Are you hitting a brick wall in your Virtual Assistant business and you’re not sure why? It’s possible that there are very good reasons your ideal client isn’t banging down your door trying to bring you aboard their team. Sometimes those reasons have nothing to do with you – but more often than not – I find that there are things you can do (and not do!) that can drastically increase your chances of getting and keeping the attention of your ideal client.
The following are just four of many possible reasons that your ideal client isn’t hiring you. It’s a great place to start when you need to take a step back and evaluate why you aren’t converting prospects into clients. Here we go!
1. You’re selling your service – and not the problem that you solve.
People don’t care about what you do unless they understand how it can help them. How will your service save them money? How will it save them time? Will it affect their bottom line in a positive way? If you are just selling your service as a product, and not marketing the result it can produce – you are missing an opportunity to connect with your ideal client. Paint a picture of what working with you will look like for your potential client and their business.
For example: Instead of: “I offer email management”, try “Increase your conversion rate and customer service ratings by taking advantage of my email marketing services.”
2. The services that you are offering aren’t what your ideal client needs
If your service menu doesn’t speak to your ideal client’s pain points, you’ve lost before you’ve begun. When you are just starting out, you might not have a high-value offering – and that’s ok. But there’s a good chance that your ideal client is looking for a specific skill-set. Maybe they need someone who will run facebook ads, social media management or bookkeeping. Whatever it is, figure out what they need. Pay attention to what they want by conducting market research.
If you find that they are looking for something you don’t offer – I have some good news: Allow me to steal a phrase from the legendary Marie Forleo – “Everything is figureoutable”. If you don’t know how to perform a specific task that your ideal client needs, you can likely teach yourself. The amount of knowledge, trainings and self-help materials that are available online is mindblowing. Check out HubSpot and Udemy for some top-notch (some are free!) trainings on a multitude of services that VA’s can offer.
3. You’re not practicing what you preach.
I might step on some toes with this one, but I’m going to be blunt. Potential clients are checking you out online before they reach out to you. They are looking at your website, your social channels and checking to see if you have the social proof that you can do what you say you do. Specifically, if you are offering any type of social media management and strategy – they will be checking out all of your social channels to see if they like what they see. If your feed is a mess or your branding is non-existent or inconsistent, you are asking people to pay you for a service you haven’t demonstrated you understand or can deliver.
Some services don’t have social proof (and that’s where quality reviews and recommendations come into play!), but you’d better believe that potential clients are judging you based on how you show up online. If you’ve ever needed to hire someone to complete a job for you – what do you do? If you’re anything like me, you go online, read reviews, check out their facebook page, and talk to friends who might have hired the same person. You then make a judgment call on how likely you are to be happy with their service based on what you can see, and what you have heard. Are you going to lose a client before you’ve even had a chance to prove your worth?
4. People don’t trust you.
This is a very simple principle and yet many VA’s are missing the mark on this one. Trust starts with connection. And it’s almost impossible to create real, tangible connections with prospective clients if you are hiding behind your screen. People hire other people. They don’t hire you because you have an amazing logo or awesome graphics. Give your ideal clients a real, live person to connect with by showing your face and your personality online. There is nothing wrong with graphics or a well-placed quote – but don’t miss an opportunity to make critical connections because you are afraid to show your face.
Every interaction, every email, every comment, and every post is a chance to demonstrate your skill and personality in a way that tells people that they can trust you with their business. For example, one of my coaching clients recently landed a discovery call because “how you reached out to me is how I’d like you to reach out to my clients”. This is a classic case of “show, don’t tell”. She demonstrated her trustworthiness and skill simply by showing up in a professional, approachable, and authentic way.
A Magic Formula?
Attracting your ideal client and then finding a way to convert them into paying customers isn’t as easy as 1-2-3. There is no magic formula. There isn’t just one thing you can learn, apply and hit the ground running with guaranteed success. Every new skill, and every new piece of information – including the four tips I’ve shared here today – are simply building blocks. A fully functional business only materializes when you bring all those blocks together to build a business with a foundation that can withstand the test of time.
