As a virtual assistant, you are responsible for your own time. You decide how much time you spend working and how many clients you can handle. You are also in charge of finding work for yourself and writing your own virtual assistant proposal. While this is liberating in a lot of ways, the challenge to stand out in an already populated industry and find work which matches your skill sets is one of the biggest concerns as a freelancer.
To be able to market yourself to clients as someone who is capable, you need to write a strong virtual assistant proposal. Writing a sample proposal for a virtual assistant is relatively easy. Creating one that actually wins you the job is the hard part. With so much competition, how do you make yours stand out?
A good proposal defines the services that will be provided in a professional and comprehensive way and should give the client a feeling that you will provide a high-quality output. This feeling will allow you to charge higher rates for the work to be done. Therefore, it is important that your proposal shows that:
- You understand the needs, goals, and ideas of the client;
- You consider all wishes and ideas from the client;
- You offer the client the best possible alternative with the best quality
TIPS ON HOW TO WRITE A VIRTUAL ASSISTANT PROPOSAL WHICH WILL GET YOU THE JOB
Read And Comprehend The Job Description
The first and most important step to writing is to pay attention to the needs of your client and the job description. To do that, you have to pay a lot of attention to how a project is described. Here, every word matters and a thorough reading should be done. You cannot write a virtual assistant proposal unless you truly understand what your client wants.
Follow instructions and make sure you meet the requirements before you even begin to draft your virtual assistant proposal. Otherwise, clients will reject it from the start.
Sometimes the description sounds incomplete or difficult to understand, so feel free to ask questions. Most clients will appreciate this since it means you are attentive to details. Then, when you write your virtual assistant proposal, match your list of skills, experience, and expertise to their requirements.
Identify Your Strengths
Yes, the blank page can be intimidating. If you don’t know how to start, you can begin by determining your strengths.You can then use this information to find a project that resonates with you.
Knowing what your skills are will help you find jobs that you’d be a good fit for, giving your proposal a better chance of being accepted. It will also make it easier to market yourself to potential clients.
List strengths that fit the project. Do not include irrelevant skills. Furthermore, don’t just list the things you are good at, prove it. Include examples, like situations, which highlight a skill you have and how it can be useful.
Most big companies get a lot of proposals when listing a project. Therefore, a good start is crucial. If your first couple of sentences are unappealing or flat out boring, you are likely to get sorted out very quickly. Forget about standardized beginnings.
Try to grab the attention of the client and show them that you are perfect for the job from the very first lines. Maybe you can come up with a slogan or a quote for yourself or express your interest and enthusiasm in a specific way – remember not to deviate too much from the style of the project description.
Study Your Client
No matter what type of freelance position you are applying for, your proposal should always reflect the client. In order to do this, you need to dig deeper into their organization. By researching potential clients before writing your proposal, you will gain more insight and ideas into their unique needs and requirements.
Find the answer to the following questions:
- Who is the client?
- Who is the client’s audience?
- What is the client’s brand?
- What is the client’s mission?
- What are the client’s work ethics, and how do they value their employees?
- How do you fit in?
Use these questions to draft a virtual assistant proposal that speaks clearly to your client.
Keep Your Virtual Assistant Proposal Short And Concise
Your virtual assistant proposal doesn’t need to be lengthy as long as it confirms you understand the problem and shows that you can solve it. Always aim for brief, clean, and concise writing. Typically, everything you need can be expressed in three short paragraphs.
Clients don’t have the time to read lengthy proposals with details that are unrelated to their challenges. Long proposals may not convince anyone, as almost no one will take the time to read them.
Reduce the word count by using strong verbs or removing unnecessary words. Write in short paragraphs with two to three sentences. Don’t forget to include well-spaced and properly labeled sections. Creating breaks will make the text more accessible and more comfortable to read.
Create A Virtual Assistant Proposal Template
If your proposal isn’t well-crafted, it won’t get you jobs. When time becomes an issue, many freelancers, especially beginners, resort to copied and pasted digital marketing resume templates to save time writing proposals. While this method may save many hours of creating and writing, you may start skipping the job description and applying robotically. This is not a good idea because every client and job are unique. Clients themselves can easily spot a pre-made proposal because it usually fails to connect with their needs on a deeper level.
A virtual assistant proposal template is not a good idea when you use them hastily but if you edit, revise and adjust them the right way, it will save you lots of time and you can use them to apply to more jobs.
Now what is a virtual assistant proposal template? Proposal template for virtual assistant is an outline that you can modify or edit according to the demands or requirements of the client. This will be your best weapon when writing proposals for a large number of different jobs.
Keep in mind the keyword here: Edit. Some freelancers make the crucial mistake of submitting a generic template to a client. Many of these organizations have been around for years. They also receive a lot of proposals daily and can spot a template when they see one.
