Question:
I ran a VA business from 2007-2009. As much as I loved it, I found that I was having to spend a large percentage of my time marketing my business. I would like to start up again, but what alternatives should I consider besides doing my own marketing?

Answer:
To give the best answer, I first asked some additional questions.

• What percentage of time did you use to market your business?
• What marketing strategies did you use?
• Would you be open to having someone else do your marketing and if so, how would you envision that?

The virtual assistant stated she spent at least 50% of her time marketing her business. Now that may seem like a lot. However, I did a bit of research and found several entrepreneurs who encourage spending at least 60% of your time marketing. I do know that if I’m working 20 hours a week for clients, I’m spending an additional 10 hours or so marketing my business. So the amount of time seems right.

What we sometimes forget is that we are entrepreneurs and business owners. That means usually we are the one person doing it all: sales, marketing, client work, administrative work. And that takes time. If we don’t want to spend the time doing the marketing, we have two choices:

1. Hire someone as our marketing person
2. Find a J.O.B. – because a business owner must market their services and products in order to succeed

Some marketing strategies that are very effective are in-person events such as SBA events, BNI meetings, professional associations. Then there’s online marketing: a blog, social networking sites, ezines, press releases. Yes, these all take time. That’s why it’s important to put together a simple marketing plan and calendar and schedule these events and actions. Our Action Guide has a sample marketing plan and calendar with details on how to put them into action.  Having a plan helps you make sure you’re using strategies that are most effective and less-time consuming than just haphazardly posting something on a social network every day.

Joining local small business groups and attending monthly mixers are effective marketing strategies. Get to know the people, what their needs are, how you can refer them to others. It’s important to build relationships with these people before you ever try to “sell” them your services. There’s a whole section in our book, The Commonsense Virtual Assistant – Becoming an Entrepreneur, Not an Employee, that has lots of great information on marketing. You can purchase a copy on the website.

The Commonsense Virtual Assistant

I believe doing your own marketing is most effective. However, hiring someone to market your services for you is also a viable option. After all, isn’t that what many of our clients hire us to do for them? You can hire someone to help promote your services – online, via mailings, follow-up phone calls, and even by attending in-person events.

Another great marketing strategy is article writing. It establishes you as an expert and always links back to your website. Check out my articles at Ezine Articles.

You can read more about proactive marketing at another blog post of mine.

I’d love to hear your comments!

Do you have any suggestions on how to raise a long-time client’s rate? Would it be best to let them go and keep adding new clients at my new, higher rate?

I still have my original clients and they take up a good amount of my time, yet are only paying a third of the rate my new clients are. I don’t want to help them any less. Yet when I can make three times as much in the same amount of time with new clients, it becomes a tough balancing act.

Answer:
This is a dilemma virtual assistants who have been in business for a while face. When I first started back in 2005, my starting rate was $25 per hour. Today, seven years later, it’s $50 per hour. Does that mean that my original client still pays $25 per hour? No.

As in any business, clients understand the need for rates to go up periodically. Of course the way we handle raising rates will make the difference between keeping a mutually beneficial relationship and losing a client.

My first suggestion is to add a paragraph to your contract that states something like “Rates are subject to annual review. Client will be given 60-days notice when rates increase.” That way your clients will know up front that there is a possibility of a rate increase annually. They will also know they will be given plenty of notice so they can budget for the increase.

Review your rates around October 1st each year and see if a rate increase is called for. Review each client’s rate to see what would be appropriate for them. Then by November 1 give each client a notice of any rate increase to be effective January 1 of the new year.

What if your client decides they don’t want to pay the higher rate? Not all is necessarily lost. If they really want to find another virtual assistant at a lower rate and you really want to stick to your rate, then this may be the time to let them go. In fact I’ve intentionally let challenging clients opt-out of my rate increase as a way of letting them go without hurt feelings.

But it may be that a particular client is one you really love and they ask you if you’re willing to negotiate another rate. Why not consider doing just that? If the work is something you love and the client is great, but they just can’t afford the higher rate, you may be able to compromise. I have a favorite client that I just recently did this with. We discussed her needs as well as mine and agreed to a compromise. We met in the middle and are both happy. She’s paying less than new clients but I’m still getting a decent rate, love the work, and have a great client who refers me to new clients – and who pay the higher rate!

When you do decide to let a client know you’re raising their rates, don’t think you can say to a $25/hour client, “By the way, next month the rate jumps to $50/hour”. You cannot double your price in one swoop like that. You can say something more like, “It’s that time of year when I review my rates. My rates are increasing across the board. New clients will be paying $50/hour. However, since you’ve been a long-time client and I love working with you, this year I’m only increasing your rate by 25%. The new rates goes into effect 60 days from today. I’d be happy to discuss any questions you have.”

You could let them know that you expect their rate to increase by that same percentage next year as well. When you set the expectation, it’s not a surprise or cause for concern when it happens.

If you and your clients value yourself and your services, you deserve asking for a decent rate from your clients. Read another post I wrote about this subject here.

Remember these rules about raising rates:

• Create clear expectations; include a paragraph about rate increases in your contract
• Give your client plenty of notice – at least 60 days – of any rate increase
• Be reasonable and flexible
• Value yourself and your services

I’d love to hear your feedback and experiences you’ve had of raising client rates.

Now neither I nor the accountant worked for this client any longer. However, the accountant connected with me on LinkedIn. I accepted the invitation to connect. We both thought, “you never know when we’ll need the other’s services“. It’s been nearly four years and I was just contacted by this accountant. She needs some work done and thought a virtual assistant could do this work. Who did she think of first? Someone she already had a relationship and connection with – me.

