I have spent today putting together my submission as to why I deserve this award and in reading over the testimonials from my clients and reflecting on my business, I’m feeling a huge kick to my self-esteem and am very happy indeed!

The award winner will be announced on Saturday 21 May (Eastern Australian time) at the International Virtual Assistant Day Celebrations at this years Online International Virtual Assistant Conference (OIVAC).  If you are a VA or even a business owner and haven’t checked out OIVAC yet, then head over there and have a look at the schedule, it’s always awesome and has something for everyone.

See you at OIVAC!

Sue Gross
Butterflies Secretarial Solutions

As a Virtual Assistant (VA) I have sub-contracted out jobs many times with varying levels of success and I’m also a sub-contractor myself. I like to think I’m a very good subbie, well the wonderful VAs I work with keep coming back so that says something about my skills doesn’t it?

But it’s not just about skills. The reason you are choosing to be a sub-contractor and the manner in which you conduct yourself is as important as the skills you bring to the job.

Why Sub-Contract?

Well personally, I do it because I love it. I love to help other VAs be successful. I love presenting them with top quality work that they can send to their clients with very little checking. I have some awesome colleagues and enjoy the relationships I have with them, but I’ll talk more about relationships a little later.

Some people choose to pick up sub-contracting when they first start as a way of earning some money, polishing up their already well-developed skills and establish some good relationships with other, more experienced VAs.  Great! That’s a really good use of subbing and in fact is originally why I started doing it. I found that I really enjoyed it and keep doing it even though I now have clients of my own.

However…

A lot of VAs new to the industry will mistakenly choose to use sub-contracting as a way to practice their skills and try out new services that they’d like to offer. NO!  Did you hear me? NO! That is definitely not why you should be chasing subbie work.

There are a couple of scenarios here – firstly the VA will take on a sub-contract job without letting the VA know he/she is inexperienced. They commit to doing the job and meeting the timelines then find they can’t do the work or can’t meet the timeline. Many seem to then panic and end up letting the VA down because they didn’t want to step up and admit that they shouldn’t have taken the job on and they’ve left it too late to get the job done by deadline. This puts the VA in a nasty situation with their client who is waiting for the work expecting it to be delivered by their always reliable VA.

The end result is a very unhappy client, a very unhappy VA and a sub-contractor who will never get work from that VA again or have any other work referred to them by that VA. Do you see my point here?

Maintaining Relationships

As a sub-contractor you are not (in most cases) working directly with a client, you are working with the VA who will allocate you tasks and check your work is up to their standard before sending the work back to the client. A lot of times you don’t know who the client is.

For some reason this seems to give some VAs the impression that it’s acceptable to be less than professional. NO!  Did you hear me? NO! It is not acceptable to treat the VA with anything less than professionalism and respect. In effect they are your client because you are completing work for them and they are paying you on invoice.

Think about how you would treat a client and treat the VA the same way. Honestly, if I was a client and was treated by a VA how I’ve been treated by some sub-contractors they would certainly never receive another ounce of work from me.

The same goes for doing the wrong thing in maintaining a VA/VA relationship. If you don’t treat a VA with professional courtesy they will not use you as a subbie any more, they will not refer you to another VA, and they certainly won’t slide any clients your way. I’ve gained several sub-contract jobs and referrals to clients from lovely VAs I’ve done subbie work for.

I recently mentioned to some VA network members that I did volunteer transcription for an organisation and had some files that they could ‘practice’ with and I would check the file before it went back to the client and give them some feedback. I got a good response to the offer but a very very disappointing result varying from a file not getting to the allocation stage; a file not being started with the job turned down several days later; and the job being returned without instructions or template being followed and I re-did it myself.

Later I came to realise that these VAs were treating this as an exercise that they could choose to do or not and could put less effort into because it was ‘just’ for practice and ‘not a paid job’.  They didn’t stop to consider the wider implications of what they had taken on. I have never worked with any of these people before and they had an opportunity to showcase their services and skills to me. I could have raved about them in a blog post, on Facebook, on networks, recommended them to others, referred on clients that I couldn’t take on, given them paid sub-contract work… get the picture? They all missed a big opportunity to impress someone more experienced and with more contacts in the industry than they currently have. If you commit to do something, whether it be paid or voluntary then you really need to do it to the best of your ability and with a professional attitude. The fact remains that even though I do that job voluntarily, I still consider that organisation to be my client and I do the work just as well as I would do anything I get paid top dollar for. It’s the right thing to do.

In Summary

Being a new VA and seeing all the wonderful things that other VAs are doing is very exciting, inspiring and motivating, there is so much out there beyond the corporate walls you’ve had around you. However, you need to remember that you are now the face of a business and need to sell an exceptional service so that your reputation can build and referrals can be made with confidence. That means playing at the top of your game each and every time you interact with others on a professional level.

Remember:

1. Sub-contract because you want to do the job not to try something new (unless it is specifically stated they are happy to have someone inexperienced have a go).
2. Maintain a professional relationship and treat the VA with the same respect you would give a client.
3. If you are doing something in a volunteer capacity do it to the best of your ability and with a professional attitude. You never know what might come of it.

Sue Gross
Butterflies Secretarial Solutions

This is the story: I was approached via the Contact Form on my website and asked to provide my hourly rate, there was a detailed description of the work given so I provided my rate and a bit of other information and asked a few questions. Nothing unusual there.

I then noticed a joblead go out on one of the networks I belong to which seemed to be for the same job. Again, no alarm bells went off because people generally look for more than one quote.

The work being quoted on was quite a large task and would be followed with more of the same. The prospective client asked if I could do a quote for the entire job based on a sample of data she would provide. No problem there, I’ve done that before. The sample was a bit more detailed than what I would usually do to provide a quote but if I landed the client then it would be worth my time to do so, so I did it. Now here is where I made a mistake. I provided the completed sample of work back to the client in final format. I would usually save it as a secure PDF with Draft or similar stamped on it so it couldn’t be used but the work could be viewed.

A few days later I did a follow-up and was sent a polite email telling me that unfortunately my quote was too high for the small budget available.  Okay, still no alarm bells went off because, well sometimes people just don’t want to pay for a quality job from an experienced operator. No big deal.

So what’s the problem I hear you ask? Thanks to a colleague posting a question to a VA Network about doing quotes and being paid to provide samples of work in a usable format, I was alerted to the fact that this prospective client has approached not two or three or four VAs but MANY VAs and had us all provide her with a ‘sample’ of work using different sections of data in the original document and then told each of us that our rate is too high – which of course means that she has received the entire job for F R E E!

This is not just getting a ‘quote’, it is in fact getting ‘work’ done. There is a very big difference.

Did I make a mistake in providing the data in a usable format?  Yes, I believe I did (and won’t ever do it again!).

Did this woman operate in an unethical and unprofessional manner? Yes, I believe she did.

It can sometimes be assumed that just because a lot of VAs work from home it must mean that we are isolated. That is not the case at all. We are a tight knit community where referrals, jobleads, advice and information is shared. The internet gives us the ability to connect easily and frequently.

Word of mouth is so important in small business, it really pays to maintain your professionalism and a high ethical standard at all times as you just never know who might be listening.