How long can we expect virtual assistants to stick?

Many speakers, trainers, authors and consultants need to expand their business, but are not in a position to hire a full time employee. A viable solution is to contract a VA - Virtual Assistant. Many a business has flourished with the right VA. On the other hand, how do you know how long one will stay with your company. This question was addressed by Gayle Buske, president and CEO of Team Double-Click.

How long can we expect virtual assistants to stick?
by Gayle Buske

My answer is always the same: “it depends.” It depends on many things. But first we need to realign our thinking a little bit and better understand today’s workforce.

As a small or home-based business owner, are you basing your perception of how long a worker stays in a position on your own work history? Personally, when I take on a position I intend to stay with it - I don’t give up. I’ve enjoyed lengthy tenures at my places of employment throughout my career.

What we need to remember though is that everyone is not like us. Especially the current workforce. I mentioned in a previous article that the days of staying in your job for the rest of your life are long gone. As business owners, we tend to forget that and we are frustrated by it.

A recent study said that the average tenure in a job for Generation Y is 18 months. That’s realistically the max you can expect someone - anyone, bricks-and-mortar or virtual, to stick with a job. Let’s leave that thought to stew for a while and talk about the “that depends” I mentioned earlier.

Depends on what?
Things change in people’s lives - everyone’s lives. Mine and yours and your virtual assistant’s. Think back to the reasons you have changed jobs in the past. What things in your past have caused a need for job changes? Pregnancy, sudden depression, death in the family, shift in financial obligations, relocation, change of career goals, a decision to go back to college, ill parents, ill children, ill spouse? Of course, and there are many more. Your virtual assistant is a human being too and they’re also subject to all of these normal human occurrences.

Any one of these or many more reasons are cause for a virtual assistant to move on elsewhere or even stop working altogether.

Job likeability.
You’ve got to like your job. I hope we can all agree on that. If you don’t like what you’re doing you’re not going to do your best and you’re always going to be shopping for a better job or better opportunity. Virtual assistants, as with bricks-and-mortar assistants, are not immune. I’m not talking about being a virtual assistant in general - though that happens too - where a virtual assistant decides she can’t handle the isolation and hangs up her computer. I’m talking about all of the tasks a virtual assistant does on a daily basis. For one client she may answer phones, for another she may do data entry, and for yet another she may be asked to cold call. If she doesn’t like those duties she’s not going to like the job and will ask for reassignment or quit entirely.

Boss likeability.
For me, the only one I didn’t stick with for a good length of time was one where I was treated like a prisoner in a concentration camp, neck breathed down and so on. I left one day for lunch and never looked back. Have you ever had a boss you just couldn’t stand? How about one with whom you just couldn’t see eye-to-eye. Or maybe there was the one you always thought was creepy or shifty. Would you stick with a boss that gave you those feelings? Certainly not! Yet we expect our virtual assistants to do that and we can’t. With 6.6 billion people in the world every one of them is not going to like each and every one of us. And you’re not going to like every one of them either.

Determining your needs.
At Team Double-ClickSM, our job, as we see it is this: to help you determine your needs in a virtual assistant; to locate the best virtual assistant for you, our client, based on your personality needs as well as your skills needs; to locate problem virtual assistants and send them packing before they do damage to you; to nurture the relationship between you and your virtual assistant; alert you to potential problems with a virtual assistant; to stand by what we do and what we offer; and locate a new virtual assistant for you should things not work out. Now, sometimes the virtual assistants we contract don’t like this. This is when we become “Big Bad Team Double-ClickSM”. You see, we’re the good guys when we’re offering work to virtual assistants. However, when we have to take that work away or ask a virtual assistant for reimbursement for a client due to negligence in their actions, we’re no longer popular with that virtual assistant. This quite often causes a virtual assistant to quit. In order to protect you, our client, sometimes we have to tick people off to do it.

