Why Continued Education for Virtual Assistants?

Because our target market (small to mid-sized business, entrepreneurs, independent professionals, etc.) is becoming more technology savvy than ever before. Computers are mainstream. Obvious, but true. How do we communicate with our clients? Via the Internet.  

Today’s clients are more likely well-versed in the typical Microsoft Office programs, Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Publisher. Maybe not as skilled or experienced as most Virtual Assistants but still they continue to obtain the rudimentary skills that serve them.  

Then their question becomes “Why pay someone $XX per hour when I can do this myself and save money?” It’s mostly about money and secondly about saving time. When our client/prospect is faced with spending money or spending time (if they think they can produce something fairly reasonable) they will choose using their time and saving the money.  

As a VA it didn’t take me very long to figure out my perfect client was about as tech savvy as I was. Having clients with a clue about technology simply makes working for them and communicating with them much, much easier. I like that.  

Then there’s the bigger problem. If your client/prospect knows as much as you do about the current software, hardware and technology, what are you going to sell them? What is your Unique Selling Position (UPS) going to be? Sure the old standbys could work,  “saving you time for your business” or “saving you money over hiring a full-time in-house secretary.” But what if their 14-year old daughter can put together a decent PowerPoint presentation? (My son was doing PowerPoint with audio for book reports at 9 years old.) What do we offer the client/prospect then?  

Well, that’s were continuing education or professional development comes into play. In order to provide value to our clients and prospects we need to be able to offer them services, skills and experience they don’t typically have (or have access to) such as creating a podcast for their web site, editing that podcast and maybe even uploading it to podcast a small business directory for marketing. Or maybe setting up a blog for them, complete with podcasts and RSS feed. Or maybe creating a package for their business consisting of a web site, blog, electronic newsletter and podcasts.  

Virtual Assistance is not just word processing any more! We need to seize technology and begin providing new services with a higher level of value to our clients and prospects. We need to keep abreast of the newest, latest and greatest technology not just for ourselves or to use in our own businesses but to sell to our clients and prospects. After all, the Virtual Assistant industry is literally founded on technology – computers and the Internet – we need to continue to carry technology forward, for ourselves, for our industry and for our clients/prospects.  

© 2006-2007 Cheryl Callighan, MVA, EOffice-Virtual Assistants LLC and the University of Virtual Assistants. All rights reserved.