Please join me as I interview Tom Buford, founder of  Charge What You Deserve.com.  Tom is an author, coach, consultant and speaker.  He shares marketing and fee-setting strategies with service professionals so that they begin to charge what they deserve and enjoy the businesses that they’ve been dreaming of.  Using his techniques, Tom’s clients have been able to double their fees and attract more clients than ever before.

I invite you to send me your biggest “blocks” to fee setting so Tom can directly address them for you.

When: FridaySeptember 26, 2008

9 AM PST / 10 AM Mountain / 11 AM CST / 12 PM EST

Where: The comfort of your home or office using your telephone or computer.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Denise-Griffitts

Call in: (347) 843-4988

We look forward to your participation!

I get a lot of inquiries and requests for advice from new virtual assistants who are just beginning to build their businesses so I have decided to write a series addressing some of these issues.  One of the most commonly asked questions is what client management system do I use in my practice.   As a new virtual assistant I knew that organization is easily one of the most important things that my practice had to implement to survive and grow. 

I need to be able to have all of my clients’ information readily available in one spot so there is no delay on working on their projects.  Our clients are tremendously excited and involved in their online businesses and it is not at all unusual to get a phone call, email or text message with a time sensitive project request. 

I have tried several client management systems (CMS) including Basecamp but ultimately was most satisfied with ClientSpot.  In fact, I am so pleased with ClientSpot that I will be offering a free teaching course on it. 

Be sure to either enter your email address in the box on the top right of this page, or better yet, sign up for our newsletter so you are always current on what we are up to in the fascinating and quickly evolving virtual assistance industry.  As soon as the ClientSpot course is ready to launch, you will be instantly notified.

ClientSpot allows my very busy virtual assistance practice to create projects, add tasks, files and comments as we work for each individual client.  As we are a multi-VA firm, it is critical that each assigned virtual assistant have access to the projects that they are working on.  By adding my team members as a sub-contractor they can also have access to the same information that I have which means no more lenghthy conference calls or back-and-forth emails.  Clearly this creates more time each day to devote to your existing clients and also allows you to build and grow your virtual assistance business by giving you additional hours each week to obtain new clients for you or your virtual assistance multi-VA practice.

One of the best features is that you can send your client a login ID and they can login to their project to view progress, add tasks, check hours used and more.  My clients love this feature!

I would love to hear from working virtual assistants about their recommended CMS.

One of the critical things any online entrepreneur or virtual assistant needs to do is to stay active on some of the social networking sites.  I get a lot of questions from virtual assistants and budding online entreprneneurs about this very topic.  There are just so many social networking sites popping up these days that you oftentimes feel like you just have to signup, take the time to build your bio and then visit every day to keep on top of things.  In my opinion, these types of activities can sap hours from your day if you are not discriminating in your choice of social networks.  You will ultimately wind up with a laundry list of worthless social networking accounts that you just don’t have time to tend to.  Virtual assistants know about time management!

My advice?  Stop wasting your time with every new social networking site that somehow gets an invitation to your email box.  I suggest that you spend your time and focus on two  or three social networking sites and become expert at utilizing what each offers.  You will find that your social networking efforts become more defined as you make connections with people interested in your industry or with people who are seeking your products and services.  An excellent example of this is Mari Smith who has become known as the “Pied Piper” of Facebook.  She made it her mission to absolutely understand how Facebook could help her in her business and is now considered the Facebook expert.  As a Facebook Business Coach Mari offers an wonderful course called “The Facebook for Professionals - Complete Multi-Media System“.  I recommend it highly!

Once I narrowed my field of social networking sites down to Facebook, LinkdIn and Twitter I found that I was making valuable connections that build and sustain my web development and virtual assistance firms on a daily basis.  I also maintain an account at MyBlogLog, but that is quite honestly all I have time for these days.

Take time each day to build your network on the social networking sites of your choice.  Be proactive in seeking out people who can use your products and services while also seeking out people that you can be of assistance to.  Always give as much, or more than you expect to receive and your experiences on these sites will be very positive and will help you build and grow your business.

Please let me know your thoughts on this topic.

Chris Brogan posted an excellent post on how to listen for opportunities on Twitter.  Be sure to take a look and I would love to hear your comments after you have applied some of his suggestions to your twitter experience.

http://www.chrisbrogan.com/how-to-listen-for-opportunities-on-twitter/

If you are a virtual assistant who is working at a highly technical level you will undoubtedly be required to create forms for your client’s websites or even your own website.  One of the best sites that I have found for form creation is JotForm which is a web-based application that makes creating forms and inserting them into your website remarkably easy.  JotForm was developed mainly for webmasters, but since it is a WYSIWYG form builder and its intuitive drag and drop user interface makes form creation a breeze, anybody with an internet connection can use it.  You don’t have to have web design or HTML experience with this system.

They offer an impressive array of features and allow an unlimited number of forms that you can create using their free version.  There is also a subscription package for $10 a month.

JotForm supports all standard web form field types and allows you to use new and intuitive fields in your form such as Date Time Picker, Star Ratings, or CAPTCHA checks.  You can create contact forms, blog contact/survey, event calendars, document uploader, satisfaction survey, time sheets, job applications, reservations forms and much more.

One of the things that I appreciate most is that they don’t have third party advertising on the forms that you create.  So create forms that will allow you to connect with prospective clients and get helpful feedback from your website visitors.  The possibilities are unlimited and so are the rewards that you will reap for implementing well designed forms into your website or blog.