I just got off the phone with my new potential client. To tell you that I felt confused is to say nothing at all, close to off balance, I guess. My mind went into overdrive. The most obvious and reasonable explanation I could give myself was somebody decided to play a funny joke on me. Otherwise I witnessed one of life’s great mysteries.

Starting off on the right foot

I should say we started off on the right foot. “Hi, I’m John XYZ from Company XYZ…” A man with a very positive voice made sure he reached the right person, a virtual assistant from VAfromEurope company, greeted me, gave me a short basic rundown of how his company works and how virtual assistant fits into the picture. Website administration and social media management were his areas of interest. He came off as very professional and I expected several rounds of questions about my experience and a test task to cap it all. But what happened was quite unpredictable. The man gave me a green light by saying “Go ahead. You know what to do. You’ve seen an email”, asked for contract conclusion and promised to give access to web admin and social accounts. Any type of instruction,direction, tips, insight? No.

What is going to come out of such business relationships? I am afraid a flop.

Missteps Clients Make

We live in the hectic world of rapid changes. To stay on top in business world, to keep pace with those changes often means predicting them, making educated guesses beforehand. Therefore successful business people are utterly alert to stay updated about every new hype. Doing research, attending meetups, taking part in conferences, listening to presentations are all part of the game called “success”. No wonder crazy busy business professionals have a hard time keeping their finger on the pulse of every single project, settling both routine and core issues, running profitable business and performing back-office duties. It’s mind-boggling when you start thinking about it and totally unrealistic unless you have a magic wand or ability to be in five places or attend to 10 issues at a time.

All our clients realize that their goals require more time, energy, resources and skills than they have available to achieve. In cases like that after a great deal of consideration and research for most contacting virtual assistant company for virtual services and hiring va would be an optimal solution. Though to spare oneself the trouble, effort and money it is wise to remember that virtual assistant can be anything but a mind-reader, especially at the very beggining of cooperation. To make your cooperation a resounding success this should be accepted as a cut and dry fact. Have it written down next to your VA contact info “Right-hand tech-friendly administrative assistant who is not mind-reader”))

Before you hire a virtual assistant it’s very helpful to make a list of tasks that you intend to delegate.
Once you’ve hired a virtual assistant, allocate to each task precise instructions and a short description where you define your goal and result that you expect. Spend a few minutes of you time to get this message acroos to you task manager to save yourself time and nerves when the task is completed.

You can avoid many troubles, making precise instructions for their tasks. Start on safe ground: invest some of your time at the outset to celebrate top performance, better results and timely delivery in the long run.

Note that the moment you take VA on board you shouldn’t go to extremes like forget instantly that fact and expect the best ever result instead or control their every move. You’d better focus this kind of attention on your clients and customers. he is not your customer and requires constant attention, as opposed to your customers.

Carve out time in your schedule as you just start working with your VA to make necessary remarks timely adjustments, point ou at some loopholes. This way your assistant won’t hit the blockroad having misinterpereted instructions.

Missteps Virtual Assistants Make

The worst nightmare that makes every virtual assistant’s blood run cold is a loss of customers. What does it take to hear something like “I found another assistant” or “I expected a different level of performance.”

They hesitate to ask the client additional clarifying questions. Why would they do that if they know or saw everything, and to be honest, they know better what the client needs. Anyway, after a demo of work done customer can always return it for revision.

Here comes another crucial point: they do not provide daily reports, do not keep your client apprised of the task status, especially when it’s a long-term project. Let the client show interest. After all, what’s the point? I know how far I progressed on this task. I’ll get in touch when I’m done.

Let us not forget that the customer will return to us, even if we struck him with lack of professionalism, lack of organization or untimely delivery. They always come back, because skillful virtual assistants are worth their weight in gold.

Is this your virtual assistant’s pattern of “professional” behavior then I am afraid your VA’s most terrifying nightmares are about to come true before long.