Communicate but don’t overshare. You destroy the boundaries and break your own rules about your time when you overshare what you’re doing. No one needs to know when you have a doctor’s appointment. It’s no one’s business if you’re sitting in a café reading a book or at a yoga class in the middle of the day. You’re not exchanging your time for money. You’re exchanging services for money. If you are professional, simply provide a quality service in a timely manner and that’s all your clients need to know. The only exception is when it’s time to vacation. Notify your clients well in advance and make sure things are taken care of.
Honesty may be the best policy, but timing is your best friend. My daughter has impeccable timing. She knows where I’m at mentally before she asks for money, and when she asks for it, I’m almost excited to transfer it. My son, on the other hand, is not always so fortunate, and instead of making a quick transfer, I find myself giving a lengthy lecture. There are times you will be candid and honest with your client when something didn’t go well. But anytime is not the right time. Choose a time when your client will be the most receptive to your conversation.
How you share is equally important. If you incorrectly scheduled an email sequence, you don’t have time to text or email the client and say something vague like, “We have an issue” or “There was an error in that last email.” Panic, anger, or frustration set in quickly, and you’d better hope they aren’t in a situation where they can’t contact you for several hours. That’s a pot rising to a rolling boil.
What do you do? Send a message with a brief explanation of what happened. State that you are aware, and you are fixing it. Make yourself available if the client wants to speak now or later. Don’t send an email and then say you’re not available because you’re taking your kids to practice. What time do you think it is for your client?
Managing your client relationship is also about managing your client time line. A client’s launch is your launch. If you are not available during the launch, it’s a mistake. At the very least, your client should know well in advance that you are unavailable, and you should have created an SOP (standard operating procedures) guide to be ready to handle anything they need to on the backend in your absence.
When it comes to managing your first big time client, you will have jitters. You may question yourself and your abilities. You know you can do it, and the client does too. But right now you keep questioning yourself. This is leveling up again. Fear and excitement come with the territory. Remind yourself why the client hired you. This is important because often when VAs get their first big client or level up to a new clientele base, they allow the clients to set the expectations and the way they work. Big mistake.
Allowing the client to run the order and workflow is the tail wagging the dog. There is a lot clients run. They can’t also run the very thing they hired you to do. You can’t own work, systems, and procedures you didn’t create. And you know what will happen if it all goes bad—they’ll blame you. The argument of “I was following instructions” will mean little. If you knew they were doing it wrong and you didn’t say anything, that is even worse. They just paid you to create a mess of their business.
Which brings up another question. Who pays for the mistakes? You do. If a restaurant gets your order wrong, if the drycleaner loses your dress, if the valet wrecks your car, you wouldn’t expect to pay for any of those things. Why would your client pay extra to fix what you broke? If it’s something that naturally might need to be revised, revision pricing should have been included in the original pricing. Nickel and diming is for the other guys. We provide an excellent service, put in the hours, and are compensated appropriately. Besides, what could you even buy for a nickel?
Educating Your Clients Effectively
Educating clients can be tricky. How much information do you give? How much do you charge? How long should you spend sharing information with them? How do you present it to them? These are common questions virtual assistants ask in online forums.
Often we know what our clients don’t. That’s why they hire us. However, the key element here is that we are speaking about clients. Not prospective clients. Not people we’ve had consultations with. Clients are the business owners who have already paid us, and yet they still have questions that need to be answered. Why does your client still have so many questions? Trust.
In Matthew Harrington’s Harvard Business Review article “Survey: People’s Trust Has Declined in Business, Media, Government, and NGOs,” he sheds much-needed light on what is happening in our society. As your clients’ VA, you can’t assume giving you money means they trust you. Paying people and companies is part of life. Trust is earned. It is your job to build it, earn it, and hold on to it.
Creating trust with your clients isn’t just for yourself. It’s also for the benefit of virtual assistants everywhere. Do you know why clients have so little trust? Often it’s because a VA before you did not deliver how she said she would and could. The business owner is now taking a leap of faith again to hire you. You not only have to prove your worth, you also have to make them forget the other VA.
The most common issue I come across is the virtual assistant a client first hired wasn’t a good fit, which is why they hire me to find the right VA. I don’t hear questions; I hear the problems. From there, I have to dig deeper to understand what they really mean. What are your clients asking you? Now figure out what they really mean. Most importantly, remove your feelings and put yourself in their shoes.
How much information do you give? Whatever it takes to put them at ease. I will give you a tip—it’s much less than you think. Don’t send a link. Don’t redirect them to your website. Don’t just send them a contract. Not only is it rude, but it doesn’t address what they’re really asking because they don’t know until you ask. So ask:
“What concerns you?”
