Patience is a Virtue

August 5, 2008 · Filed Under Virtual Assistant Tips, Virtual Assistants · Comment 

As a business owner many of us struggle with the patience required to be a successful business owner …

  • We open our virtual doors and wonder where the clients are!
  • We send out marketing letters and wonder why the phone hasn’t started ringing
  • We ask for help and wonder why we haven’t received the work back immediately
  • We try a new marketing approach and wonder why it hasn’t yielded any results
  • We attend a networking event and wonder why no one requests our services immediately upon hearing our reply

It is hard some days to have the patience that is needed to let our efforts begin to work. It is like my good friend says “We plant the seeds and expect a flower overnight”!! I thought that maybe some of you could benefit from how patience has developed in my business and some of the lessons that I have learned along the way!!

When I opened my virtual doors I had a full client load within a month … at the time I was told that this is very unusual for a virtual assistant business!! Well as we all experience in business, I lost one of my clients and this client was a very large client on a 75 hour retainer per month. I lost the client not through any fault of my own, but because he sold his business and the new owner wanted someone on site full-time to answer the phones and provide a physical presence. So there I was left with the task of going and getting new clients … it took hard work, but now I have the best clients in the world and absolutely love the clients I do have … the advantage too is that I now have several smaller clients so that if one should happen to leave i won’t feel the huge crunch. I spoke with some other virtual assistants as I was building my business and learned that it is not unusual to take upwards of 3 years to obtain a solid client base!!

Here is the biggest thing I learned about marketing letters …. they need follow up. The latest client I just signed was from a marketing letter that I had sent out when I first started my business 2.5 years ago. That client told me that originally they had thrown my letter in the garbage, but when I telephoned to follow up and because I was so nice about it on the phone (I told them I understood they weren’t in a position to work with me at that time, but when (notice I didn’t use if) they grew, which I was confident they would, to remember me and contact me at that time. Because of this conversation they took my letter from the garbage and put it in a file. Their business did in fact grow because they were about to hire someone to help them on a part-time basis and then remembered me and all the advantages of working with a Virtual Assistant I had told them about!! There is no way I could have imagined that it would take 2.5 years for that marketing campaign to pay for itself.

The best way to market a Virtual Assistant business is through word of mouth and referrals. The thing to remember is that it can take time to establish a relationship with a person to the point they can know, like and trust you enough to tell others about you. I have been networking for over two years and the really good referrals are just now starting to come!! Don’t give up on your efforts … stick it out and I am sure you will reap the benefits.

I hope that some of these lessons I have learned along the way and some of my thoughts on why patience is important can offer some of you struggling in the beginning stages of your business to see it through. Having your own business can bring you the biggest satisfactions and rewards!!

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