One of the most crucial parts of running your own Virtual Assistant Business is having a good working relationship with your clients. After all, without your clients, you wouldn’t have a business.

So how do you ensure that you create and nurture these relationships to the best that you can?

Let’s start at the beginning. It is most likely that your clients will have reached out to you either after seeing one of your posts on social media, or you may have responded to their request for a Virtual Assistant. Either way, they will have seen you somehow and somewhere online.

I highly recommend initially setting up a ‘discovery call’, most clients will want one anyway. It’s a good way to get to know each other more and to establish whether you ‘click’. It doesn’t have to be via Zoom (I know we are all feeling pretty ‘zoomed out’ at the moment), a telephone call is just as good. I usually give my clients the option of which they would prefer.

During these initial calls, you can get a glimpse of how the client would be to work with. It is a chance for both of you to ask questions, ascertain the services you can provide for them, your rates, your working hours etc. This is also a good time to establish those all-important boundaries. Kindly make them aware that you are not available 24/7, 365 days of the year to be at their beck and call. You will find that once you have mentioned this they will be so much more respectful of your time.

Ask the client if they would like weekly ‘check-in’ calls or emails initially. A lot of clients can feel anxious about handing over parts of their business to someone else, which is completely understandable, so making the process as easy and as less stressful as possible is a great way to establish the foundations of your working relationship.

Communication is key!

If you don’t understand what is expected of you for a certain task they require, just ask. They would rather you asked than do it wrong and you have to do it again, or worse still end up doing it themselves.

If you have undertaken a task for the first time for them, ask for feedback, check if it is what they wanted. They will appreciate you asking and it will help you with any future tasks.

Reliability is another important factor when working with clients. If they expect you to check their inbox every day at set times, then that is what you should be doing for them. If something unexpected arises and you aren’t able to do it, then let them know. They will understand, but would rather know than just be left in the dark.