Many virtual professionals don’t realize all the details that need to be looked after in order to host a kicking virtual event.

But it’s easy to make yourself look polished and professional.

For instance, a common event setup has you interviewing someone else. Here are a few tips that you should be sure to use to make an interview event setup go smoothly, and to encourage a guest to do a reciprocal event with you (or even a repeat event)!

Get contact information – when you first get in contact with someone to plan an event, be sure to get their email address, mailing address and phone number. When you have any questions during your planning, production or promotion phase of the event, you will easily be able to get in touch with them.

Handle scheduling – before you start any planning, get your guest’s schedule information. If they will be travelling, away, or just busy during your planning or promotion phase, you will lose valuable time and it could delay your promotion of the event. Don’t forget to confirm their speaking date at the same time.

Gather all information at once – you will need a headshot, biography and (possibly) a topic description in order to get your registration page set up. You will need this information from your guest before you can do anything.

Put together promotional tools – build your registration page and your promotional materials, and be sure to get them to your guest with plenty of time prior to the event. Promotional calendars can fill up very quickly for many people so it’s important to be sure your event will get fit into the schedule as soon as possible!

Follow up – be sure that you continue to contact your guest prior to the event, to ensure that they are promoting and to be sure that they remember.

Provide script or questions – it is often a great gesture to send along a script of your interview, or a list of questions that you intend to ask someone on the call. It shows that you have planned your call well, and it also helps the guest feel at ease if they can somewhat plan their responses.

Plan for technical difficulties – be sure your guest has a landline or mobile phone number to contact their host if anything goes wrong before or during the event. Discuss what you will do if something goes wrong.

Bonus Tip: Thank them – be sure to be grateful to your guest for taking the time to attend your call. You can thank them by sending them a small gift (you have their mailing address after all!) or with a reciprocal call (where they interview you!)

Paying attention to these details as you are setting up your event really helps you put together a polished and professional event. You will have all the information you need to build your promotions, and you will be prepared for a smooth interview session, and you will be prepared if anything goes wrong.

So what are you waiting for? Plan your first (or next!) event now!

When you are getting started, it can feel like no one even notices you, and if you are just putting up a list of services that you provide that might even be the case.

That’s why it’s important to get specific about a few things and use those things to build a strategy to get clients to notice you.

1. Know who you can best support or serve. The services you provide are probably ‘in need’ in several industries, especially if you work in administration. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that you can help everyone. You need to really get clear on what you do best, what you are an expert at, and then figure out who you can help the most, and then you will ‘target’ that market to connect with and work with.  By being really specific about who your client is, you will be able to get in touch with them quickly and speak directly to them, and you will sign more clients in a shorter time frame than by trying to put your services out there to everyone on the Internet.

2. Know exactly what they need. By studying your target market and your ideal client, you also need to determine their needs. You need to know how their business runs, how they interact with their clients and the specific kind of support they need in their business. By getting to know their needs better, you can tailor what you do so that you are the perfect person to help them in their business. It’s not enough to be able to provide a long list of services; if you can’t explain to a prospective client how you know you can help them in their business, they probably won’t buy your services. Be clear and be confident and you will sign them.

3. Know the benefits of your services. One common mistake small business owners make when discussing their services with prospective clients, is to tell them the features of the services they provide (turnaround time, process by which you complete things, specifics of packages and rates). While features are important from your own perspective, it’s really not important to the client. What they want to know is how you are going to help them and their business.  So you need to know how each of your services will benefit them: ie, save them time, save them money, give them more time to work with clients, broaden their audience, etc.) This is a key area to present your expertise to your market as well, so really be sure to work on this when you are doing your marketing strategy.

Look carefully at these things to develop a successful marketing plan. Figure out who you can best support, research them so you know what they need, and determine what benefits you can provide them with. Then all you have to do is find them and connect with them. If you do your research and you speak directly to them, you will build up a loyal following of great clients before long!

