The first challenge to getting new clients is getting them to trust you with their businesses and their money. It’s not an easy challenge to overcome. That’s why the technique I’m going to share with you in this article WORKS and works well. What I’m suggesting is … working for FREE (do I hear a big gasp of horror from the audience?).

Why work for free? Well, it makes sense. Many virtual assistance companies offer a free consultation where the client can ask questions and you can explain your process. You need to stand out from the crowd and win the business.

Here are two reasons why offering a free sample of your services works:

It eliminates the risk factor. Business is risky from all sides of the fence. It’s risky for you and it’s risky for the person doing the hiring. He or she will be trusting you to work for his or her business and get results. They’ll be taking their valuable time and money to invest in your services and they want to choose wisely. You help them not waste their time by proving yourself before they ever pay a penny.

It builds the relationship. Working well together is all about having a good relationship. It’s really hard to do great work for someone who doesn’t like you and vice-versa. If you offer a little sample of your work you can create an instant relationship and they will usually like you already! That’s a great start.

Before I get the fifth degree from some die-hard virtual assistants, I’ll admit that this technique of getting new clients is risky. You just need to be smart about what you’re doing and you’ll eliminate a large part of the risk.

You’ve probably heard the saying “Why buy the milk when you can get the cow for free?” Yes, some unscrupulous marketers may go around getting freebies and never be willing to pay, so that’s why it’s your responsibility to do your research and hand-pick the clients you want to work with.

That’s right. Don’t just take any ol’ Billy-Bob who comes to hire your services. Make sure she is the kind of person you want to work with, will most probably love to work with and who you can create a rewarding relationship with. When I used this technique for my own business I went to online marketers who I already had a relationship with and whose business models I greatly admired. This allowed me to know exactly who I was going to be working for. It also gave me the added bonus of learning what they did in their own businesses to make them great successes!

If you’re thinking giving a sample of your work away for free might be a good idea for you, here’s a bit of a game plan:

 Offer a small sample of your work; one or two hours would be good.
 Offer the work with no-strings attached; they’ll hire you if you’re needed.
 Only offer to people who are interested in hiring and who need the help (research).
 Do an amazing job.
 Ask for referrals and/or testimonials in exchange for your free work.

Finally, this isn’t a technique to do all the time. It’s one you will use for a hand-picked group of highly sought after employers. Try it once and see what happens. You really only need one good high-profile client who loves your work to get great referrals for a long time coming.

I have done this both with great success and the expected wasted effort, you might say.

I love to proofread and edit so did this for several web sites with just the promise to have the caption “Edited by Jan Tallent” with a link to my VA site. So far, of the 5 or 6 I did this for, only one has kept her word but we do live and learn AND I know that I did it.

Plus, to be honest, I turned 2 of them down later for paid jobs because the trust factor was destroyed when they did not keep their end of the bargain and that is the biggest thing with me – my word and yours 

Wishing you all of the best in your client-getting goals.

Remember, I am a Virtual Assistant who LOVES to do editing and proofreading
assignments along with research, blog posts, article submissions
and social media maintenance!

Why not Schedule a Project now?

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Another great article from Daily Writing Tips that I just had to share.

As English evolves, word meanings shift and turn, sometimes reversing themselves altogether. These ten words have shifted their senses over the years. In some cases, we are wise to likewise be flexible; in others, we relax our vocabulary at the expense of useful distinctions:

1. Decimate

The literal meaning of this word, as all you lovers of Latin (not to be confused with Latin lovers) know all too well, is “to reduce by one-tenth,” supposedly from the punitive custom of selecting one out of ten captives by lot and killing those so selected. But the senses for this rhadamanthine Roman policy have proliferated, so that now it means “tithed,” “drastically reduced,” or “destroyed” as well.

2. Disinterested

Commonly employed to mean “not interested,” disinterested has a precise, useful meaning of “neutral, unbiased.”

3. Enormity

Some people would reserve this word to mean “monstrously wicked,” but, in truth,
it is properly invoked to refer to anything overwhelming or an unexpected event
of great magnitude, and thus it need not be invariably corrected to enormousness
except when it is clearly in reference to a loathsome occurrence.

Refrain, however, from diluting the word’s impact in such usage as “The enormity of the new stadium struck them as they approached the towering entrance.”

4. Fortuitous

This word means “occurring by chance,” but its resemblance to fortune has given it an adopted sense of “lucky.”

For meticulous adherence to the traditional meaning, use fortuitous only in the sense indicated in this sentence: “His arrival at that moment was fortuitous, because her note
had not specified the exact time of her departure.” Nothing in the context qualifies his arrival as fortunate; the sentence merely states that he arrived in time without knowing that he would do so.

The informal meaning is expressed here: “His fortuitous arrival at that very moment enabled him to intercept the incriminating letter.” In this sentence, the time of his appearance is identified as a lucky stroke.

