“How can a VA help me make more sales?” This is the question on everyone’s mind. There are plenty of people who think this is impossible, but we’re here to explain how it is very much possible. Especially for those in service type businesses, so make sure to read until the end.
Why Do I Get a VA To Do This? When it comes to business, it’s impossible for the business owner to be available all the time to make sales personally. On the other hand, you can make a VA available pretty much all the time. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you can get your VA to be doing all the work, but don’t underestimate the value that you can get from contacting your new leads immediately. In our experience, chasing a lead relentlessly isn’t as remotely effective as making a quick initial contact. It’s probably something we can relate to as consumers as well. That company that gets back to you in under an hour is probably much more enticing than the one that kept you on hold for an entire week. For this reason alone, it’s the quick response rate that a VA achieves that creates a way of gaining more sales easily.
What Not to Do If there is one thing that we’d recommend avoiding, it would be to delegate cold calling to your VA while you’re absent. Sending them out there with a script might be okay for regenerating sales, but it’s incredibly difficult to build the rapport required for new leads, and it will be near impossible to revisit these lost opportunities. To generate leads, get them booked in and leave it in the hands of your salesperson or for yourself if that’s your system.
What Works Well Now that you know that your VA can help you generate sales, let’s dig into what works well. We’ve actually seen some people do extremely well by just doing these three things, so have a good read.
1. Contact New Leads (Call, Email, and SMS) When a new lead comes into your business, you might have a name, an email and a phone number. What we’d recommend doing is following up with a call straight away. If they answer, the VA will speak with them and book them in to speak with yourself or any other appropriate salesperson depending on your lead’s role or business. It’s often useful to send out an email to go with it that has testimonials and proof of services, and this will often be a smart way to book them in. If you don’t manage to get into contact with them immediately, sending them an SMS with a Calendly or your chosen appointment booking service will give them the opportunity to book themselves in through there. Covering these three angles is a fantastic way of lifting your response rate of new leads that come into the business and easily get times booked in. It’s challenging for people to answer the phone these days with all the work they’re doing, so these diverse approaches save you from constantly ringing them up and gives them the opportunity to get into contact with you on their own time.
2. Live Chat We do this on Outsourcing Angel’s website, so take a look if you haven’t already. Live chats are useful for people that often come in with a question that isn’t featured on the site. Having a Virtual Assistant behind the live chat gives your potential leads a quick way to communicate with your team and it is often their avenue of choice for small questions. The more ways your potential clients have to communicate with you, the more likely they will become your next sale.
3. Contact Old Leads This is something that many businesses don’t do enough and it gives some great success – and that is, to contact old leads. Businesses will generate plenty of leads over their lifetime, and not all of them will eventuate into clients. They’ll have many different reasons for not signing on with you, but that doesn’t mean that they have permanently crossed you out. Don’t harass them immediately after they’ve decided to give your business a pass. After an appropriate period of time has gone by for things to change, maybe 3 months or so, try to get into contact with them another time. Find out if they are still interested in your service and if there is anything you can help them with. Because this is different from cold calling and your leads have already expressed interest in your service, this is a task perfect to be given to your VAs to push your lead generation and make more sales.
What YOU Need To Do There are only two things you’ll need to do to get your VA improving your sales.
1. Prepare Scripts Our recommendation is to simply go through your email to see what you or your salespersons have done in the past and make a template from there. Also, make sure to mentally revisit the kind of workflow you’ve tended to follow and document that for your VA to use. Ideally, account for different scenarios so that your VA is prepared for all typical situations. For example, if you want to book a lead into a meeting – this is the flow we normal use. If they ask about our standard services or perks, this is what you should be explaining. Taking the time to prepare scripts for your VA will ensure that they’re able to effectively communicate with your leads.
2. Train Your VA The second thing you’ll need to do is train your Virtual Assistant and give them some practice. Nobody wakes up as an expert in sales or communicating with leads, so give your VA the chance to hone their skills and improve. Our recommendation is to simulate calls with your VA and go through trial runs before letting them work directly with your leads. This will also give you the confidence in what they’re doing since you’ll have already seen and approved their quality of work.
What If? You might still have doubts about the effectiveness of a VA for sales for various reasons. Maybe you’re worried about your product being too complicated for them to sell. But if that was your concern, we would say that it still comes back to training and good scripts. Take the time to foresee the types of questions you’d expect to come up and set your VA up to be able to answer that. Even if they can’t perfectly address all questions, it doesn’t hurt to set up a system where they can get in contact with an expert on your team in a follow up call. If you have any other doubts, be sure to contact us to see if we can address your concerns.
Other ‘What If’s Most Virtual Assistants are located overseas, for example, in the Philippines, and that might make you worried about their phone connection and reliability. The thing is, the internet is a wonderful service that can be used to effectively make calls and make some fantastic new leads. What about your existing salesperson? Having a VA doesn’t mean you’re making their role redundant or that you’d be kicking them out. Your VA will help scale up your existing staff by letting them focus on more difficult or sensitive leads that would require their expertise. If you have any additional questions about how this process can work, feel free to get in contact with anyone from the Outsourcing Angel team and we can work through your questions one by one. We can also provide scripts and templates for your Outsourcing Angel VA to work effectively in a range of different processes. Overall, we’d really encourage you to put away the negative mind-set that something can never work for you or that it sounds too difficult. Be optimistic and stop letting these great opportunities slip away.
