm not talking about an elaborate 45 page professional plan; I'm talking about something simple that states how you plan to start and grow your business.

The most important thing that I took away from this interview (and the conference call) was realizing that it really is possible to have a successful online business. Sue and Joel opened my eyes and showed me that honest and legitimate internet businesses really do exist. Sue helped to alleviate my worries about becoming a victim of the internet. Use commonsense and take appropriate precautions. In all likelihood, there will be no problems. Joel instilled me with a sense of confidence that I have the ability to make my vision become reality. It starts with being passionate about what you like to do.

Knowing that there are successful and well established internet businesses that mentor and provide assistance to fledgling entrepreneurs is very encouraging. I consider ChiefVirtualOfficer.com a valuable resource I will recommend.

CVO Source: New Forum Means New Look for the Blog

Joel D Canfield — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 18:52:46 +0000

Yes, this is still the blog of Chief Virtual Officer; you're not lost. In order to set up our new online learning environment, CVO Source, we're changing the layout and look of the blog to match the Source. The blog becomes the free portion of the Source, always available to anyone interested in the business of being a virtual worker.

If you're interested in even more, including audio, video, how-to articles, Q&A, and whatever else we can dream up together, sign up for CVO Source. For less than $5 a month, you'll get more business knowledge than you can possibly absorb. You might want to read more about it, but if you're ready right now, click the button below:

After payment you'll be taken to the Source where you can create a username and password. Your account will be approved promptly, and you can get started learning!

Spring into Action!

Sue L Canfield — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 13:00:13 +0000

It's Spring, sunny and time to take action! What is one thing you can do every day to grow your business?

Local Author Appreciation Fair

Sue L Canfield — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 14:00:53 +0000

Today I'm attending the local author appreciation fair in Folsom, California. My son James Ashman wrote a fiction book, The Lupine Prince, and he is one of the local authors who will be recognized at this fair.

Have you ever considered writing a book? There are good reasons as business persons to do so.

Preparing for 2010 - Network Now!

Sue L Canfield — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:07:21 +0000

As we near the end of 2009, it's our tendency to slow down in our networking efforts. It's a very busy time of year and we tend to feel we just don't have time to attend one more networking event. So stand out and take the opportunity to attend one more networking event before the end of the year.

Now is the time to prepare for the New Year. One of the best ways to market your business is to build trusting relationships. You build trusting relationships by networking and getting to know people and what they do. Take a sincere and personal interest in them. Find out who their ideal client is so you know who to refer to them.

Start planning today to grow your network so you can start 2010 on the right foot. Make it a point to connect with at least 2-3 new people and follow up in January over a cup of coffee.

Oops! How to handle those mistakes

Sue L Canfield — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:00:37 +0000

It's bound to happen. We're only human and we all make mistakes. We try very hard in our businesses to put processes in place so that we don't make mistakes. But it happens. So what do you do when it happens?

Here's my opportunity to be authentic and admit that recently we made a mistake on a client project. Of course it was completely unintentional and accidental. Upon review we still don't even know how it could have happened. But it did. Our client brought it to our attention in a very kind manner. He knew it was accidental and unintentional. Though the mistake couldn't actually be fixed, he expected us to offer some sort of compensation for the error. And we completely agreed!

We were mortified that a mistake had been made! This client is one of our favorite clients. We really enjoy working with him and we weren't sure if this was going to be the end of our working relationship. We needed now to make sure we lived up to our customer service superheroes policy. So we discussed exactly what we could offer this client to make amends for this mistake. We wanted to be sure that what we offered far exceeded any expectations he had.

We called our client and apologized for the mistake, no excuses. Then we proceeded to explain what we could do to make amends. We made a generous offer of additional time at no charge and offered to take on a project we knew he needed done at no charge. We wanted to make sure our client felt well taken care of and hoped he'd continue working with us.

Our client was very happy with our offer of additional work at no charge! He explained that he'd wondered how we would handle the situation. He realizes that mistakes happen and that it's the way they are handled that makes all the difference. He was very excited to continue working with us and had a project we could start on immediately. He was so impressed with the results of that project that he offered to write a testimonial if he hadn't already (he already had though). We continue to work together and our client continues to refer others to us.

Yes, we will make mistakes. It's how we handle them that determines the outcome. So here's my 3 simple rules on how to handle mistakes:

1. Own up to your mistakes. Take responsibility for what you did. Don't make excuses. Figure out how the mistake was made, if at all possible, and then put into place processes to prevent that mistake from happening again.

2. Apologize. Give your client a sincere apology, without excuses, for what happened. If you used a sub-contractor and the error was made by your sub-contractor, you still need to take responsiblilty.