This reiterates the fact that building trusting relationships takes time. Don’t be in a hurry to sell your services to total strangers. Take time to get to know people, Connect on LinkedIn, ask some questions, comment on their blog. Once they get to know you, like you and trust you, you’ll have something to build a working relationship on.

Who are the people on your list that receive your newsletter or blog? Do you have hundreds on your list? If so, do you know where they all came from? If you had to write each one of them an individual message, could you include something specific that you know they would want to hear?

We have an extensive network of people around the world that we stay in touch with via blogs, emails, newsletters, forums, etc. Some have opted-in to a newsletter or blog that we don’t personally know. Otherwise, I can tell you something about just about everyone we to whom we send out a  mailing.

Joel and I were recently getting ready to send out a mailing about our web design company, Spinhead Web Design. We wanted to announce our new service, Kindle Formatting. It had been a while since we’d sent anything out so we decided to review the list first to make sure that only people who would really be interested received our email.

We started out with over 300 on the list and pruned it to about 120. But I could tell you where every one of those 120 contacts came from – how we met, whether in person or online. We knew these were people that had either done business with us or were fans of ours. These all are people who are our fans. If they don’t need our service, we know they’ll refer someone else who does.

It’s not effective to send eblasts out to those who are either going to ignore you or feel annoyed. But targeting our fans – that’s effective!

Thank you to all our fans!

If you’ve done all you can, it doesn’t matter if they are right or not. You will do more harm to your business keeping them as a client. As we state on page 39 in The Commonsense Virtual Assistant – Becoming an Entrepreneur, Not an Employee: ” If you decide that an ongoing relationship will do more harm than good to both of you, calmly, politely let them know that you’ve done all you can. Apologize that you haven’t been able to make them happy. Express a genuine hope that someone else who offers the same product or service will be able to do what you can’t. And that’s all.”

Have you had to let a client go? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

I  set up a blog for Stacey, started her email campaign and created a newsletter template, and integrated social networking as an additional piece of marketing puzzle. In a short period of time, Stacey started blogging, contacting prospects via email and growing her business. She now has processes in place so she can easily and quickly use these tools to help grow her business. Read what Stacey herself has to say.

“As a corporate tax software expert, I knew nothing about Blogging, Newsletters, Professional Mass Emails or Social Networking. Thanks to Sue Canfield, you’d never know it! Sue and her team did an amazing job setting up my blog so that I had the highest opportunity to capture prospective client information and direct them to my company’s website! She also effortlessly put together a coordinating professional mass email system for me to promote my business. She gave me a fantastic education on using blogs, newsletters, professional emails and social networking to add value to my prospects and build my business at the same time!

“It is delightful to have Sue on my team, because as an entrepreneur herself, she always has her focus on building my business and getting a great return on my investment! Sue makes it so simple and easy for me so that I can focus on my business! When I began searching for a Professional Assistant, the one thing that was important to me was to find someone who could ADD VALUE to my business from an administrative perspective; not just “do my to–dos” for me–and I got MORE than that with Sue! She is the ultimate in professional assistants and her team is fantastic! If you are a professional who needs to “follow the profit” by spending your time on what really adds value to your business, then don’t hesitate for a second, hire Sue Canfield, or as we call her in our office, Sue Awesome!

“Working with Sue has saved me 15 hours a week in administrative tasks that I no longer have to do and 15 hours is worth $3,750 to me! Thanks Sue, for putting $3,750 dollars a WEEK back in my pocket!“–Stacey Martino, CFO Martino IT, Pennsylvania

• How do you find your first client?
• What are affordable and effective ways to market your services?
• How can you attract and educate prospects with your website?
• How can you develop a business plan, blogging strategy and article writing strategy?
• How do you determine your rates and pricing structure?

Chief Virtual Officer offers an intensive 5-month course customized to your specific needs. Each month focuses on a specific area of your Virtual Assistant practice. Each week you will receive homework with specific strategies to implement in your business right away. In addition to two monthly coaching sessions via telephone, we will reply to all your questions via email as often as you like.

We are currently taking on new clients. Use the Contact Form to schedule your free 30-minute coaching session so you can determine if this is the right program for you.

Get all the details on our Coaching page.

Shout outs to Vickie Turley and Christine Giri for donation these bonus items. Thank you both!

Read all the details here.

Grand Prize! To be announced shortly. We will have one Grand Prize Winner!

Bonus #3: Drawing for copies of the book What’s Love Got To Do With It? How to Have the Perfect VA Client Relationship by Vickie Turley. There will be 7 copies to give away! ($19.95 Value)

Bonus #4: Drawing for copies of the ebook on CD Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn – A Quick-Start Guide for Virtual Assistants by Christine Giri. There will be 5 copies to give away! ($49.95 Value)

Other comments included:
1. Do all possible to correct the situation.
2. Ask the client what you can do to make things good.
3. Learn from the mistake and think of ways to avoid it in the future.
4. We all make mistakes, that’s how we learn.

This virtual assistant has done all she can and is moving on. This is exactly the right thing to do. Though it’s never easy to lose a client, once we’ve done all we can it’s important to move on. We don’t want to allow negative energy to be drawn away from our existing clients.

Thoughts, comments, suggestions?

This virtual assistant had a client and a large portion of her income was received on a monthly basis from this client. Then unexpectedly the client passed away. Fortunately she is in a position where the loss of income is not a severe blow to her business. However work is left hanging and the virtual assistant is not sure what to do with the website she was in the middle of working on for the client.

So here’s a suggestion for anyone in business. Make sure you have an ‘emergency’ contact, someone you can contact if for some reason you are unable to contact your client or something happens to your client. On the flip side, you should provide your client with an emergency contact so that if something happens to you, they have someone to contact to get their project work done.