How I Find Clients for My Virtual Assistant Business

How I find Clients for My Virtual Assistant Business

I started my journey in my own virtual assistant small business 12 years ago. I did this while working full-time in the corporate world. While I loved the benefits of working from home as a virtual assistant, I didn’t realize how hard it would be to juggle family, my full-time job and finding a way to get my virtual assistant business off the ground. The hardest part for me has been finding clients. I am not an extrovert by nature so giving my business a voice was and is tough for me. Over the years, I have tried different avenues on getting my business the face time it needs to get clients interested in me. Below I have listed the different avenues I have taken and how they worked for me.

In-person networking – While this was the most terrifying for me, it became easier over time and eventually became something I loved. This avenue supplied me with a huge stack of business cards to which I am utilizing today (through LinkedIn) and I can honestly say I have a client from attending an in-person networking meeting. In-person networking is time consuming and can be expensive, but it is not dead!

Cold-calls – This avenue was another terrifying reach for an introvert like myself. I wrote a script, practiced and eventually made the first terrifying phone call. What I realized though, it’s not so scary once I learned not to take a refusal of my phone call personally. Busy business owners don’t always want to be disturbed by a “sales call.” You will get people like that and you just need to move on.

Mailings – I made several attempts to send postcards to many of the contacts from my large stack of business cards. I received a few responses from this avenue, but no signed-on client. It’s time consuming to create the postcard and costly to send. Not the best option, for me.

LinkedIn – This avenue has worked very well for me. I took that huge stack of business cards went through it and connected with those very same people I already met face to face. Sending a message on LinkedIn that I’d like to connect and referring to our previous meeting helped them recall me and made for more connections. Along with those connections, I sent messages reminding them of my virtual assistant services. I also use LinkedIn Premium (paid monthly subscription) and have benefited greatly from their “InMail” services. I can go into more detail on how to use that at a later date, but I have had 5 interested potential clients in one week!

All of these avenues link together and have given me great exposure to other small businesses. I recommend trying different avenues until you find one that clicks and gets you many hits!