Building Your Network of Fellow Virtual Assistants

I know you think you can and should do it all. I disagree. You’ve developed your niche market and your specialized skills. That’s great! Now your client asks you to do a task that you have no experience doing. Instead of taking on a task that you don’t know, why not enlist the assistant of a fellow virtual assistant?

I have a client that has a half dozen different virtual assistants working on her team. She recognizes that each one has specific skills and talents. Imagine you are a small business owner starting a retail business. Would you really hire one person to be your accountant, attorney, salesperson and business coach? No. You would hire individuals specializing in each area so that the work they each did was the best and made the best use of their time.

I encourage you to build a network of fellow virtual assistants and then freely refer business to each other. There’s plenty to go around. Instead of getting stuck and caught when you cannot accomplish a task you don’t have the skills for, your client will be impressed that you were able to find someone that specializes in that particular skill.

I have found that I love the general administrative tasks that involve lots of typing, data entry and ten-key. Several clients have had me compile spreadsheets of contacts to include names, addresses, phone numbers, emails, websites, and additional notes. Many find this type of work tedious and boring. So give me a call if you need someone to handle that type of work.

On the other hand, I have not had extensive experience with setting up shopping carts. Yet many solo professionals now need this type of work. If that’s your expertise, let me know so I have someone to refer those prospects to when they approach me for that type of work.

Working together, virtual assistants can grow their businesses. There is enough to go around!

Defining Your Niche Market

One of the biggest mistakes a virtual assistant can make is to try to market general administrative services to everyone. It’s vital to define your niche market – who is your ideal client? Once defined, you can then create your core marketing message aimed directly at your ideal client.

Newer virtual assistants often have a hard time defining their niche. They may feel that to get started making money, they need to offer general administrative assistance to any business owner. This, though, just causes them to get lost in the growing crowd of VAs.

With a clearly defined niche market, your prospects know you are the right person they need and they will be more comfortable contacting you than another VA who offers general admin with no clearly defined market.

So what market do you want to reach? What do you have a passion for? What are you doing that no one else is doing?