Great Article. I love your thoughts. I have an outsourcing business which I am trying to promote but dont understand how to promote it. It deals with outsourced accounting and outsourced bookkeeping services http://www.businessvein.com. Please give give your guidance.

Thanks

The VACOC has a membership that is worldwide. Every member has passed stringent screenings to even qualify for membership. There are members from Australia. Danielle gave excellent resources.

Nowadays if you want to make a success you need to outsource, there simply isn’t enough hours in a day to do everything yourself, especially when it comes to new ventures and ideas!

And on your blog, there’s nothing wrong with having a few ’static’ pages where you can focus more on your marketing message.

Just some thoughts…

My website is for a Virtual Assistant network so we promote a number of things our team do and get a lot of clients coming via the site. And many of the team specialise in lots of different areas so I wouldn’t want to focus on just one niche area.

My blog was designed to educate people about the industry so I talk about all sorts of things, including problem-solving and different niches from time to time.

Kathie,
I wonder how your marketing would go if your website focused more toward problem-solution and specified a specific niche? Positioning yourself is key to grow your business. Love to chat about your marketing sometime, if you’re interested.

Your post above has been good, as it also helps educate the public about our industry.

I’ve been on the web since January 1996 and I find that developing a web presence is important but so is networking locally, face-to-face to meet prospective clients. Everywhere I go I meet prospective clients and have put processes in place to keep things happening. There are many new VAs online these days that seem to think they can only get a ‘virtual’ client and they forget that their neighbour, the guy down the road, the business around the corner, and so on, could all be clients. They don’t have to be in their office space to do work for them. My longest-term client lives 5 mins away from me and we work almost entirely via email. And yet I have other clients who are interstate and overseas. I find what I do for one works just as well for all the others.

Kathie,
Really good example, thanks. What’s been your biggest barrier in finding clients?

How often is a ‘boss’ physically present when their PA is doing work for them? It’s really not that much different having a VA do the work for them instead. We’re really as close to you as your computer.

After that Chris (the lawyer) looked to send the work back to his home state of New York and then realised if he could do that, he could send it anywhere. So he found me and sent me a Word file formatted the way he wanted it, and a .wav file for testing and we secured him as a client. After that he referred us to many others around the world and our international transcription service took off.

Of course we can do many other things for international clients too – if the work can be done mainly via email then we can do it. And Skype has been a great tool for voice interaction.

Ok, that was kind-of a joke. On a serious note, I had never even considered hiring someone or contracting out to someone hundreds or thousands of miles away. The irrational fear that “something could go wrong” can be a major impediment for small business owners. Hiring and subcontracting can often provide business owners the boost they need to ‘get over the hump’.

The funny thing is, there are just as many possibilities for things that could go wrong with an in-person employee as with a virtual assistant.

Thanks for sharing the insights!

I think working with people on other parts of the world offer some interesting opportunities. For instance, if I work with someone who’s time zone is on the other side of the world, they can sometimes get work done for me while I’m sleeping. Imagine sending out a audio clip for transcription at the end of your business day and waking up tomorrow with the transcribed text in your inbox. It’s pretty neat.

growing business,
I hear you. I wouldn’t be able to grow as I have without outsourcing.