Theft. Yes, theft. Team Double-Click is a virtual staffing agency - we’re the middleman. We work hard to do the best by our clients and locate quality virtual assistants for them. And theft does happen - even from virtual assistants who’ve shown no signs of being anything but above board. If finances get tough, the first thing most people want to do is cut out the middleman. Why? Usually to make more money of course! While we do our best to prevent it from happening, it does from time to time happen that a virtual assistant will attempt to steal a client - to make more money. I’m sure you can see how this opens a whole can of worms here and can easily mess things up for other clients. My question to you: would you want to directly hire a person with that kind of track record? Could you really trust they wouldn’t try to steal something from you later on down the road? I wouldn’t.

A virtual assistant (let’s call her Jane) recently successfully stole a client (let’s call him Dick) from Team Double-Click. In this instance, rather than enter into a lengthy legal battle with Dick and Jane, we let it go. We of course discussed with Dick the potential for Jane the Thief to repeat her history again in the future. Three months later Dick came back and said “Gayle, Jane just stole from me - she embezzled my funds in fact.” While I felt badly for Dick we predicted that this could happen which is why we’d warned him. Dick chose not to listen to our years of experience and the information we had available.

Popularity.
Most virtual assistants are contracted - not employed. As with most contractors (think home builders, highway builders, and other competitive bidders) we too at Team Double-Click impose restrictions, benchmarks, and even penalties on our contractors for lack of performance. Again, this sometimes makes us unpopular and can cause a virtual assistant to quit.

Knowing what causes people to leave should help you better understand how long a virtual assistant may stay in a position. About 25% of our virtual assistants have been with us and the same clients for well over a year and many more approaching the one year mark. In fact, earlier this year one of our virtual assistants retired from Team Double-Click and the client she was assigned, after being with him for more than three years.

So when asked “how long can I expect my virtual assistant to stay with me?” I always say, “It depends. As long as nothing goes wrong and there is no reason for the virtual assistant to leave, he or she will most likely stay.”

Gayle Buske is the co-founder, president and CEO of Team Double-Click, one of the country’s foremost virtual staffing agencies. As the head of a virtual staffing agency with over 29,000 virtual professionals in its pool, Buske is uniquely qualified to aid clients’ growth through virtual outsourcing as well as speak to the ins and outs of the industry.

For more information, visit http://www.teamdoubleclick.com or phone 888.827.9129.

The world of author tours is changing rapidly

I just received a notice from Allison Nazarian about how traditional author tours are changing - and fast.

Here's what Allison sent me that she found during one of her web searches.

AUTHOR BOOK TOURS SWITCHING TO ELECTRONIC CONTACT. The traditional author tour has been in decline: Fewer writers are being sent out, and those who do tour make fewer stops. Among the many reasons for this shiftare marketing tools that have made it possible to orchestrate a virtual encounter, without the hassle or expense of travel. Publishers and authors are now touting books through podcasts, film tours, blog tours, bookvideos, and book trailers. See http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1130/p12s02-bogn.html

Thanks Allison for this great information. Allison is a professional copywriter and always on the lookout for the latest trends. Allison sets herself apart by constantly providing great information to her readers. You can read more about Allison at http://www.getitinwriting.biz/ or www.GetItInWriting.biz/blog

In success,

Kathleen Gage
The Street Smarts Marketer
http://www.streetsmartsmarketing.com/

Poll reveals 30% of people don't know how to market on the

What is one of the greatest challenges businesses today? Almost 30% of respondents to a poll on BizTipsBlog.com say they don't know how to market their business on the Web.

This information comes from my collegues, Patsi Krakoff and Denise Wakeman aka The Blog Squad. To read the full story go to http://www.expertclick.com/NewsReleaseWire/default.cfm?Action=ReleaseDetail&ID=19208

In response to this staggering statistic, The Blog Squad and The Street Smarts Marketer are hosting a free teleseminar on Monday, December 17, 2007 at 6 p.m. Eastern to provide an overview of what people need to be aware of when taking their business online. Details and registration are at www.blogsquadteleseminars.com/5traps.

Kathleen Gage
The Street Smarts Marketer
www.streetsmartsmarketing.com

Is Blogging Necessary?