5. Fulsome

This term originally meant “abundant, generous, full,” but that sense was rendered obsolete when the word acquired a negative connotation of “offensive, excessive, effusive.” Conservative descriptivists rail against the use of fulsome in a positive sense, but the cold, hard fact is that this sense has been increasingly resurgent for many years, and the adulatory meaning is now much more common than the condemnatory one.

If you wish to stand fast before the tsunami of inevitability, be my guest, but fulsome as an exquisite insult has been consigned to the dustbin of history. Some commentators recommend that because of the word’s ambiguity, it’s best to avoid its use altogether.
If you insist, make sure the context is clear.

6. Ironic

The impact of ironic has been diluted because many people use it to mean “coincidental,” when its traditional definition is “counter to expectations or what is appropriate.”

7. Literally

Some folks get exercised when this term is used in place of its antonym, figuratively. However, in a hyperbolic sense, that meaning is justified. Unfortunately, that sense is literally overused.

8. Notorious

This term is occasionally used in a neutral sense, but that’s not an error, but the word literally means “known.” However, its dominant connotation is that the fame is a result of infamy.

9. Peruse

This victim of definition reversal literally means “to use thoroughly,” and its first sense is that of careful steady or attentive reading. However, many writers (myself included) have employed it as a synonym for scan — enough writers, as a matter of fact, that its second sense is “to look over or through in a casual or cursory manner.”

Unfortunately, these mirror meanings mean that if you use the word, I advise you to support it with context that clarifies the intended sense.

10. Plethora

Plethora originally referred to an excess of something, but that usage is rare now, and more often the sense is simply of abundance. The medical meaning of swelling caused by an excess of blood is all but unknown.

I love these articles and hope my readers do as well. I love expanding my word knowledge and this is my favorite ezine for spelling and grammar and word usage information.

Remember, I am a Virtual Assistant who LOVES to do editing, proofreading
and transcription assignments along with research, blog posts, article submissions
and social media maintenance!

Why not Schedule a Project now?

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Can you believe we have a fresh, brand new year? We can accomplish
lots of new tasks and make new dreams come true.

It is 1-1-11 – that is so awesome! What do you plan to achieve with this fresh start you are getting? I am determined to make regular and loyal updates to my blogs, here and for my ezine of almost eleven years,
Rim Digest at Rim Digest blog AND my newest that I had wanted for years: Healthy Living, which is the one for my Health & Wellness Products Superstore.

I wear many hats, only one of which is of a Virtual Assistant , specializing in proofreading , editing , transcriptions and social media assistance.

As a proofreader, I bring to the table one of my all-time pet peeves that was drummed into my head by all of my English teachers in both grade school and high school AND later in tech school where I got my degree in Computerized Medical Office Technology.

Some of my editing clients prefer I leave it “as is”, so I do, but the article in
Daily Writing Tips , which I am using with their permission, really sums it up for me!

A Person Is Not a “They.” Neither Is an Army.

So you want to be politically correct, you want to be inclusive, and you would never assume that every nurse and every teacher in the world is a “she.” Right?

Right.

But sometimes this worthy thought leads us to perform some very clumsy gymnastics. Consider this passage from a guide for a doctor’s front office staff:

Show the patient how to use their medicine.

Does this patient have three heads with three mouths through which to ingest medications? Or maybe the patient is using a medication produced by several Big Pharma companies?

We can see the impulse behind this absurdity: whoever wrote this document didn’t want to suggest that every patient in the practice was a “he.” Or a “she,” unless the doc’ was a gynecologist. But this good intention led to a moment of bad grammar: pronouns need to agree with their nouns.

We have several alternatives that honor our desire for inclusiveness without sliding into the ridiculousness. One obvious strategy is simply to make the noun plural:

Show patients how to use their medicine.

Another is to change the pronoun (his, her, its) to an article (the, a, an):

Show the patient how to use the medicine.

Or, if it works in the context, we can change the singular “medicine” to the plural:

Show the patient how to use medicines.

Each of these approaches allows the writer to make sense without offending anyone’s sensibilities.

Remember: in U.S. English, collective nouns are singular:

Zappit Electric just raised its rates. (Not “their rates”)
An army travels on its stomach. (Not “their stomach”)
The jury returned its verdict. (Not “their verdict”)

Not so in the Queen’s English: Brits see collective nouns as plural (e.g., “The jury returned their verdict”). But when you’re writing for a U.S. publisher, corporation, government agencie, and similar entities, take singular verbs and singular pronouns.

What do you think? Do you use *they* in this way and find that you are happy doing so?
If was editing YOUR work, would you feel I was maybe too nit-picky or would you appreciate the fact that I really CARE how your writings come across to those of us who ARE picky when we are reading?

I would love to hear your comments and opinions!

If your web pages, blog posts, reports, sales pages, books, etc. are not grammar and spelling error free, why not contact me and we can get them all into shape for this brand new year!

Spelling & Grammar Errors Are Costing You Business!

Remember, I am a Virtual Assistant who LOVES to do editing, proofreading
and transcription assignments along with research, blog posts, article submissions
and social media maintenance!

Why not Schedule a Project now?

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