This process starts before you have even attended your consultation meeting or phone call with your new prospective VA client. It’s in the preparation, in fact, it starts with ‘you’ and your ‘mindset’.
In many a coaching/mentoring sessions we have given a VA, the actual challenge that has been raised has been in connection with a lack of confidence and a negative belief system about themselves.
Many ‘What ifs’ are mentioned.
‘What if they have spoken to other VAs that are better than myself?’, ‘What if they are not prepared to pay my fees?’, ‘What if they cannot see the point of using a VA?’, ‘What if I say the wrong thing and put them off?’, ‘What if I forget what I want to say?’. Sound familiar?
OK, so let’s start with the opposite:
- ‘What if the fact that they are meeting with me shows they’re interested because I made a good first impression (not to mention their time is valuable so they would not be taking time out to meet you otherwise)?’
- ‘What if they have spoken to other VAs and they have indentified that I could be a great fit for their business because they recognise I am unique?’
- ‘What if they will understand the huge value in using my services and how that will positively impact on their business because I would have articulated it so they understood?’
- ‘What if I put myself in a positive way and remember all that I want to say because, not only am I passionate about what I do I will have prepared what I want to say?’ and so on….now for each sentence remove ‘What if’ and this then becomes a list of powerful affirmations.
What you have then completed is the first step in changing your frame of mind.
When you love what you do and are confident in the value you know you can and will deliver to your clients, the clients will come. Avoid making the mistake many a new VA makes by creating similar statements on benefits to other VAs which has often been noticed on websites.
Think more about your uniqueness…
- What makes you different?
- What can you help your clients achieve?
- How can you help your clients achieve their vision?
- How can you help your clients achieve what is important to them?
When you can start to answer these points you are well on your way.
Next is to step into the mindset of the prospect.
Get into the mind of the person you are about to meet and imagine now for a moment what they may be thinking…
* I don’t know much about their VA service
* How will their service provide a solution to my challenges?
* Are they aware of my expectations that I have?
* There are results I expect to achieve by using their service
*How will it all work?
* What is this going to cost me and can I afford it?
Therefore, do ensure you have thought carefully about how you will choose to answer these. There is nothing more embarassing that being asked these questions and not knowing what to say. It is very obvious when someone shows they have not prepared for a meeting and you only have one chance to win a client over in this instance.
People want to feel understood, they want to hear that in your reponses. They are not expecting the first question that you ask them to be ‘So, how can I help you?’, unless of course they know. They want you to take the lead.
How do we know this? Well simply, we have researched this and what makes a VA attractive is that they show that they understand the prospective client and this makes them stand out a mile from other VAs.
We have a very sound model which includes very effective scripts detailing how to answer these questions that we provide our delegates and boy have they been useful!