“How can I put your mind at ease?”
“In a perfect world, what would the outcome be?”
“What are you afraid is going to happen?”
Now you’re ready to tackle the real issue. Your responses should first address the clients’ concerns and then explain your overall action, what you have in place to meet their needs.
How much do you charge? Nothing. This question actually frustrates me. You can’t charge for a phone call, an online chat, an email, or a text. Nothing. You can’t charge because 1) the client is already paying you, 2) this was your responsibility to take care of during the consultation, and 3) it would be very unprofessional. We’re not lawyers or psychiatrists or any other profession known to charge clients for speaking to them. Can you imagine if your doctor gave you a prescription and then charged you extra to explain how it will help you?
How long do you spend sharing information with them? You never stop sharing. You don’t have the luxury to work on an island (no matter how remote you are) and then check in when you feel like it. The client is paying you for your work. Determine your communication strategy, know what they what to know, determine how often they want to know it, and then deliver on it. Sharing only takes a long time and becomes a burden when what you’re sharing isn’t what the client was asking for.
How do you present it to them? In their preferred format. Anything less and your message will not get through. Again, this goes back to determining the best communication strategy.
If you can’t willingly and happily work with a client in this manner, you are not working with your ideal client. Educating your clients is an ongoing process, even after trust is established. It’s natural for your clients to ask why. It’s a smart business person who asks questions and wants to know the ins and outs of their business. The right way to educate your clients is to build trust. Be sure you’re earning trust while you work for them.
Should You Focus on Pleasing People or Serving People?
Managing the client isn’t pleasing the client. People-pleasing is a slippery slope. The idea is fantastic. Who doesn’t want t
o please people? If you’re an assistant of any kind, it seems like an automatic and necessary part of your job. When people aren’t happy, it’s your job to fix it, right? Here’s when you usually hop on the downward slope.
You aren’t in control of anyone’s happiness. There are definite times when you are a contributor, but you can’t make someone else happy. In the same manner, no one is responsible for pleasing you and making sure you are always happy. However, you can and should serve your clients. To serve someone isn’t always to make them happy.
Serving people is much more finite and takes emotions out of the equation. I consider myself a pretty emotional person. One who cries at commercials, sunrises, sunsets, and art. A person who will also laugh until I’m in tears, even at myself. However, having strong emotions in business isn’t always positive or logical. It is not uncommon for a person to have strong emotions and not know why. Feelings and emotions change. Facts don’t.
When it’s my time to serve my client, the goal isn’t for the client to reach an emotional high and be pleased. Of course, I want to provide an experience that surpasses the goal, but I’m not in charge of the goal. The client is. Nor can I reach the goal without first providing excellent service. My goal first and foremost must be to serve.
How you serve is as important as the service you provide. They go hand in hand. You have to start at the end and work your way to the beginning. This will let you know what your final work will look like and provide the route to accomplish it in a way so your client feels served.
For instance, if you are working on a project and know your deadline as well as what the end result will look like, the client may or may not be served if she doesn’t hear from you in the interim. It doesn’t matter if you achieved exactly what the client wanted. If she doesn’t feel served you can trust she won’t be pleased. You could very well please the client and not serve her a positive end result. A common complaint is a virtual assistant who is very sweet and pleasant, the client likes her, but the service is not good. The service includes your work and how you go about delivering it.
Here’s how to set up a service plan, making service the first priority and setting yourself up to be in a position to please the client:
Begin at the end.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again—start with expectations. However, don’t just find out what the client’s expectations are. Set your own. If you only agree and don’t offer any feedback, you are focused on pleasing people not serving them. It’s your job to help your clients set realistic expectations or offer advice on a better practice. Let them decide the final outcome based on your expert feedback. Few things are worse than when the person you hired to help you remains silent when he or she has the ability to help make things better.
Know and share your mapped-out route.
Communication strategy is critical. Creating your checkpoints in the beginning gives everyone an overview of how the working relationship will function. If you’ll need check-ins and feedback at certain intervals or proofs to be approved, these should be discussed in the beginning. Does the client know what happens if they don’t respond in a timely manner? Will this move them back in your queue? Do you have rush job fees? It’s all fair and reasonable if the client knows this up front. Clients might prefer a specific day to receive emails or may have their own firm deadlines, such as before a vacation or a conference. A good communication strategy means you will collect all of this information directly from your clients.
If you were driving across country and learned there isn’t another rest area for 100 miles, you would most certainly share this with your passengers. The same is true for your clients. In these circumstances, surprises don’t delight clients.
