Yesterday and today, I have been busy packing up my main street office in readiness to move it back into my home. I am moving to a new home in a few weeks time which has an ideal outside room which is going to be converted into office space for Net Secretary and I am very excited about that. Having premises has been good for me and Net Secretary and a welcome learning experience for me - but I don’t require it to do what I do best. Most of my clients are virtual anyway and I’ll be saving on overheads, as well as regaining some of the flexibility I have lost in having an off-site office. I think it will allow me to concentrate better on my new business model also, that of Online Business Manager, and in the end provide better service to my existing clients.   I have gone full circle - virtual business to bricks and mortar business back to virtual business - and I like that.

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Bookkeeping services were not something that Net Secretary offered previously, although a lot of virtual assistants do. I had previously not had formal training in bookkeeping and to be frank, it’s not really an area I was greatly interested in, having disliked Accounting at high school. However, times do change and the first inkling of change was getting my own books into a different bookkeeping system, having out grown the Tax Office’s E-record. Also, a local client approached me to do his books in Quickbooks, among other secretarial services for him. So that is the programme I have chosen to go with.

I am currently completing a bookkeeping course so that I have the basic knowledge behind it all. The Quickbooks programme itself is easy to pick up.

So there you have it, another virtual assistant service added to Net Secretary’s already wide range of services.

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I recently had to spend a few days in hospital with a serious infection. As a normally healthy person, this was a complete shock to me. The onset of the illness was quite sudden and I was very unprepared for managing my business during this incapacitation. This experience has taught me that one’s health is so very important but also the importance of having contingency plans in place for one’s business. Luckily, I was able to enlist the assistance of my cousin to email my clients and let them know what had happened and that I would be out of action for a week or so. My photographic memory enabled me to remember most of the email addresses off the top of my head and a little research by my cousin found the ones I could not remember. For the most part this worked quite well, but it also was a timely reminder that I need to finish putting together my business manual so that this information can be easily accessed in my absence.  Good planning can avoid this type of stress during an illness or while on vacation, times when one needs to be relaxing and not thinking about the business.

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Recently a client asked Net Secretary to undertake the compilation of a database. This entailed telephoning a number (100+) of government and hospitality contacts gleaned from the internet and asking for permission to place their HR manager on the mailing list to receive emailed information about a seminar the client is providing. For the most part, I would say 90% of respondents agreed to be placed on the list and were therefore emailed the information.

In effect, I believed this was cold calling and therefore fell under the auspices of telemarketing. After an exhausting few days fulfilling this request, I advised the client that we could no longer provide the service as VA’s are not sales people or telemarketers and we did not have expertise in this area. I felt strongly that we didn’t want to waste the clients time or money, given that none of my other VA contacts were willing to undertake this work in a subcontract capacity (the original subcontractor was called away on urgent family matters). They all pointed out that it was telemarketing and not within their scope of services.

I have no such issue with calling a client’s customer and confirming an appointment for the day or following up on outstanding work, unpaid invoice or whatever. However, I believe that Virtual Assistants should concentrate on what they do best and that is providing administration support. To me, asking a VA to undertake telemarketing is like asking an accountant to give legal advice. They may have some knowledge of the matter but they are by no means an expert and are likely to give misleading or just totally incorrect advice, therefore wasting the client’s time and money when it could be better spent on an expert in that field to give them results they want and deserve.

I would be interested to hear any other opinions or thoughts.

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I have been both impressed and frustrated this week with my new VOIP phone and broadband telephony service. I specifically bought the phone and phone service so that I could receive calls for clients with relative simplicity and without the prohibitive expense of installing additional landlines. For the most part, things are working well. I can make calls out, receive calls in and the sound quality is excellent. BUT … my voice mail for the phone line is not working. I can access it via my landline but it won’t accept my password. My VOIP line can’t access it at all. I have logged a service call with my VOIP telephony service provider but they are taking an interminably long time to respond. There is some urgency to this as I’ll be receiving a clients calls beginning this week and I would like the voicemail to capture any that come through when the office is unattended. Technology is awesome when it is working as it should but when there are hiccups, it can be a nightmare in frustration. Here’s hoping I get a speedy resolution to this small but significant problem asap.