It’s a terrific, easy-to-read book that takes you through the various components of how to sell effectively – by being you and by knowing what your customers want. That is some serious paraphrasing, but you get the point!

One of the chapters in particular spoke to me and I wanted to share it with you. It’s called Sell Yourself.

Harvey talks about the three toughest sells being Company, Product and Self. As a small business owner and a mentor, I know how difficult selling yourself can be.

Selling yourself can be one of the most difficult things to do, if you do not recognize your own value. If you can’t see and describe the value you provide to your clients, you will have a more difficult time finding new clients.

If you find yourself having endless conversations with prospects … and coming up without the sale more often than with the sale … your problem may be value-related.

Prospects can come up with every objection in the book, but the bottom line is that people spend money on things that they consider to be valuable.

Exercise: Try recording your sales conversations for the next month. Revisit them after you have finished. Note what you did right … and what you did wrong. Listen for missed cues or things that you can fix or tweak for your next call. Improving your skills on sales calls will definitely help you to see if you are missing opportunities to show your value to your prospects.

When you are working on your marketing, be sure to place big emphasis on your own value – what makes you the best choice to work with, your expertise – but always bring it back to the client … and how that expertise you provide will benefit them, and be of value to them. When you look at your marketing message from a value perspective, it’s much easier to sell yourself.

After all, how can your prospects recognize your value if you don’t?

I often open more than one tab or website at a time, and when I all of a sudden hear someone start talking to me, it definitely attracts my attention! I will always go and check out the talking page!

Many of my clients are coaches and so they use an audio service like Audio Acrobat all the time in their businesses. Whether they are recording coaching calls or conference calls, it’s a big part of the service they provide to their clients.

Of course, not all of my clients are coaches, so I thought it would be a good idea to check out what a service like Audio Acrobat could offer to other solopreneurs and small business owners. If I come across an interesting product or service, I try to introduce it to my clients if I think it might help them with their Internet marketing needs.

I was surprised to see what other things you can do with Audio Acrobat:

• record an audio by telephone, by computer microphone or by uploading a previously recorded file
• combine audio files so they play in sequence
• customize a webpage with audio notes for those you are sending audio to
• use guest lines to have guests record testimonials, comments or even events
• create podcasts
• record or upload video up to 256 MB in size

It’s such a simple system to use, and it’s very cost effective. For less than $20 a month, it’s a service that anyone can use to incorporate audio into their business. They have a terrific affiliate incentive too … you can put your affiliate commissions towards your monthly bill if you want to.

Go and check it out!  It’s an opportunity for you to bring some fresh ideas to your clients about how to repurpose their content and how to enhance their online presence with audio or video.  I know I’m going to!

From June 3 to 7, I was in Niagara Falls, Ontario with a number of other virtual assistants at the Forum on Virtual Assistance, or as we call it, FoVA.

The slogan for FoVA is ‘Meet, Learn and Grow’ and we sure did that (and more!).

It is a gathering where we meet others in same line of work (it can be isolating working from home all the time!), and where we learn (seminars and workshops) and where we grow from our experiences at the conference (whether they are work-related or personal experiences!).

Wesnesday, June 3, I made my way to Niagara Falls and got in quite late. I was lucky enough to locate a gang of VAs – some of whom I had met before, but some of whom I had not. They had finished dinner and were just hanging out relaxing after dinner, and luckily I was able to join them to unwind after a long day of driving. I also met my roommates that I would be staying with for the week (more on them in another post!). There is nothing like meeting people in person who you ‘know’ online. Great fun!

Thursday, June 4,  I had the very good fortune to be able to attend a workshop on blogging and social media by an industry great, Kathie Thomas. Kathie came all the way from Australia to speak at FoVA this year, and I was thrilled to meet her and to learn from her.

Thursday night was the official meet n greet for FoVA, and everyone else arrived for dinner and drinks. Somehow after our great dinner at the Marriott, we ended up at the Casino, where we had fun dancing to the band, and we even spotted a celebrity or two (check out Facebook photos for our much-discussed missed photo op!).