Be prepared to deliver.
The saddest thing you can do is lose the client in delivery. It’s sad because everything you’ve done up until this point is absolutely worthless now. Every consult, every email, every call is forgotten if you deliver the final piece incorrectly. How will you serve the final product?
You don’t think it’s important? You think your work will speak for itself? You’re wrong. Imagine dining out at a fancy restaurant. You’ve waited for this night for weeks. You might have even bought a new outfit. The hostess was kind and made sure you got the table you wanted. Upon arrival, you were warmly greeted and promptly seated at the table. The restaurant has the right lighting and music. The view is extraordinary. Then it all goes downhill.
The server spills water on you while carelessly pouring it into your glass. Another server throws some bread on the table. The special entrées are half-heartedly rattled off, and when the sommelier arrives at your table, he treats you like an idiot for not knowing as much about wine as he does.
Wine is poured without offering for you to taste it, since you don’t have extensive wine knowledge. When the meal is served, the plates are slammed down and the food looks like it was dumped on the plate. Did the flavor of the bread, wine, or food actually change due to the way it was served? No. Does it leave a bad taste in your mouth? Absolutely. It’s all about delivery.
You say it’s all about the money, and small projects and tasks don’t matter? Think back to the last time you ordered a pizza. When you opened the box, was the cheese on the pizza or on the inside top of the box? Delivery matters.
Don’t shy away from difficult conversations.
You could follow all these steps and serve the client. What do you do if the client isn’t pleased? You must have a difficult conversation. And do it on the phone, on a video chat, or in person. Take it offline. Back and forth emails or texts will only make a difficult conversation worse.
Here’s where you need to uncover the root of the problem and ask questions. Do not ask emotional questions, such as “What aren’t you happy with?” or “How can I please you?” Emotional questions invite emotional responses. Instead ask questions like,
“What didn’t meet your expectations?”
“When you envisioned the final product, what was missing from the actual result?”
“How can I satisfy your expectations?”
If you have not read Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen, you must. No matter how long you’ve been in business or how many satisfied clients you have, there will come a day when you need to have a difficult conversation. No other book will prepare you like this one.
You won’t ever win the people-pleasing game. It’s impossible to be all things to all clients. Instead, focus on serving people. Only then can you please them as a byproduct. To be served is what people really want, even if they don’t know it. If they didn’t want to be served, they wouldn’t have hired you in the first place.
VAs don’t do damage control. We find the win-win situation. Damage control is for the other guys. We find a way to make the client feel like a winner not a triaged victim. If you’re doing damage control, there better have been a natural disaster.
What Type of Experience Do Your Clients Want?
I love to experience things. I seek out new experiences on a regular basis. Other times I go back to have the same experience as I did before. It’s a rare company that can duplicate or exceed an experience. You know what I’m talking about—one day your cup of coffee is perfect, but the next day it’s too sweet or too bitter.
While I traveled the world, I made it a point to have a true experience in each country. In several countries, the experience I couldn’t wait to take part in was a local massage. I had my best experiences in Bogota, Belgrade, and Hanoi. While each experience was genuinely unique, they all incorporated the same basic principles. Some of these principles I already used with my own clients, but for others I was going to figure out a way to include them in the future.
The first step is expectation. Sound familiar? I wasn’t left wondering where to go, what to do, or what was going to happen next. I was told all of the details, and I was able to anticipate what was coming. Before ea
ch massage, I was either signaled by a sound or told by the masseuse we were about to begin. This seemingly small act made a big difference. Often it was the way the massage ended as well. I wasn’t wondering if the time was up or what was going to happen next.
The beginning of your client working relationship should be solid, and the client should not be surprised at what is about to take place. They should expect a contract, an invoice, and an onboarding process, as well as a timeline.
What experience do your clients want? Don’t think about what you’re providing, but what do they want? Don’t guess, ask. It is important to know if you are giving them what they want. Or maybe you’re actually giving them more than they want. Far too often we do what we like and assume the client is just as pleased. Don’t make those kinds of assumptions. Surprise and delight are far too overrated.
First off, if you are surprising your clients because you are giving them such quality service, somewhere along the way you went wrong. You didn’t come off very well in the consultation or the client was leery and now you’ve put them at ease (think about all the potential clients you didn’t win over) or your prices are so low they’ve gotten the deal of the century. Your services and pricing should be the expectation.
Delighting someone is good, but it doesn’t last. You can only keep doing this for so long before it wears off and you have to keep outdoing yourself. Instead, it is better to consistently meet and exceed expectations and goals, then celebrate your victories.
Become A Successful Virtual Assistant Page 13