Getting and onboarding your first client
Well done! You have come this far in this course, you deserve to land your first client and start earning.
At this stage, you want to test your job skills, collaboration skill, and generally how you would handle your virtual assistant business. There are several ways to land your first client based on pricing options. I suggest you use the 3 methods I am going to share with you in the next paragraphs as they all have benefits for your business.
- Offer free service in return for testimonial
Having testimonials on how good you are is one of the early social currencies you want to earn as a virtual assistant. However, be careful not to get it in an undeserving manner. You want to work for it and really earn it. This is how I did mine 3 years ago. I sent the message below on LinkedIn and some of my connections took up the offer. I was also able to retain some of them after the free offer.
- Offer huge discount on a single service to at least 5 clients
I have created a GET YOUR FIRST CLIENT IN 3 DAYS Challenge to help you work around this point. Enter for the challenge here. It is easy to participate in this challenge, simply get creative and follow the instructions I send to you everyday for the next 3 days after you opt-in.
Why you are offering only one service here is to establish your expertise in that area and easily turn the clients who enjoy the discount to your word-of-mouth advocates.
- Offer one month discount retainership to a maximum of 2 clients
I provide more details on this technique in Day 3 of the GET YOUR FIRST CLIENT IN 3 DAYS Challenge. Enter for the challenge here.
After selecting the desired number of people you want to offer discount offer to as suggested in point 2 above, do a filtering of the clients who take up the offer and pitch your monthly package to them but offer a discount so that they find it hard to pass up.
At this stage, you are testing the waters as to how you would collaborate with a client if you are to work with them on monthly basis as against the one-off service you rendered in point 1 and point 2. You will also be able to determine if retainership is for you or you just want to stick to one-off services in which case you would be more of a freelancer than a virtual assistant.
ONBOARDING YOUR CLIENT
Onboarding a new client has to do with the processes you complete to get them familiar with your business and setup your relationship with them for success. Onboarding actions include but not limited to:
- Schedule a discovery call
- Send an invoice, then a receipt after payment confirmation
- Send your contract for e-signature
- Agree on the frequency and channels of communication
- Agree on work tools and set them up
For deeper insight, refer to this guide for how to onboard a new client in your virtual assistant business.
This brings us to the end of Module 8.
Do not forget to share this course with your friends and family, they’d really appreciate it.
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