“How can a VA help me make more sales?” This is the question on everyone’s mind. There are plenty of people who think this is impossible, but we’re here to explain how it is very much possible. Especially for those in service type businesses, so make sure to read until the end.
Why Do I Get a VA To Do This? When it comes to business, it’s impossible for the business owner to be available all the time to make sales personally. On the other hand, you can make a VA available pretty much all the time. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you can get your VA to be doing all the work, but don’t underestimate the value that you can get from contacting your new leads immediately. In our experience, chasing a lead relentlessly isn’t as remotely effective as making a quick initial contact. It’s probably something we can relate to as consumers as well. That company that gets back to you in under an hour is probably much more enticing than the one that kept you on hold for an entire week. For this reason alone, it’s the quick response rate that a VA achieves that creates a way of gaining more sales easily.
What Not to Do If there is one thing that we’d recommend avoiding, it would be to delegate cold calling to your VA while you’re absent. Sending them out there with a script might be okay for regenerating sales, but it’s incredibly difficult to build the rapport required for new leads, and it will be near impossible to revisit these lost opportunities. To generate leads, get them booked in and leave it in the hands of your salesperson or for yourself if that’s your system.
What Works Well Now that you know that your VA can help you generate sales, let’s dig into what works well. We’ve actually seen some people do extremely well by just doing these three things, so have a good read.
1. Contact New Leads (Call, Email, and SMS) When a new lead comes into your business, you might have a name, an email and a phone number. What we’d recommend doing is following up with a call straight away. If they answer, the VA will speak with them and book them in to speak with yourself or any other appropriate salesperson depending on your lead’s role or business. It’s often useful to send out an email to go with it that has testimonials and proof of services, and this will often be a smart way to book them in. If you don’t manage to get into contact with them immediately, sending them an SMS with a Calendly or your chosen appointment booking service will give them the opportunity to book themselves in through there. Covering these three angles is a fantastic way of lifting your response rate of new leads that come into the business and easily get times booked in. It’s challenging for people to answer the phone these days with all the work they’re doing, so these diverse approaches save you from constantly ringing them up and gives them the opportunity to get into contact with you on their own time.
2. Live Chat We do this on Outsourcing Angel’s website, so take a look if you haven’t already. Live chats are useful for people that often come in with a question that isn’t featured on the site. Having a Virtual Assistant behind the live chat gives your potential leads a quick way to communicate with your team and it is often their avenue of choice for small questions. The more ways your potential clients have to communicate with you, the more likely they will become your next sale.
3. Contact Old Leads This is something that many businesses don’t do enough and it gives some great success – and that is, to contact old leads. Businesses will generate plenty of leads over their lifetime, and not all of them will eventuate into clients. They’ll have many different reasons for not signing on with you, but that doesn’t mean that they have permanently crossed you out. Don’t harass them immediately after they’ve decided to give your business a pass. After an appropriate period of time has gone by for things to change, maybe 3 months or so, try to get into contact with them another time. Find out if they are still interested in your service and if there is anything you can help them with. Because this is different from cold calling and your leads have already expressed interest in your service, this is a task perfect to be given to your VAs to push your lead generation and make more sales.
What YOU Need To Do There are only two things you’ll need to do to get your VA improving your sales.
1. Prepare Scripts Our recommendation is to simply go through your email to see what you or your salespersons have done in the past and make a template from there. Also, make sure to mentally revisit the kind of workflow you’ve tended to follow and document that for your VA to use. Ideally, account for different scenarios so that your VA is prepared for all typical situations. For example, if you want to book a lead into a meeting – this is the flow we normal use. If they ask about our standard services or perks, this is what you should be explaining. Taking the time to prepare scripts for your VA will ensure that they’re able to effectively communicate with your leads.
2. Train Your VA The second thing you’ll need to do is train your Virtual Assistant and give them some practice. Nobody wakes up as an expert in sales or communicating with leads, so give your VA the chance to hone their skills and improve. Our recommendation is to simulate calls with your VA and go through trial runs before letting them work directly with your leads. This will also give you the confidence in what they’re doing since you’ll have already seen and approved their quality of work.
What If? You might still have doubts about the effectiveness of a VA for sales for various reasons. Maybe you’re worried about your product being too complicated for them to sell. But if that was your concern, we would say that it still comes back to training and good scripts. Take the time to foresee the types of questions you’d expect to come up and set your VA up to be able to answer that. Even if they can’t perfectly address all questions, it doesn’t hurt to set up a system where they can get in contact with an expert on your team in a follow up call. If you have any other doubts, be sure to contact us to see if we can address your concerns.
Other ‘What If’s Most Virtual Assistants are located overseas, for example, in the Philippines, and that might make you worried about their phone connection and reliability. The thing is, the internet is a wonderful service that can be used to effectively make calls and make some fantastic new leads. What about your existing salesperson? Having a VA doesn’t mean you’re making their role redundant or that you’d be kicking them out. Your VA will help scale up your existing staff by letting them focus on more difficult or sensitive leads that would require their expertise. If you have any additional questions about how this process can work, feel free to get in contact with anyone from the Outsourcing Angel team and we can work through your questions one by one. We can also provide scripts and templates for your Outsourcing Angel VA to work effectively in a range of different processes. Overall, we’d really encourage you to put away the negative mind-set that something can never work for you or that it sounds too difficult. Be optimistic and stop letting these great opportunities slip away.
