At IAC Professionals, we have a 90 day training period, where our Virtual Assistants are put through a boot camp, for lack of a better term. During those 90 days, they don’t work with clients, rather they work on small tasks that are assigned to them, and part of a larger project, while supervised by a project manager. This time period gives us a chance to see (and possibly work on) their professionalism, response time and abilities. Our project managers are patient individuals, and spend time making sure that the client is happy with the end result. This 90 days allows us to assure that if they were to work directly with a client, they would give the professionalism, efficient response and work quality that our clients demand.
In order to be able to have this period, we need a steady flow of project related work, so when the volume is low or when we have an exceptionally large amount of candidates in the training period, we hop on over to Elance and see if there are any projects that would be ideal for us.
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As most of you know, I run a virtual assistance enterprise. I currently have a staff of 45 and a client list of over 600 with at least 20% clients active at any given time. Our clients range from one person freelancers working out of their homes (like UberGeekGirl) to multi million dollar organizations (like Clean Energy Fuels). The key to our success is professionalism, structure, continuitity, quality and maintaining a customer satisfaction centric organization focusing on superior service.
We all have problems, get sick, go on vacation, have spats etc., however, clients don’t want to hear it. Even when they ask ‘So How are you doing?’, they want to hear as it relates to their work or ‘fine’, they don’t want you to start telling them about how your husband never helps out or your wife never cooks or you can’t pay your bills. Rule of thumb is – if your life is disorganized or chaotic, your work may be. Click here to read more »
In my work as a consultant who helps turn ideas into products and business services, I am often approached by a potential client who tells me: “I have a great business idea”…and then they proceed to tell me what it is.
Although I maintain an air of professionalism and would never word it quite this way, the truth is, they don’t usually have a good business idea. They might have a good idea. And it might be sellable. But they don’t really have anything until they’ve made their very first sale. Click here to read more »
