February … the month that is associated with love and relationships. In our personal lives, it’s a time to reflect on the love of family and friends we have been blessed with. In our professional lives, it’s a time to reflect on the wonderful relationships we have created with our colleagues, our clients and the people who support us in our business growth. As a virtual assistant, it seems appropriate this month for me to write about the importance of having a great relationship with your virtual assistant.
If you’re familiar with the world of virtual assistance, you might have heard the phrase ‘partnering with a virtual assistant to help you grow your business’. But are you confused about what it means to ‘partner’ with another person without giving them full access to your business from a legal standpoint? In the world of virtual assistance, ‘partnering’ means to collaborate (join forces) on a professional level so that together you both complement each other. Great business partnerships are founded on the symbiotic quality that occurs as a result of the perfect union of two people who fit together in work style, personality and skill sets.
I was recently reminded last month how important it is that my clients and I relate well together in order to create a great relationship. I’ve been blessed with clients that I get along with fabulously. We share stories about life, love and business and we find moments to laugh and enjoy each other. We genuinely care about each other – personally and professionally – and, as a result, we have built strong, trusting relationships with each other in a very short time. This kind of working relationship is what feeds my passion for what I love to do and my clients benefit because they feel my passion for their business and helping them become more successful.
If you want to know how to find the perfect VA for you, it’s important to look for the complementary fit in the following areas:
What is your work style? Do you prefer to collaborate with others in your business decisions or are you a lone ranger and prefer to make all decisions on your own? How do you make decisions? Are you logical and linear – moving through each step of a process without skipping over one step to get to another? Or are you feeling and circular – jumping around from one step to another based on what makes the most sense at the moment? The perfect VA for you may be the one who possesses the same work style because this VA will become an extension of you. On the other hand, the VA who possesses the opposite work style can provide balance to your world because she picks up where you leave off.
What is your personality style? Are you an introvert or extrovert in the way you draw on energy to take action? Do you make decisions based on facts or feelings? Do you like details or are you the visionary/big picture person? Do you like to integrate fun into your daily activities or are you serious, driven and focused? When it comes to creating a great relationship, I believe that this is the area that deserves the most attention from the beginning. My belief is that if you have found the person who complements you well in this area first, the rest will come naturally and easily.
What are your skill sets? Obviously, you are not looking for someone who can provide the same services as you do – that would create competition. What I’m referring to here are your strengths and weaknesses regarding administration. There are two ends to any spectrum that determine your level of administrative strengths or weaknesses and you may fall anywhere on the continuum. For instance, when it comes to managing the administrative side of your business, you may be a power user with the computer and online technologies but you just don’t have the time to devote to administrative tasks any longer or you may be technology-challenged and you dread managing this area of your business. Either way, working with a VA who loves supporting you in the administrative arena can propel your business to new levels. You’ll find that you have more time to focus on servicing your clients, creating products and marketing your business in order to generate more revenue.
The key to being able to hand-off this side of your business to a complete stranger is trust. So how do you trust someone you don’t know yet? Well, the first place to begin is in a personal conversation with each other. By having a personal conversation (either over the phone or in person), you begin to share information about each other that allows you to discern the fit between the two of you. By using the areas I’ve described above as a guide, you will get a sense of this person and their ability to complement you and your business. Of course, this is just the first layer of discovering your ideal VA. The other layers come into subsequent discussions based on the goals, the values and the talents that you each bring to the partnership. But that’s the great thing about conversations, they take you into deeper and deeper levels of communicating as you both discern the fit and, before you know it, you’re relating and creating relationship!