Although some people view blogging as a novelty or a “someday I’ll get around to it” most companies will find great benefit by adding blogs and blogging to their overall marketing strategy. When done correctly, blogging can have an incredible impact on your market position.

In essence blogs are no different from other marketing channels. Blogs are designed to deliver results, position you and your company and establish credibility. Some of the primary reasons to have a blog and to blog are to build expert status, reach a global market, increase customer and media relations, keep your market informed on what is happening with your company and industry, establish market perception and rank high on the Search Engines.

Determine the Purpose
Are you blogging because this is the latest and greatest fun idea someone on your team thought of or is this a viable part of your overall branding and marketing strategy? If a blog is simply another whimsical idea, you are likely blogging for the wrong reason. If, on the other hand, this is a part of your overall marketing strategy make sure you are strategic in your process.

Blog Consistently
To be effective you need to blog on a fairly regular basis. Your postings can be short, but need to be relative to your purpose. Many bloggers post information from other sites as a way to keep their readers informed on a particular topic. When you post information from another resource you absolutely must reference where you got the information from.

You can blog about new product releases, plans your company has, articles of interest and even what your competition is up to. The more valuable the information the more you will build a dedicated readership.


Driving Visitors
There are a number of effective ways to get people to view your blog. One is to use key words relative to your market and industry. Whenever you post something you want to include those key words.

Next you can announce your blog in your company newsletter, through media releases, to your current opt-in subscribers and in any advertising you do.

You can add your blog address to your outgoing email messages by way of your sig (signature) file that you use at the end of your email messages.

Another option is to write articles specific to your market and industry. Add a resource box at the end of your article with a link back to your blog. If your article is perceived to have high value there is a very good chance readers will visit your blog.

Most importantly is to make the blog postings valuable to the readers. If the information doesn’t hold their interest they will have no reason to return.

The more valuable your readers find your information the more likely it will be that they turn into loyal readers.

Make It Easy for People to Subscribe
By offering readers the chance to subscribe to your blog the more likely it will be for them to continue to read your information. Make it easy for people to sign up for your blog. You can add what are known as blog buttons also known as chiclets. You can also add a simple sign up form by visiting FeedBlitz.com and FeedBurner.com. This allows people to subscribe to the feed and receive updates as you add new content to your blog.

Keywords
Keywords are a way to improve your search engine ranking. Choosing the right words for your products, services, industry or market is extremely important. Keywords are what lead search engines to your blog. The more targeted your list the more effective your postings.

Analyze your business and your market. Think of any words that your readers might be search on to find you that relate to your company, industry, product or service.

The way to narrow your target words down is to use a keyword selector tool. A reliable selector tool will help you to narrow the search by indicating how often people search on specific word combinations.

In Conclusion
Blogging will create great opportunities when done correctly, consistently and conscientiously.

Kathleen Gage is an Internet Marketing Advisor for Speakers, Trainers, Authors, Consultants and Entrepreneurs. Access her eBook The Truth about Making Money on the Internet at http://www.streetsmartsmarketing.com/free-ebook.htm

Powerfull Living Radio Show

I was recently interviewed by host Lorraine Cohen on her Powerfull Living Blog Talk show.

www.blogtalkradio.com/PowerfullLiving

We had a great time in spite of (or maybe because of) some technical glitches.

In success
Kathleen Gage
The Street Smarts Marketer
www.streetsmartsmarketing.com

8 Common mistake people make when they try to get in front of their market

• Come across as only interested in the sale rather than someone who is interested in the customer’s needs.
• Target an incompatible market
• They are not prepared when opportunity strikes
• Appear desperate – not being willing to walk away
• Trying to sell too soon – before they know there is a need
• Prejudging a person’s potential to buy
• Not setting themselves apart from the competition
• Chasing good money after bad – not letting go of someone who just isn’t a good match for your products or services.

Are you making any of these mistakes? If so, remedy them immdediately.

Kathleen Gage
The Street Smarts Marketer
www.streetsmartsmarketing.com

Kathleen Gage Expert Author on EzineArticles.com

I am pleased to announce my position as Expert Author on EzineArticles.com.

