How often do you go to a network event hoping and expecting to make a sale or meet someone who wants your services or products there and then?
What’s your main purpose for attending a network event?
Do you feel and see yourself as an expert networker, do you feel happy, relaxed and confident chatting to lots of people and what do you chat about?
Every time you attend a network event do you send a follow up email the next day to all those business cards you collected and find the rest of the people from the delegate list on the internet from their websites?
Does creating a simple, straight forward follow up email, coming up with something to say, stop you from contacting people afterwards?
I’m always amazed after attending events at the number of people who don’t do this…
What are the possible reasons why?
• People think they don’t have time
• It’s not really that important to do
• I don’t have anything to follow up with
• I don’t have any information to send them
I work with a lady, a professional in her field, a very intelligent and creative person but she has a problem with dyslexia.
What she does is phone me the day after every event she attends and basically tells me what she would like to say in her follow up email.
I then create an email from the information she’s told me about, so it reads as though it’s coming from her and send it back to her by email.
All she’s got to do is use it as a generic email and send it to each of the business card contacts she’s collected. Really simple and doesn’t take me long to create.
Just think if you got into a routine like this, how fast your database of contacts would grow…
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Is a Virtual Assistant a luxury in a Recession?
In a recession when the knee jerk reaction is to cut back on employment wages and look at more economical ways of getting jobs done, a manager has 2 choices:
• Do the work him/herself
• Look for someone freelance to subcontract the work to
Having a Virtual Assistant in a recession can fall both ways of the argument.
On the plus side, it definitely saves money on employment, all those costs associated with sick, holiday, NI, pension contributions etc. plus providing them with office space and equipment.
A VA (Virtual Assistant) on an hourly rate gives you much more control of how much you spend per week or month, which can quite easily fluctuate from week to week.
You get a definitive idea on how long a job takes and costs, especially for jobs like populating a spreadsheet of new contact details or phone calling to follow up emails and mail shots – remember time is money…
On the other side, as an established Virtual Administrator I have the choice to take on a new client or not. I can make a decision as to whether a potential client would be better doing their own admin work if it only involves 1 hour’s support per month and they show no great ambition to grow their business.
But from the businesses perspective, by using the skills of a VA, this will free up time for them to concentrate on other areas of their marketing, selling and growing business strategy.
Having a VA in a recession really does boil down to these 2 facts:
• Can you afford to pay someone on an hourly rate to look after your admin functions?
• And do you think by freeing up your time to concentrate on other areas of your business will benefit you in the long term?
A VA working for small businesses can:
• Look after your appointments
• Reply to your emails on your behalf
• Populate your ever growing contact spreadsheet with business cards
• Type up reports, quotes and help with form filling and grant applications
• Sort out your invoices and chase up late payments
• Create articles, press releases, write ups on your business
• Update your website with fresh content and pictures
• Make sure your website comes high up when people search on Google
This gives you a good list of jobs that would tie down a person who really needs to get out to meetings, appointments and network events.
• Do the work him/herself
• Look for someone freelance to subcontract the work to
Having a Virtual Assistant in a recession can fall both ways of the argument.
On the plus side, it definitely saves money on employment, all those costs associated with sick, holiday, NI, pension contributions etc. plus providing them with office space and equipment.
A VA (Virtual Assistant) on an hourly rate gives you much more control of how much you spend per week or month, which can quite easily fluctuate from week to week.
You get a definitive idea on how long a job takes and costs, especially for jobs like populating a spreadsheet of new contact details or phone calling to follow up emails and mail shots – remember time is money…
On the other side, as an established Virtual Administrator I have the choice to take on a new client or not. I can make a decision as to whether a potential client would be better doing their own admin work if it only involves 1 hour’s support per month and they show no great ambition to grow their business.
But from the businesses perspective, by using the skills of a VA, this will free up time for them to concentrate on other areas of their marketing, selling and growing business strategy.
Having a VA in a recession really does boil down to these 2 facts:
• Can you afford to pay someone on an hourly rate to look after your admin functions?
• And do you think by freeing up your time to concentrate on other areas of your business will benefit you in the long term?
A VA working for small businesses can:
• Look after your appointments
• Reply to your emails on your behalf
• Populate your ever growing contact spreadsheet with business cards
• Type up reports, quotes and help with form filling and grant applications
• Sort out your invoices and chase up late payments
• Create articles, press releases, write ups on your business
• Update your website with fresh content and pictures
• Make sure your website comes high up when people search on Google
This gives you a good list of jobs that would tie down a person who really needs to get out to meetings, appointments and network events.
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