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Sucess Mantra of a Virtual Assistant
By Admin | December 18, 2008 -->1,419 views
Virtual Assistants are self motivated individuals working as businesses associates from a remote location on a long term collaboration with clients.
Need for Virtual Assistants
The advent of Virtual assistants has made smaller businesses with global presence as the greatest beneficiary. Small business owners aquire the services of Virtual Assistants towards reducing costs and global expansion by telecommuting . Assistance is provided in areas of local awareness, negotiation, support, and communication. A VA’s suport range from simple clerical support to complex project management, primary research etc. As the market expands, the utilization of the virtual services is no longer limited to personal and administrative tasks. Virtual Service Provider (VSP) would be a more fitting term to address the VAs. Their services have advanced towards project management, web development, consultancy, research, writing, public relations, marketing, training etc. With telecommuting shrinking the geographical distance barrier, Virtual service is set to expand in leaps and bounds.
- Keep track of the service requirements and the skills expected from a service provider. Track the influx of requirements and outflux of services by watching out for advertisements along these lines appearing in criaglist postings and other freelancing sites.
- Establishing a professional relationship must be followed by proactive approach that expands one’s services in the current project .
- The most sought after providers are those who keep themselves abreast with the developments in their chosen field of expertise. It is a wise move to enroll and participate in relevant workshops.
- Clients scouting for Virtual Assistance tend to look at “VA - communities and work groups ” as a source to identify talent. Providers in such communities tend to have an advantage over other unlisted providers.
- Virtual Assistants must religiously follow the trends, news, & debates in the Virtual Services sector inorder to be in the forefront
Virtual Assistants have been approached for Secretarial ,Administration, Computing, Legal Services and other Miscellaneous services specific for the project at hand. Some common services are word processing, legal and business transcription, Internet research, e-mail handling, bulk mailings, Data ( information) processing, reminder services web development, design and maintenance, database management, desktop publishing, event planning, Accounting ( bookkeeping ), business consultations etc.
Virtual Assistants require additional skills to maintain a long term professional relationship. Additional skills include marketing skills, proactive customer support, setting up and implementing shopping cart for E-commerce portals, blog posting, setup of auto responders, creating e-zines and newsletters and mailing, teleclass registrations and followups, and creation of multimedia training or information brochures.
Tools that help virtual assistants
- Google Docs & Zoho Docs- A utility tool to Store and share documents on the web between multiple users, allowing restricted and / or complete access as chosen by the document owner. An on-screen chat window allows real-time discussion over the document across users over varied timezones.
- Google Reader – Effective RSS ( feed) aggregator for collecting information on the industry. A must have for a virtual Assistant who wishes to be in par with industry news. One place to view and respond to all the sites, without having to visit them individually.
- Zoho CRM – A customer relationship management tool to track the conversion of opportunity to sale. Another popular CRM solution is HighRise.
- Survey Monkey – A feedback facilitator tool used for analyzing customer responses using genric set of questions that is custom made for your business.
- DeskAway, BaseCamp & ACE Project – Web based Project management tool for tracking projects and ideas . For an Exhaustive Analysis of Project Management Tools on the web, view “Top 10 Project Management Tools“.
- Wordpress & Blogger – Two most popular free Blog hosting platforms that also allows to have custom url (Company Domain) for a reasonable fee.
- DocStoc.com - A portal to view, procure and share legal and business documents. The documents published at this portal is available for download and allows customisation to suit your personal and business needs. If you have a document template, worth sharing, this is the place to be. Another popular document sharing portal is Scribd
- Zamzar – A useful online tool to convert files from one format to another. This tool supports a large number of file formats. A handy tool when receiving a unknown file format unsupported by the applications in the desktop.
In addition to the tools listed above, email backup and data restoration plays a very important role in smooth and timely execution of everyday tasks.. For MSOutlook users, Microsoft Back-up Tool and Microsoft In-Box Repair Tool are highly recommended.
Topics: Being Organised, Being a Virtual Assistant, Resources, Working with VA |
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December 19th, 2008 at 4:11 am
Sure it is that virtual assistant are in need to the business marketing. For its great contribution and benefits into the internet marketing and company as well. Thank you for sharing your ideas and knowledge. Hope to hear from you soon.
June 19th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
I visited this blog first time and found it very interesting and informative. Thanks for sharing such information.
August 5th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
I would add HyperOffice to the list of tools for virtual assistants. That is because it is the collaboration tool endorsed and used by Virtual Assistance Chamber of Commerce.
June 8th, 2010 at 6:28 am
There is really a big advantage of having a virtual assistant. Well written post and thank you for sharing those practical steps! Keep it up and more power.
Richard