To view various articles I have written visit

http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Kathleen_Gage

My best

Kathleen Gage

The Street Smarts Marketer

www.streetsmartsmarketing.com

Do you know what is posted about you on the Internet?

Have you ever wondered what is posted about you on the Internet? Wondering if your articles are getting listed in directories? Want to find out what sites your information might be showing up on?

If you want to know this then you need to do a google alert on your name.

Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.

Some handy uses of Google Alerts include:
finding out what is written about you
monitoring a developing news story
keeping current on a competitor or industry

To sign up for your own google alerts go to http://www.google.com/alerts

Kathleen Gage
The Street Smarts Marketer
www.streetsmartsmarketing.com

Are You Utilizing Push/Pull Marketing?

(Feel free to use the following article as long as you keep the resource box at the end as is)

Are You Utilizing Push/Pull Marketing?
by Kathleen Gage, The Street Smarts Marketer

An important aspect of marketing has to do with what is referred to as Push/Pull marketing. Push/Pull marketing is exactly as it sounds. At times you are “pushing” information out to your market and at other times you are implementing strategies to “pull” consumers to you.

Regardless of whether you are selling someone else’s products and services or your own, if you do not implement a complete marketing strategy that includes the Push/Pull philosophy, you are likely defeating your purpose.

To create a steady stream of revenue for products and services you offer you have to have a very targeted approach. Not only will a systemized marketing approach help you make money directly from your online offerings, you can definitely enhance your offline offerings as well as live presentations, consulting, and coaching.

Keep in mind, there is a process people go through in order to buy your products and services. It is built on need, want and desire. Additionally, the greater the investment on the part of the consumer the more you must build confidence, trust and credibility in the consumer’s mind.

If all you are doing is selling $10 widgets that is one thing. If, on the other hand, you are seeking to build long-term relationships with your market and be viewed as a professional, you must approach things in a systematic way.

The fact is, my clients want to do far more than sell a widget. They want to make a difference in the lives of their clients. They want to provide long-term solutions and create ongoing relationships with their clients. They want to build their business based on trust, value and integrity. To achieve these results requires they implement effective systems.

Realize that no matter how great your product or service, most people will not buy a high-ticket eProduct or a $1,000 plus mentoring course or consulting contract without first buying a $20 - $50 eProduct. There is what is referred to as the funnel approach to marketing. Clients will enter your “funnel” by way of something that is very low risk such as a free item or very inexpensive item. Based on their experience they will decide what the next course of action is.

What you do every step of the way, including someone’s initial introduction to you and your way of doing business, will determine how likely it is that someone will become a loyal customer. Never discount the power of a free offering or a low-ticket item to be the catalyst to someone becoming a premier client.

To introduce consumers to your and your product offerings as well as get people to the point they will even consider the $20 item you will find the Push/Pull marketing process is second to none.

The higher the price of your products and services the more you absolutely must use the Push/Pull strategies.

Kathleen Gage is an Internet Marketing Advisor for Speakers, Trainers, Authors, Consultants and Entrepreneurs. Access her eBook The Truth about Making Money on the Internet at http://www.streetsmartsmarketing.com/free-ebook.htm

The Author's Corner features Nikki Leigh

The Author's Corner is presented by Kathleen Gage and The Street Smarts Marketing and Promotions Blog.

This week's featured author is Nikki Leigh. She is an award-winning author. Nikki has done promotional work for over fifteen years. When she signed the first book contract, she knew her marketing background was a big advantage. Her new book -Book Promo 101 is a way to share the things she's learned. It gives information about many types of promotion.

Tell us about yourself - where you are from, how you got started writing, what you do when you are not writing (or anything you want our readers to know)
I'm from the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. I started writing when I was a kid in school. But, I didn't get serious about getting back to my writing until about 15 years after I graduated. A woman suggested that I read The Artists' Way and that helped me to overcome so many personal concerns and doubts. At that time I joined an online writers' community and I dove back into honing my craft. In 2005, I was in a position to make a career change and I decided to dive into freelancing fulltime. That has allowed me to work on a wide variety of writing projects and it led to four business books and seven ghostwriting projects. This is in addition to my fiction books which are in print. When I'm not writing, I work with my business clients to do bookkeeping, promotional work and business consulting.

