Leveraging Your Skills…

Virtual Assistants (VA’s), like many people in the administrative community, have valuable skills that can be applied toward a project management effort. VA’s have organizational skills, communication skills, scheduling, and time management capabilities, as well as understanding resource needs. Now is the time to leverage those skills and develop a project management system for your firm and your clients.

We have already established that VA’s have many of the critical skills needed to be effective project leaders and the next step will be to develop a system that can be used as a repeatable process to deliver results that your clients are looking for.

When you client calls to ask if you can lead a project for their firm, your response to this question is critical - for both you and your client. You want your client to feel confident in your skills and ability to deliver on the project and you want your team to be self-assured in their ability to meet the clients needs through the use of a positive, informative, and meaningful system that you have implemented for your projects.

This is such a great opportunity you and your firm - be prepared and your clients will be impressed. Your clients will be provided with the clarity they need on how your team will approach the project which will also raise the credibility of the firm with respect to your project management capabilities and services.

Lastly, I would encourage you to consider creating an onboarding package for project management clients. Your package can include an overview document of some of the high level process steps that are an integral part of your project management system. I would encourage you to create a corresponding visual image of your system, which can be called a process map. The process map will provide clarity for your client on how projects are managed at your firm. Having a visual image of the system will also remove any misunderstandings or misinterpretations of how the process unfolds. By sharing this onboarding package with your client, you are providing them with the information they need to make informed decisions. You may also be teaching them about project management practices which is a great way to build a relationship with your client – establishing trust and sharing knowledge.

I hope that after reading this article, and pulling together your own system, you will answer the question “Can your firm lead a project for us?” with a resounding “Yes, we can and let me show you how!”

Go for it! You can do this.