We hope that you are having a great day!

Can you believe that we haven't sent our newsletter out since July of last year? Believe us, it is not that we didn't want to. We have been busy (in a good way). We are so stoked about some of the changes that we are making. Exciting changes! You will have to wait until next month's issue to find out what this exciting news is all about.

We are having great success with VA Training. We are seeing first hand the talent that is being added to the VA industry and are glad to be there at their inception! We are constantly on the look out for VAs to be part of the Virtual Accuracy Team. The VAs that we are coaching are top notch in our book. They continue to surprise us at the quality of work that they do.

We are writing new articles that we think will help emerging and seasoned VAs, Entrepreneurs, Small Businesses and Coaches. We will highlight one or more of these articles each month just as we have been doing. However, we think that the content of these articles will be more interesting and engaging than they have been in the past. Not that the other articles haven't been useful. We do not recall how many times the Cold Beginnings on Cold Calling article has been requested or viewed. It seems that this particular article has been a "Hot Topic" within the service industries. So, we will definitely be expanding on this one!

If you are interested in reading an article on a specific topic, please e-mail one of us with your suggestions.

Warmly,
Dale Noles, President
Becki Jaspin-Noles, Visionary

If you have ever heard of a Virtual Assistant (VA) you might be inclined to think that they are an obscure way to build your business. You pay them for the work that they do for you. You pay them for the work that you can do yourself. How can that benefit a startup business or even a thriving business, like yours?

Eat In or Sub-Out
A large number of VAs are able to provide your basic administrative needs. Most, can type documents, transcribe, do data entry and a variety of tasks that chew up a good portion of your time, if you are doing it all yourself. VAs can be a gigantic asset to any business. Their prices may seem high, but there is savings in utilizing one. Some examples are: no overhead, no extra office equipment, no taxes, etc. In addition, they take the time that you were spending on the daily tasks of running your business and give that time back to you, which is an extremely valuable asset to your business.

Ultimately, you have to decide what the trade off is. Do you continue to do the tasks yourself and waste valuable time that you could be spending on getting new clients and building up your current clients? Or, do you retain a VA who can do those tasks for much less per hour and give you your time back, so that you can focus on your business?

Feed Your Needs
When selecting a VA for your business, you will want to consider some very important variables. What kind of work do you do? Does the work that you need done require a certain amount of expertise? Are you looking for the right kind of VA? Is the VA that you are considering familiar with what your type of business requires (law office, coaching practice, real estate, etc.)?

Standardize or Super Size
One of the core benefits of identifying the right VA for your business is eliminating the learning curve. Assume that you have a coaching practice. In your practice you not only coach your clients but you also are a speaker and an author. If you use a general VA who does just the basic administrative work, you will have to teach them how to handle other aspects of your practice. They will have to learn how to handle your monthly newsletter, market you for speaking engagements and research the best publishers for the coaching industry before they can actually start to work on getting these results for you.

While, some of those things may seem like standard requests of a VA’s time, it is wasting your money if you have to teach them how to assist you. If you can identify a VA that has those specific talents/experience then you do not have to pay for or wait on their learning curve to catch up to where you need them in order to work with you efficiently.

The Top Five Questions to ask a VA

1. Who is your target market?
   If a VA cannot answer this question, I would recommend moving on to the next candidate. If they do answer the question and you cannot relate your tasks to their target market, you may want to keep looking.
   
2. Of your target market, how many clients do you have?
   This will give you an idea of their experience in dealing with your specific market. If they indicate less than two in their target market, they may just be starting out in that market and might not have the experience that you require.
   
3. How many years experience do you have working within your target market?
   If they have two clients or less but have been working with them for six months or more, you might have a winner on your hands.
   
4. What are the two most common tasks that you do for your clients?
   This question will give you an idea of where their strengths lie. For example, (continuing on the coach angle) if they say, “The two most common tasks that I do for my clients are handling their newsletters and marketing their e-books.” You can determine if these are needs that you have and are looking to have a VA fulfill for you. These answers imply that they also handle their client’s web site and are familiar enough with their client’s practice to be able to market their services, which relates to revenues for their clients.
   
5. What can you do to help my business?
   This question can help to weed out any untruthful responses from any of the previous questions. If they are familiar with your target market, this question will not be a difficult question for the VA to answer. This should also open the door for the VA to tell you how they can either save and/or make you revenue.

You have just gotten the answers to all of your questions. Now what? Indicate your interest in retaining this particular VA or VA firm and snatch them up. If you do not, someone else will come along and see their value and take them right out of your pocket. The good news is, most VAs do not have a full practice. Every VA wants to fill their practice and they are looking for their perfect client. The question is, will it be you?

