Do you provide professional services? So there are 4 particular points that you should keep in mind if you want to have a successful practice.
As a Virtual Assistant, I also often ask myself how to make my services stand out and consequently, grow my business.
For this - and as a good former executive secretary - many of the skills incorporated during my career in dependency have been useful to me. Good secretaries are people who add value.
But what does adding value mean? What concrete actions add value to your clients?
Joan Burge, owner of a renowned training center for secretaries in the USA, highlights 4 characteristics that also apply to those who provide services.
Here are the 4 characteristics that make you a “partner”, someone who adds value:
• Increase productivity: Can you identify exactly how your service improves your client's productivity? If you understand what you have to do to achieve this, you will provide an effective service, save time and most likely your customer will notice.
• Generate money: Do you detect any profitability opportunity that your client is not exploiting? If you have a general vision and understanding of your client's business, you will be able to identify actions that generate income. This type of initiative will definitely promote your service as something that adds value.
• Save money: This feature needs no further explanation. If your service saves you money you are clearly adding value and your customer will notice it.
• Proactivity: The best way to demonstrate the value of your service is to present yourself as a person who does not need to ask for things. You do things that make sense and that collaborate with the business of your client! A proactive person is a person who adds, who adds value.
Although some of these characteristics are individual (they have to do with the person who has direct contact with the client) I consider that they can be promoted within the work team. Share these characteristics among the members of your team. It will allow you to provide a service that adds value to your customers and you will have a successful business.
One last tip: document the actions taken and the objectives achieved that have added value. Furthermore, quantify them. This information will be very valuable when talking to your client about your services, about other solutions that you can provide and even when you decide that it is time to increase your rates.
