Every virtual assistant wants to create results for her client. Every client wants the same. But when the client’s budget is tight, what kind of outcomes can you realistically expect for only 5 or 10 hours a month?
This is where a lot of client-VA relationships go sour. Yet a lot of good things can come out of those hours if used the right way. Some tips for helping you leverage a limited virtual assistance budget:
Everyone is feeling the pinch. Even if you’re projecting more prosperous times, there remains a dilemma over how to sustain key operational and marketing activities when cash is tight. And if you have a virtual assistant or other contractor on the team, you’ve no doubt considered cutting them loose so you can breathe a little easier at month end.
This might seem like an obvious way to lighten your budgetary load, but what of those prosperous times you’re planning for? If you permit the fundamentals to deteriorate (marketing, operations, customer care, etc.), what will be left when opportunity comes knocking (and it will come knocking again)? Will you be ready? Will you be sane?
Hiring a virtual assistant can help your business succeed in so many ways it’s hard to imagine why anyone would not at least give outsourcing careful consideration. Then again, why take bold and strategic steps forward with your business when you’ve got things like status quo and been-there-done-that to keep you warm and comfy? Just in case you’re running out of excuses though, I’ve come up with a handy little list of trite excuses for not hiring your own VA today.
Print this list off and tape it to your desk. You just never know when you might have to turn down another opportunity to grow:
I posted some online marketing goodness over at Search Engine Guide yesterday and felt I should share, mainly because the strategies I wrote about are as much applicable to the B2B services web space as they are to ecommerce (the post was regarding etailer price wars specifically).