What inspired you to write your first book?
I started to form an idea for a book over twenty years ago and finally got back to work on it in late 2002. The story was coming together, but I couldn't figure out the right place to set the story. In 2001, I visited Cape Cod which was my first idea for a setting. On the same trip, I visited Cape Ann, Massachusetts and that's when the story really took shape. Since then I've released 2 other books set in that area and I'm working on the fourth Misty Cove book.

How many books have you written?
I have four novels in print, four business books in print. My first anthology, one novel is being re-released after some changes and my first author promotion book is being released this fall. I've created a writer's resource ebook which I plan to release in October. In my freelancing work, I've ghostwritten seven books - five promotional books, a novel and a restaurant management book. One of my recent freelancing clients is talking about putting my name as a co-author on the book I wrote for him.

How do you decide on their topic?
My business topics and ghostwriting topics were based on my business and promotional experience. I use that experience to choose the projects I want to work on. All of my novels are centered near the coast and lighthouses. I enjoy history, the coast, lighthouses and the lifesaving service, so I work these topics into my novels.

What works best to keep you focused and on track?
Deadlines and the desire to see the project completed are two great ways to stay focused. With my freelancing, bills coming due also keeps me focused to finish projects.

Do you write to make money or for the love of writing?
I tell people that my fiction is a labor of love. At some point, I'd love for my fiction to pay better, but I'm still building readership and visibility at this point. Although my promotional launch for my Cape Hatteras mystery has helped to propel my sales in the last few months. My business and promotional books are more about making money since my freelancing keeps the bills paid. My author promotion book is a combination of the love of writing and making money. It's an awesome chance to share the things I've learned over the last 16 years in promotional work.

What are some traditional methods of marketing you have used to gain visibility for you and your book(s)?
I have an extensive website which features information about each of my books, the settings, the characters and much more. It also has writing and promotional articles for writers and readers. I've attended some writer's events and have held a number of online chats. I send press releases about my books and special events. I've got several online message boards that I use to promote my books. I offered to moderate a panel at the Virginia Festival of the Book which helped me meet a lot of people and I had a chance to brainstorm with Dr Bill Bass (of the body farm) and Jeffrey Deaver. In October, I'm scheduled with a couple of friends to do a workshop about setting development in stories. In the past, I've taught a series of character development classes that developed and I'm hoping to rework the classes to offer again in the near future.

What are some unique methods?
I'm the Self Promotion Topic Editor on

www.inspiredauthor.com and this gives me good visibility. I've hosted a couple of chats for Inspired Author about writing related topics. When Lilah and the Locket was released, I planned a week at the beach (where the story is set) and I contacted my preferred businesses before the trip. I then visited these stores with the book and they are being sold in 7 stores along the Outer Banks of North Carolina. For more information, visit http://www.nikkileigh.com/lilah_launch1.htm. A couple of years ago, I created a fundraising event for a local animal shelter and that's where Lilah and the Locket began. Details are posted at: http://www.nikkileigh.com/pets_n_portraits.htm. Lilah and the Locket features a couple and their dog - the characters are based on a real couple and their dog. This was part of the Pets 'n Portraits event and has opened up interesting ways to promote the book and they just asked if I'd like to write a sequel - of course I said “YES!” I formed an author co-op and we promote one another and the group. The website is www.readersstation.com.

Do you sell through a website?
I use my websites - www.nikkileigh.com, www.sandcconsulting.com and there are links from www.readersstation.com to my sale pages. My books are also available on Amazon, Borders, Abe Books and I promote that they can be ordered at any bookstore. The ebook versions of my books are available on many online ebook sale sites.

Do you plan on writing additional books?
Most definitely. I'm working on plans for my next two novels, three short stories and the next book in my author promotional series and I have a new character who will be the focus of a series of short stories.

This interview was done in conjunction with Nikki Leigh, author of Book Promo 101 –

www.nikkileigh.com/book_promo_101.htm.