© 2005, Virtual Accuracy

About the Author
Dale Noles is the President of Virtual Accuracy, Assistance For Coaches and VA Training. His areas of expertise include complex database creation, marketing, website design and coaching VAs to success. For more information visit www.VirtualAccuracy or www.AssistanceForCoaches.

This article can be reprinted as long as it is kept intact, about the author is used in its entirety (with hyperlinks) and an email notification is sent to VA@VirtualAccuracy.com.

1. If you're having trouble getting someone to respond to your email, piggyback your question onto something they wrote.
   
   

   This works especially well if it's someone with a high-profile.
   
   Have you ever tried emailing someone new with a question, and not heard back? I suggest you try again, but write your email as a reply to something they wrote. It's human nature for people to look at a reply to something they emailed out before they reply to an email that looks like it's asking for something out of the blue.
   
   Doing this is equivalent to joining a conversation that's already in progress, as opposed to starting a brand new one.
   
   How do you reply to something a person wrote? Subscribe to their ezine.
   
   This is an especially good practice if you are building joint ventures online. If you think you've discovered someone who you'd like to partner or collaborate with, it makes sense to look at their website. While there, subscribe to their ezine so you can get to know them better. And then when you have a note to drop them, do so in response to one of their issues.
   
2. Be courteous. Don't automatically use your "Urgent" flag to mark your emails.
   
   

   Is your email really urgent? Really. If not, please don't succumb to the urge to mark it that way. People will notice if you abuse the privilege of asking for fast attention by misusing your "urgent" flag. Sad to say, I for one routinely ignore the "urgent" flag of a couple key people. I know they're marking themselves urgent because they think they're important, and that annoys me.
   
   So don't let that be you. Instead, consider judiciously using your "not urgent" flag. That's the blue arrow that points downwards, if you're working in Microsoft Outlook. When I receive an email marked with a "not urgent" flag - now this is giving things away - I've become predisposed to be extra gracious towards the person because they've been considerate of my time, and let me know I needn't rush to read their email.
   
3. Put your best foot forward.
   
   Do you have a good "friendly name" in place? If you don't know what this is, address an email to yourself and when it arrives, look to see what it says in the "from" column.
   
   In Microsoft Outlook, click on "Tools" then select "Accounts" and click on the "Properties" button for an existing email address. You'll then see the spot where you can edit your current "friendly name."
   
   It may well be the world's tiniest marketing space, but your friendly name is like your handshake. In the virtual world, it's the first thing that makes an impression on the reader and you know what they say about first impressions.
   
   I've even seen some enterprising marketers use that space to advertise a new product, "One More Day to Save $50" or "I Must Be Crazy." This is fine, but feels a little junk mail-ey, so use caution. Then again, you can also say "Your Name | It's My Birthday!" and have some fun with it.
   
   Once you start paying attention, you'll begin getting in the groove. That's what online business owners do when they start treating their email as though it was their musical instrument, not just a tool. That's because it is.

Question: How can a VA help me increase my selling opportunities or increase my business profits?
Dianne – Marketing Coach

Answer: The right VA will be able to provide services that help you increase your profits. An example: Let's say that you are writing an e-book. The right VA can not only design an attractive cover, but also prepare the e-book for sale on your website, set up the shopping cart to sell your e-book, attain ISBN numbers so that your book can be offered through Amazon, B&N, etc. In addition, your VA can put the "ad" for your e-book in all of your digital material (e-mails, newsletters, blog, etc.). While doing this, the right VA can continue to service the other areas of your business, typing documents, transcription, contact management, producing marketing materials, updating your web site, sending out your newsletter, etc.

To make it plainer and to see the overall cost benefit, fill out this little formula.

Part1. [$_____ (how much you charge per hour) X ____ (the number of hours you do all of this "back-end" business stuff per week) = $_____ (Total cost of YOU doing this work yourself)]

Part 2. [$_____ (how much your VA charges per hour) X ____ (your weekly "back-end" business hours) = $_____ (Total cost of the VA doing this work)]

Part 3. $ _____ Your total cost - $______ VA total cost = $______ Your actual savings.

You might say that you agree that it is a cost savings but still say that you are spending money for a VA that you would not have spent if you did it yourself. I would agree that you are spending MONEY instead of TIME. However, the time that a VA can save you allows you to service more clients or sell more houses or take a vacation...or how about go to bed at a decent hour... The time that they create for you can be worth much more, if you use that time - on purpose. (You can always make more money, you cannot make more time. However, A VA can help you "trick" the system.) :o)

Details:
We always receive great feedback from readers of The Accuracy Report. Many times readers ask questions about the virtual assistance industry, marketing techniques, publicity and more. Due to the shear volume of requests, we have decided to implement an “Ask the VAs” column. “Ask the VAs” will be in a question and answer format. To ask your question, please send an email to QandA@VirtualAccuracy.com.

Virtual Accuracy will only print your full name and company by request only.
No exceptions.