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After a lengthy and valuable session with my business coach this morning, I have a long list of things I need to organise for Net Secretary. ‘Organise’ is the key word here. Implementing systems and procedures in a business is a crucial tool for increased productivity and streamlining business processes. Systems allow all of that information that you store in your head to be put into some sembalnce of order and method on paper - into a type of manual for your business - and this has many benefits for small business, both virtual and shopfront. These benefits may include:

• Enables you to see where the business is at and where it is going, it gives you focus
• Becomes part of your risk management strategy
• Provides a tool to review current processes and discard those that are not working for you
• More efficient use of your time - you know when, where, how to do something and are not as likely to forget to do something
• Makes it easier for someone to caretake your business if you are ill or away.
• Makes it simpler for new staff coming on board to learn about the processes in your business together with its vision, values and mission
• Allows a process of review to take place - a constant evolution of the systems to maintain best practice and incorporate feedback from clients and customers about things that may not be working or could be improved
• Facilitates benchmarking

 If you are new to implementing systems that work, start off with baby steps. Simply diarising or marking on your calendar the regular things you do in your business (bookkeeping, updating your marketing materials, computer back-ups etc) is a good start. From there, you can start to detail the actual process step by step. Eventually you may want to have a manual for your business in A-Z format which details a policy or procedure for each aspect of your business.

 I firmly believe in the saying “With systems I am safe” - now I just have to live it myself by implementing some systems in Net Secretary!

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We’ve had some interesting discussions in the VA network I belong to about client expectations of VA’s and the notion that some clients are not fully aware of how best to ultilise a VA. Some clients think they need someone local who can come to them and that they can actually ‘meet’ face to face. Although I am personally not adverse to going onsite and doing work for clients from time to time, the fact is most tasks can be done virtually. But how does this get around the lack of personal contact present in traditional business relationships? I have clients around the world and around Australia, some of who I will probably never meet. However, I have spoken on the telephone to a few and kept in regular touch by email with the majority, even trading photos with my New York client to bridge that gap. I also make sure there is a photo on my website and in my newsletters to try to overcome the impersonal nature of the electronic medium. I’m interested to hear what others have to say about educating clients, working virtually and how to overcome the trust/personal contact issues, both from a VA and customer perspective.

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In the past I have had some success with Google Adwords. These are the “sponsored” links that appear down the right hand side of a Google search page and sometimes across the top. These are a great way to begin learning about and working with keywords and a successful way of getting increased traffic to your site, as well as paying clients. They work on a “pay per click” basis so when someone clicks on your ad, you accumulate the cost onto your account. You can set yourself a daily budget so that when your clicks have reached a certain amount, your ads no longer show on Google searches. This is great for ensuring you don’t go over your weekly or monthly spend. The actual “how tos” of setting up an Adwords account can be quite complex and a bit of trial and error before you find the right mix of your keywords, campaigns and pay per click budget. This service is perfect to be performed remotely by your VA - she can set up your account, add your keywords, design a compelling ad or ads and monitor the campaigns (as sometimes keywords get deactivated for not being optimised enough or not paying enough per keyword). If Adwords appeals to you but you don’t have the time or energy to learn it yourself, why not speak to us about setting up and monitoring a campaign for your business?

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I’m excited that I’ve enrolled in a Resume Writers Course that I’ve been longing to do for a while. I like the notion of assisting people to bring out their best and really sell themselves to prospective employers. In terms of an additional service that Net Secretary can provide to its customers, the resume service will be offered predominantly as an online service but it will also enable me to do more of the ‘face to face’ work that I enjoy - getting out there and meeting with customers, interviewing them about their skills and the job they want and then going away and preparing something wonderful for them. I’m not completely sure what the Resume Writers Course entails in absolute detail, but it does have lessons and assignments to prepare, and appears to have a lot of positive feedback from participants. The course designer, Beverley Neil, has won countless awards for her outstanding resumes so I am looking forward to learning all she has to impart. Here’s hoping I can manage my time effectively to really get stuck in so I can start using it for my clients.

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