Not editing your virtual assistant proposal template will immediately give the wrong impression. It can be even worse if it contains another organization’s name and information. How do you create a winning virtual assistant proposal with a template? Usually, it includes the following parts:
- Overview of the client’s job description and expected outcomes based on your process and expertise
- Your name (or your organization)
- Information about you (e.g., work experience, expertise, skills)
- Contact information
- Work sample
- The step-by-step process you will use to complete the project
- The expected completion date of the project
- Terms and conditions
- Fee summary
Within the first sentence, you want to show you’ve read their job posting. This is super important. It’s more important than your name even. Tons of proposals start like this: “Hi, my name is Ben and I’m a ________”. They don’t care. That’s boring and is done by mostly everybody. Talking about their needs and their job posting before talking about yourself is also powerful because it immediately shows them you’ve read and understood the job description.
You can start like this instead: “Hi. I just read your job posting and it sounds like you need ________”. This is so much better, and if you make this single change, you’ll get more job interviews, I guarantee it.
The next part should be your name and your organization if you belong to one. Include relevant information about you such as your work experience, expertise and skills. Write also your contact information so the client can reach you if they feel the need to contact you.
Include work samples before the process flow as they support your intended outcomes and give the client more idea about your skills and expertise. Include the expected project completion date if applicable.
The fee summary is placed at the end since your proposal should focus more on your value than on the price. Note, however, that if the client sets a budget, strive hard to stick to it.
How many virtual assistant proposal templates should you create? It depends but three or more are recommended. You can make one for every niche or expertise you have. The more virtual assistant proposal templates you have for each skill or expertise, the better so you only have to adjust and edit some parts of it.
You can try and test virtual assistant proposal templates you created and figure out which one generates the most replies from clients. This will be the virtual assistant proposal you should use often.
Review Your Virtual Assistant Proposal Before Submission
Make it a habit to review your virtual assistant proposal before submission to make sure it is free of error. Double-check the following:
- Job description and requirements;
- Facts such as dates, names, figures and claims;
- Links (make sure they’re working)
- Spelling, grammar, punctuation, and capitalization. There is nothing worse than spelling and grammatical errors in an offer. Keep in mind that most non-human spell checkers are not foolproof. Do it yourself; don’t rely on autocorrect.
Follow Up With Potential Client
After submitting your virtual assistant proposal, you may become anxious waiting for the client’s reply or update. If possible, follow up with the potential client if you don’t hear from them in a while. Write a follow-up email or call to ask if they have read over your proposal and let them know you are happy to discuss anything they need.
MISTAKES TO AVOID WHEN CREATING A VIRTUAL ASSISTANT PROPOSAL
The benefits of a virtual assistant proposal always comes down to understanding what the job entails before starting a proposal for that project. With that said, there are a few things to avoid when submitting proposals for freelance jobs.
Don’t Make It All About You
A critical issue to avoid is talking too much about yourself and not enough about the client. Remember that clients care about solving their problems; that’s why they posted the project in the first place. Of course, you have to include your details but make it a point that your proposal contains details about your clients, their problems, and the ways that you can solve them.
Don’t Include Unnecessary Fluff
Be nice and professional. Remember, less is more! With the proposal, your goal is to give important information to the client, not just about marketing yourself. Though the client can’t physically see you, this proposal is the key to making a good first impression.
Writing unnecessary details that aren’t useful to the job runs the risk of you sounding unprofessional. Clients don’t have the time for fluff or filler. Write personalized, concise, and impactful proposals to show clients that you are someone who values their time.
Don’t Be Too Casual Or Overly Professional
How to write a virtual assistant proposal? Professionalism is always a good first impression to instill in your potential clients. Steer clear of comments or statements that attempt to be funny or entertaining. More often than not, these can have the opposite effect of what you intended. While work communication has become less formal, especially with online collaboration tools, this should not blur your vision of acceptable professional settings.
However, on the other end, being too professional can sometimes do more harm than good. Many freelancers think that they have to sound extremely formal in their pitches to appear knowledgeable and competent. But this actually can hurt their chances of getting an interview. Being overly professional might rub off clients the wrong way and give the impression that you’re stiff and hard to connect with personally.
To avoid these two extremes, finding the middle ground is the best go-to to ensure you connect with the client in the best possible way. Remember that anything you write will always give an impression, and you want to make sure that it’s a good one.
Conclusion
Virtual assistants are the modern-day superheroes of the professional realm. These highly skilled and trained professionals offer remote support, giving business owners and entrepreneurs the power to delegate tasks and free up valuable time for themselves. Learning how to write a convincing proposal is one of the best ways to increase the numbers of freelance jobs you’ll land. Follow the tips listed in here to get more responses and interview requests.
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