Everyone in business has a picture of what their ideal
client would look like. Virtual Assistants
are the same and one issue that comes up a lot amongst the VA”s I coach and
mentor is where to find “The Holy Grail Client.” I’d argue that the Holy Grail client doesn’t
exist, or rather it does, but you can’t recognise it from the picture you have in
your head of what you think he/she should look like.
Some Virtual Assistants specialise in particular “types” of
client and we all talk about our “Holy Grail Client” that is going to turn up
out of the blue and offer us heaps of fantastic exciting work and pay fabulous
rates for our talents. However, I wonder
how many of us are passing up outstanding opportunities with clients that at least
outwardly are perhaps a little less shiny than our Holy Grail ideal?
When starting a Virtual Assistant Business most budding VA’s
will take any job that comes their way until the business is up and running and
they can afford to be more selective about the clients they work with and the work
they take on. It’s usually about this
time, on examining their portfolio of clients, most VA’s discover some of their
clients have characteristics in common.
Either they all are authors/presenters/workshop clients, or they all
have a technical or scientific interest, or perhaps most of them are high net
worth entrepreneurs. A niche, if you
will, they are attracting. This is also
around the time most VA’s start creating the fantasy of The Holy Grail client
and what they would look like.
When the “filtering process” begins and the Virtual
Assistant becomes more secure in their business, they might start to weed out less
lucrative clients and begin directing their attention towards the quest for
more “Grail-like clients” that suit the niche they have created. This makes good common sense. However, a word of caution. Sometimes the Holy Grail is right under your
nose and you missed it.
Working with a Virtual Assistant is sometimes a scary
proposition for a client and sometimes they hold back on the more exciting,
interesting work till they feel confident their VA can handle it and also till
they get more confident in delegating responsibility to a VA. Like all relationships, sometimes the client/VA
one needs time to blossom. Make sure you are not discarding a client with
more potential than was immediately apparent.
Some of the best paid and most exciting work I have done as
a VA has come from clients that, at least initially, didn’t fit my Holy Grail
client ideal. It took time for them to
see my potential as an assistant and also for me to see their potential and realise
my ideal was right under my nose the whole time.
www.theexceptionalassistant.com.au
