clients Archives - Page 3 of 5 - Online Business Love

20 ideas that your Virtual Assistant can do for you

There are so many ideas your Virtual Assistant can do for you..share your ideas in the comment area below. Here are some from me….

Research travel, hotel and meeting facilities.
Update website content.
Article and press release submissions.
Update and manage your calendar.
Transcribe 15 minutes of audio
Basic research for a specific project.
Type handwritten notes from a seminar.
Tweet out some thoughts and ideas
Re-purpose your content
Schedule out all of your social media posts
Create images for your content
Call 15-20 of your leads
Mail merge 50-100 letters including stuffing and mailing (yes in snail mail)
Start creating your prospect list of 30 contacts
Create one of your Email campaigns.
Enter Data of about 100 contacts in an Excel spreadsheet.
Create a letter to send to a client or prospect.
Edit and proof a 5-7 page report.
Setup the process for an Ezine or newsletter
Balance a monthly bank statement

I bet you could keep on making the list…Care to Share?

Nurture Marketing

By Annette Leave a Comment

Relationship building skills are valuable as business owner. And as you know, It takes time to pay attention to your existing clients. Nurturing your clients is much like nurturing your plants. Nature has a way of nurturing plants that are even in rocks. I call this Customer Love.

Did you know . . .
• repeat clients spend 33% more than new clients?
• referrals among repeat clients are 107% greater than non-clients?
• it costs six times more to sell something to a prospect than to sell that same service or product to an existing client?

I think it is interesting to note that spending the bulk of your money in nurturing and developing our existing relationships with people you probably have contact with daily, weekly or monthly, is really important.

Clients want to know that we care about them and their business. Providing Nurture Marketing to them is crucial! Long-term client loyalty is an on-going effort no matter what the size of your business or yours. Putting this into play could very well increase your sales by 50% without increasing your marketing budget. Now that can really be a win-win!

My favorite way is to use Send Out Cards and drop them a thank you loyalty card. Or to do a 6 card campaign (much like an email campaign but with real cards), to keep in touch, and letting them know about your referral program.

Remember with Send Out Cards… You just pick out your card online from our zillion and one card catalog, personalize it, pay for postage and a gift if you like, and hit Send. Send out Cards does all the rest….they print it, stuff it, stamp it, mails it with your handwriting if you chose) all for about $3 a card. Awesome right?

What are you currently doing to nurture your clients and customers and showing customer love?

5 Steps to Strengthen Your Business

By Annette Leave a Comment

“5 Steps to Strengthen Your Business Foundation and Create More Profits”

Excerpts By Sydni Craig-Hart

It’s important to take stock of your business periodically and see how your foundation is holding up and what improvements you need to make. And if you’re just starting out, you’ll do yourself a HUGE favor by setting up a strong business foundation from day one.

The following are my top five tips for assessing your business and strengthening your foundation:

Review and revise your business plan – Many times business owners create a business plan when they are first starting out, get excited about it, but then file it away and never look at it again. Sometimes new entrepreneurs don’t even take the time to develop a simple business plan. This is a BIG mistake! Going through the steps to create a business plan is a terrific way to get all of your ideas down on paper and to create a roadmap to follow to grow your business. It’s easy to think one can keep all of their ideas, goals and strategies locked safely in their memory, but you know you absolutely can’t remember all of the details right? So schedule time on your calendar NOW to review and revise your business plan. Think about all that you’ve accomplished thus far in the year and map out your goals for the rest of the year and then how you’ll achieve them.
Take stock of your financial situation – For some this can be the least “exciting” part of running a business – having to deal with all of the “number stuff.” But, most of us start our companies to make a profit and support our families – not to unintentionally be running a non-profit organization where we work for free. If you are not already doing so, ask your accountant or bookkeeper to start running monthly reports of your expenses and income so you can see how profitable you REALLY are. You may be surprised to find out which of your services are actually most profitable and then start focusing more attention on those. Also, you’ll see clearly how your expenses are affecting your bottom line and what adjustments need to be made.
Review your business standards to see if they are still working for you – One of the things my coach helped me to do when I was first starting out was to create a set of standards for my business. This included the hours I would work, my fee structure, how I would handle different clients, different situations, illness/vacation, etc. – basically ALL of the details of how I would run my business. I highly recommend that you take the time to outline your standards as well. It’s your business, so the way you work and operate your business should be reflective of and work for you. After doing this you’ll be clear about your boundaries and can then easily (and tactfully) share them with your clients to ensure that you are supported and protected to do your best work.
Fine tune your marketing systems – Some have a bad habit of only marketing their business when they need a new client. That is a big no-no! As a business owner, you should only be spending your time on two things – 1) serving your clients and 2) marketing your business. You should be regularly attending networking events where your ideal clients hang out, following up on leads, engaging in social media and pursuing other effective marketing strategies. Marketing your business will be a lot easier (and much more effective) if you consistently and comfortable share what you have to offer instead of operating from panic mode because you need a new client.
Start implementing systems in your business – You likely do some of the same tasks over and over again in serving your clients. At the very least, each week/month you’re doing bookkeeping, marketing, reporting to your clients on project progress, etc. As such you should be developing systems for every aspect of your business. A system is simply a list of guidelines or instructions about how to handle a particular task or project. It’s a way for you to implement quality control into your practice so that you consistently deliver high quality results for yourself and your clients. It’s a way to save time, because you won’t have to think about or try and remember how to handle a particular project. And it’s a way to make more money. “How so?”, you may ask. Because you can easily delegate certain tasks to someone else, freeing up your time and mental energy to pursue your high-payoff activities. The more you systematize your business the more organized and profitable you will be. So, start today in outlining the steps you take to operate your business and serve your clients. Compile the instructions into one central document or binder and create your own operations manual. As you continue to grow you’ll have all of the information you need to run your business right at your fingertips.

Sydni Craig-Hart, The VA Success Coach™, is Founder of Executive Assistant to Virtual Assistant!, a company dedicated to providing Administrative Professionals with the support, tools and resources they need to create a highly successful, profitable Virtual Assistant business. To read more tips and receive her free report and newsletter… Visit http://www.eatova.com