Posts Tagged "creative professional"

We’re Like an Airline – No Baggage Allowed

Posted by Erin Blaskie on Jan 12, 2010 in blog, Business Tips, Virtual Assistance | 6 comments

Even though my business has grown to the level that it has, I still do all of the new, potential client calls.

Call me crazy and tell me there are better ways to spend my time but I continue to do these calls myself because I have an amazing red flag detection system.  I like to think it’s genetic but I really think it’s attributed to working with some very non-ideal clients in my past.  Having serviced over 300 entrepreneurs in their businesses, I can tell you… not all clients are good ones (sorry!)

One of my biggest red flags on any new call is what I like to call the baggage flag.

Better yet, let’s call it the bag tag… oh wait, that doesn’t sound appropriate… Baggage tag?  Nah, let’s just go back to baggage flag.

Imagine this… you’re me and you have a call scheduled with a potential new client who, on the onset, seems like a perfect match.  They have an online business, they are into the whole Internet marketing thing and they just seem to have it going on.  Exciting right?

So, you get on the phone with said person and they are all nice and pleasant and the call is going well until you turn their attention to what brought them to hire an implementation company.

New Potential Client:  “Oh, this isn’t my first time.”

You:  “Oh?”

New Potential Client:  “I’ve actually had quite a few VAs in the past couple of years.  However, they just didn’t seem to work out… I woke up one day and one of my virtual assistants had just disappeared… another one just wasn’t meeting my expectations… this other VA I hired, well let me tell you, didn’t… blah blah blah”

You:  “Sounds like you’ve had a lot of unfortunate experiences.”

From this point forward, the new potential client fills up their entire booked time with me discussing previous VA experiences and asking me to prove how we’re not going to step into those same mistakes.  Next thing you know, the half hour is up and the entire time was spent focused on the past instead of on the present.

BAGGAGE FLAG!

Instead, new potential clients (if you’re reading this and the above sounds like you, note taking time!) should push a big, giant reset button before starting any new conversation or working relationship.  This will help you re-focus on what’s important.

It’s like any relationship.  Let’s say you have this boyfriend (or girlfriend) who is really unromantic.  Never buys you flowers, never surprises you with chocolates and never takes you out.  Now let’s say you’ve met Joe/Joanne.  Do you spend your first date explaining how your previous relationships failed and grill them about how they are going to be different?  No.  You don’t do that because you’ll cause your new date to go running for the first exit.

Same principle applies with business.

If a new potential client spends all of their time talking to me about how previous relationships didn’t work and they stay so focused on how we’re not going to screw up too, they are going to miss out on our excellence.  They’ll miss out on my award-winning (okay, so that’s stretching it) pitch about what I’ve built and how our team is so different than other VA companies.  They’ll miss the fact that we don’t even really call ourselves VAs but rather creative professionals.

Most importantly, they’re missing the present moment.

Do you have your own red flags when speaking to potential clients?  If so, what are they?