I had a business owner contact me through my consultation request form last week. She didn’t want a consultation, however. Instead, she gave me a laundry list of questions she wanted answered via email, indicating she "didn’t have time" to go through my telephone consultation process.
I had news for this client… If you don’t have time for my processes, I don’t have time for you as a client.
Of course, I didn’t put it quite like that… I’m actually not accepting new clients right now, but before referring her to my members at the Virtual Assistance Chamber of Commerce, I did explain to her the reasons and necessity for talking with Virtual Assistants in a consultation.
No good generally comes from allowing prospective clients to take shortcuts with your processes.
First, as a Virtual Assistant business owner, you have processes and systems in place for a reason: to help you find your right, ideal clients, and to operate your business in the most sustainable, profitable way possible. And that’s to their their benefit, as well as yours. It’s a model and standard that has quality and integrity at its core.
But even more importantly, it’s a bad precedent to set in the relationship. It tells the prosepctive client that your standards and processes are unimportant and to be disregarded. This instills disrespect, and clients who try to shortcut everything tend to be non-participants, and don’t do their equal part in the back-and-forth/give-and-take dynamic that is vital and necessary to your work together.
Clients need to do their homework and research; it is going to take time. Finding the right Virtual Assistant is an investment. They should be reading your website fully in order to determine if the next step is to talk with you.
Of course, your job is to make sure your website has lots of relevant, substantive information to help them make that decision.
But it’s all just gonna take what it’s gonna take. And that’s as it should be.
Save your time, energy and consideration only for those clients who show they’ve done the necessary legwork, are happy to go through your processes and who best demonstrate they are a fit. Deviate from that standard and you hammer nails in the coffin of your success.
Thanks for commenting. Yeah, the virtual assistant term is really completely idiotic to...
2 Comments
yes, that is true but a lot of them want one question one answer and no follow ups.
So you don’t focus on those folks. Don’t let them spin your wheel. Save your time and energy only for the right-fitting, best-fitting prospects.
This is why you want to have an intentional system for winding clients through your qualifying process. You are not going to be able to work with everyone. You will also necessarily have to guard your time and energy, and make sure it is expended only on those who are the best fit.
So you use your website to educate and inform clients about what you do and how you do it. If they “get it,” the next step is a call to action telling them how to have a consultation with you. The ones who aren’t going to be a fit are going to weed themselves out; your time and energy is then saved for those who “show up” as more of a fit, which means the prospects are far greater that they are going to more of your ideal client.
When you get good questions, save them up and post them on an FAQ page. That way, your website can continue to be an active “worker” in your business.