Well, it so happened that Friday, June 5 was my birthday, so when the clock struck 12 in the Casino that night, I received quite the celebration (with my friend Pat @cletch who was also born June 5). There aren’t many better places to celebrate your birthday than with a gang of crazy friends in Niagara Falls (but I digress!).

Friday brought more seminars, and I was happy to see my favourite FoVA 2008 speaker again, Mary Lou Ashton, who talked about how to set professional and personal foundations and how to eliminate tolerations. Friday lunch was a Lunch n Learn session about different personality types with Janet Barclay. Friday afternoon we learned all about Wordpress from Frances Palaschuk (one of my awesome roomies). Friday night the whole gang went for dinner with Alex and Julie from Solvate. Very full schedule, so Friday night was a welcome relaxing evening with plenty of laughs!

Saturday morning we had an amazing panel of professionals available for a panel discussion: representatives from various VA groups and associations around the world  (Yvonne Weld, Kristi Pavlik, MaryLou Ashton, Jeannine Clontz, Stacy Brice, Dawn Goldberg, Kathie Thomas, Sharon Williams, Pam Ivey .. have I missed anyone? If I got your link wrong, please let me know and I’ll edit it!).  We missed seeing Tawnya Sutherland and Elayne Whitfield on the panel, but it was amazing to have such a group of highly respected people all on the same panel!

Saturday afternoon we spent with Pam Ivey who discussed defining your niche, and creating passive streams of revenue within your niche.

In between we had loads of fun, but the sessions were extremely informative by all – (there were many more sessions available – the above list are the seminars I attended).

It’s truly professional development (amid the fun) for virtual assistants anywhere. I would highly recommend attending FoVA to any virtual assistant, whether you are starting out or have been in business for while.

There is nothing like getting together with colleagues and even mentors, to discuss the finer points of our industry. And there is definitely nothing like meeting the people that you are in contact with every day online, up close and in person!

I know for myself that I came home from this year’s conference with a renewed excitement for my business, some great networking opportunities, and some fantastic new friendships. I am looking forward to using all of my newly-acquired knowledge to forge ahead in my business for 2009.

Thanks to Barb Lang for all her hard work this year, pulling FoVA 2009 together. Thanks also to all of those who helped in any small (or large!) way, to make the conference such a memorable event for all of us.

I can’t wait for FoVA 2010 (wherever it is!) …

When I started my VA business, I was a hospitality industry specialist. I still offer some hospitality services on my website, and I get many questions about how I arrived at my selection of service offerings.

In my early 20s I went back to college to study catering management. I was fortunate enough to find work in a multi-unit restaurant chain, where there was plenty of opportunity for growth into management.

After opening a few restaurants with the company, I left to run my own consulting business, working with other restaurants and bars. The company became one of my biggest clients, and I continued to work with them for almost 8 years. I analyzed their controllable expenses, prepared their training materials and maintained their point of sales databases, all from the comfort of my own home office. In 2004, we parted ways and I began working with other local restaurants and bars again. 

As I was seeking work with new clients via the Internet, I came upon the VA industry. In researching the VA sites and groups, I realized that for the last eight years I had been a VA specializing in documentation and finance.

So I jumped at the chance to market myself as a VA, and I am glad I did! I expanded my target market and have been working with wonderful new clients in many industries.

I obtained my Internet Marketing VA certification through VAclassroom. Now I offer even more services, such as article marketing, email marketing, search engine marketing, affiliate marketing, blogging and social media marketing. I also continue to offer hospitality services where my clients require them (it’s in my blood after almost 20 years!). 

So there you have it!

My journey continues to present me with opportunities that I would never have dreamed of in 1993 when I went back to school at the age of 24.

So while I will always look back down the road I have travelled with a smile, I really can’t wait to see what’s up ahead!