It’s a classic love story – Boy meets girl. Boy likes girl. Boy pursues girl. Boy courts girl – dating is so exciting, they have a whirlwind romance – flowers, dinners, day trips, picnics. Love blossoms and so does the relationship. Then marriage and the honeymoon – and it all stops! 🙂
It shouldn’t of course but sometimes with the pressures of life couples do stop “courting”. No, this is not a relationship counselling session but it has a lot to do with the sales cycle.
You see the excitement of pursue and “courting” a new client is fun. As you develop that connection and start working for them, and you are able to help them, a mutual feel good connection happens. After some time though, when the honeymoon is over – the shine can start to wear off – and the relationship starts to go cold.
Over the past few weeks we’ve talked a lot about how to bring in new clients to your Virtual Assistant business. Bringing in new clients is one thing. But once they are in the door how can you retain them? How can you “keep the love alive”? How can you score those lucrative, long-term paying clients? Here are some tips that you can use in your Virtual Assistant Business plan to implement in your own business.
Keep your promises and do everything in your power to meet expected deadlines
Do this one step alone and it will put you in the top 20% of virtual assistant service providers. Yes, I agree the statement may be an obvious one! Your response maybe, “well of course!” BUT I’m telling you it’s that simple. Many virtual assistants I’ve worked with don’t see promises as a priority.
Delight and Surprise Your Clients
Continue to delight! Surprise your clients with outstanding service and value. Don’t just meet their expectations; surpass their expectations by taking initiative. You can also send your clients thank you notes, a gift of congratulations when things go well or just a surprise bottle of champagne on a special occasion.
Share your tools and Resources
What do you have in your knowledge bank or library of resources that will help your clients? As a real life example, I have found my clients love checklists. When I give them a simple checklist they can use themselves they absolutely love it. It adds value to the service I’m offering and it saves them a lot of time and energy. In addition to that it showcases my level of expertise. It’s a win-win all round!
Keep in regular contact
In the world of virtual teams keeping in contact with your clients on a regular basis is even more important. Remember to ask your clients about their life … you know, their weekend, family, special occasions etc. There are a number of online tools to help you keep in touch. Vary your medium to keep things interesting. Here are a few ideas … www.skype.com, ShowMyPC Meetings and Remote Support, phone calls, emails, SMS, Twitter, and Facebook.
Keep improving your knowledge
This takes investment on your part, but if you are bringing new skills or things to the table, your client will begin to see that you are forward thinking and won’t want to lose your resource of knowledge and innovation. Sometimes it takes research and getting to know a specific problem your client is having, but believe me it is well worth it. It will also give you new ideas for your Virtual Assistant services.
All the best in your endeavours to keep the romance alive with your existing Virtual Assistant clients!