3. Make generous amends. This does not have to be monetary. It can be additional time or product. Be sure your client feels they got more than enough compensation. If the error resulted in a $500 loss for your client, make amends of double that value.

When you own up to your mistakes, apologize, and make generous amends, you'll find that your clients appreciate your openness, honesty and integrity.

Follow Up Pays Off

Sue L Canfield — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:30:59 +0000

Four months ago a prospect contacted me to create a spreadsheet of all her contacts. She'd been collecting business cards and scraps of paper for sometime and wanted them all in one spreadsheet so she could upload them to a contact management tool. She explained it would take her several weeks to compile all the contacts and send them to me. We agreed upon the cost and she said she'd be in contact in a few weeks.

Knowing this client was very busy and was going to be compiling scores of contacts from different places, I scheduled to follow up with her in three weeks if I hadn't heard from her. So three weeks later I sent her an email asking her if there was anything I could do to help her with the compiling since I knew she wanted to get these contacts uploaded to her contact management tool in time to send out cards before the end of the year. After a few emails back and forth in which I sent suggestions she replied, "I truly appreciate your professionalism. You are inspiring me to get moving!"

Several more weeks passed and I still hadn't heard from her so I sent another follow up email reminding her that I was available and asking again if there was anything I could do to make it easier on her end. Though she still wasn't quite finished compiling all her contacts she said, "Thanks for keeping in touch."

Now over three months had passed and many of you may be thinking, "That client is so disorganized she'll never get the contacts compiled. You're wasting your time following up with her. It will never turn into paying work." Wrong! It did take longer than she hoped to compile all the contacts. However, she really does want this project to be done.

After nearly four months the check and contacts are in the mail and this project will be completed in time for her to send out cards before the end of the year. Yes, it did take some time to follow up. The client appreciated that I took the time to stay in touch. And who do you think she'll call when she needs additional work?

So don't write off those prospects that seem to be dragging their feet. No, don't pester them. But send a friendly and helpful reminder. Perhaps send some tips they can use. Let them see that you are interested in helping them and providing valuable information, whether or not they are yet a paying client. Developing this type of relationship does pay off!

How Many Clients Do You Have?

Sue L Canfield — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 06:00:19 +0000

A business broker I know suggested I write about the danger of a virtual assistant having only one client. Many virtual assistants would agree that they want more than one client. However I do know of VAs that only have one client because they get 20-40 hours work each week from that one client. That's wonderful!

The one drawback to having just one client is - what happens if you lose that client? You've just lost your entire business. So even if you are working 20-40 hours per week for one client, consider adding a couple of smaller clients to your client base.

You may think you can't take on additional work when you're already working 20-40 hours per week for your one client. This would be a good time to get to know another virtual assistant that would be willing to sub-contract for you. There are other advantages to building a relationship with another virtual assistant also and we'll discuss that in a future post.

Virtual Assistants Meetup

Sue L Canfield — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:10:11 +0000

We live in a virtual world. As virtual assistants, for the most part, it is not necessary to leave our home office to do our work. Yet there are some cons to working solo in this environment. It can be lonely not to have the comaraderie we once had in an office setting. We no longer have the ready access to a fellow office mate to bounce ideas against and get instantaneous feedback on our work. Sure we can get that from other people online. But the connection is not quite the same.

Virtual assistants in many areas are creating meetup groups at Meetup.com. They meet regularly with one another as a group at a local setting. Here they are able to exchange ideas, brainstorm, and get encouragement to help them in their businesses. Some have other people come in and speak on topics that are of interest to the group and can help them develop their businesses.

I belong to such a group that meets in Roseville, Caliornia each month. The Northern California Virtual Assistants Meetup Group usually meets the fourth Saturday of each month. We've had a business coach come in and speak to us; someone else came in and spoke about their time tracking software; another coach came in to speak on getting out of our comfort zone; another came in to discuss our motivation in selling our services; another is coming to discuss organization and productivity tips.

Perhaps you can find or create a similar group in your area so that you and other virtual assistants have a way to brainstorm ideas and grow your businesses. Let's work together to grow the virtual assistant industry.

Our Virtual Book Tour Continues

Sue L Canfield — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:19:45 +0000

Several bloggers have already hosted interviews of our book, The Commonsense Entrepreneur- Becoming an Entrepreneur, Not an Employee and we greatly appreciate that.

We're being hosted today, October 15, 2009, at this blog (thank you Lee):
http://myofficeassist.org/blog/2009/10/15/the-commonsense-virtual-assistant-becoming-an-entrepreneur-not-an-employee/

Other dates are:
10/23 - Rachel Rasmussen
http://rescuedeskblog.com

10/27 - Janine Gregor
http://yourvirtualwizard.com/Blog.aspx

Come join us on the tour and leave a comment.