The Gritty Virtual Assistant Blog

A member of my Virtual Assistant community asked a great question today that I thought I would share here as it’s excellent food for thought. This member has been asked by clients on occasion if she would come to their offices and teach them how to do a thing (the “thing” itself doesn’t matter) so they can do it or manage it themselves. She basically wanted to know if this was a good opportunity or something to avoid, and if she did offer it, should the rate be significantly higher. Here’s my advice to her and you:

One reason doing something like that should be offered at a substantially higher fee is because of the on-site, personal one-on-one training and attention. Anytime you have to leave your office, it puts stress and strain on your normal systems and operations, especially if that’s not the thing you are normally in business to do. That time and energy away creates a significant expense for the business and takes away from other work and clients–time-wise, availability-wise, space-wise, energy-wise and money-wise. So yes, I would definitely offer that at a considerable premium fee to make it worth your while. Doing so also creates an additional layer to your top-tier offerings and signifies to clients that this is a special, premium service.

Whenever you get into work that takes you out of the office, it creates significant impact on your profit margins and to the time you have left available to you and your other clients. As solopreneurs, this is a particularly important consideration for Virtual Assistants/Administrative Support Consultants. What you might want to consider offering instead (or at least additionally) are online training classes where you can stay in your own office (thus reducing the expense to produce and conduct them) and teach several clients all at once. That kind of offering is going to be much more profitable for you all the way around.

I think this is a great opportunity for any Virtual Assistant as it is client-focused. This is exactly the kind of thing that I’m always touting to Virtual Assistants–there are so many more avenues for creating additional revenue streams and passive income from clients (not other VAs) that they just aren’t exploring. This is a perfect example of the kind of supplemental, complementary stand-alone offering that Virtual Assistants could be marketing to clients and prospects separately from their retained monthly administrative support.

Qualifier: That is, IF it’s something you want to be doing/offering. It’s perfectly okay to tell clients, “that’s not what I’m in business to do.”