Long Term, Low Volume Clients in Your VA Practice: A Conversation
What do you do about the clients in your practice who don’t generate a significant volume of work?
When I opened up my Virtual Assistance practice in 1996, I admit I had no client screening instincts. I was just thrilled to land that first client, ANY client.
Years later, when I began envisioning my ideal client and project type, I realized that not everyone who called in those early days was a good match for my services and personality.
As your skills and service offerings become specialized, you become more discriminating in client selection. As a result, you learn that there are projects and clients who are better served by someone else. Pruning back your practice will enable it to flourish in the long run.
Even after some judicious pruning, I still handle a small amount of business for people who need only very occasional service. One asks that I update a single page on her website annually, while another requires about a half hour of service every month. In some cases, their jobs are in service areas I no longer perform (except for them). It’s not financially profitable to still be carrying these clients (the invoice takes longer than performing the actual service in one instance!), but I like them and appreciate their loyalty.
There is a lot of potential for selling up existing loyal clients: you would think that through education efforts on my part, I would by now be performing additional services for these folks, and would have turned them into stronger revenue sources. And since that hasn’t happened, from a strictly-business standpoint, I wonder if I should let these oldies-but-goodies go?
A recent discussion of this topic in a professional forum elicited some great new perspectives. So, I am posing it here and inviting friend and colleague Lauren Hidden of The Hidden Helpers to respond over on her blog.
Lauren, what should we do with those low volume clients?
Go here to see what Lauren has to say. (Note from Katie: if Lauren’s response isn’t there when you stop by, please check back later - we haven’t mastered total synchronicity yet, so there may be a little lag time before her reply appears.)
If you have input please join the conversation! You can comment on either or both of our blogs, OR post a response on your own blog and link to us so we know you what you have to say.
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Pingback // July 20th, 2007 // 9:33 am
[...] Baird over at Loose Ends asks how you know whether or not to keep long-term, low-value clients. You know, the ones that you have kept on because they’ve been with you from the beginning, [...]
Comment // July 20th, 2007 // 10:15 am
In thinking about the long-term health of our businesses, you’ve got it right by realizing that there are some clients that you have simply outgrown and are more a drain and less of fit then they might have been in the beginning.
You won’t get what you don’t ask for. So my advise would be to simply let these folks know that you CAN’T help them without more of a commitment. They aren’t being truly served in the way you are in business to serve clients. Tell them your new standards (e.g., “I can’t truly serve clients in the manner I intend on a piecemeal basis. Therefore, my new standard is to only serve who have a need and will commit to a minimum of X hours per months. I think there’s much more I could be assisting you with such as X and X, and I want to give you an opportunity to keep a spot in my practice by getting you my X monthly package.”
The ones who aren’t a fit anymore will weed themselves out. And the ones you can truly best serve and who truly value you are going to want to stay.
But everyone will languish exactly as they have been unless you have an expectation. Make it. Expect It. Ask for it.