You do you

From Twitter, @scottpalmer tweeted: "Knee-jerk support interactions aren't effective for me - but they're still the norm. Do they work? Do cookie cutter answers satisfy anyone?"

My response? “Cookie cutter answers, like cookie cutter people who can't think critically for themselves/have no power, & satisfy no one."

When Scott tweeted this, I connected some dots that weren’t there, and I’m now happily blogging about them.

He, clearly, is talking about customer support—probably from people in call centers. My brain, OTOH, moved directly to Virtual Assistants, and how what he said applies here, too.

In our case, it’s more that soooooo many VAs sound alike. Randomly compare a couple VA sites and you’ll likely see what I mean.

I’m guilty of supporting that, to a degree; in the Virtual Training Program at AssistU, we want to make sure that our trainees are prepared, soup to nuts, to strongly start their new VA practices, so we give them some great language to use for a variety of circumstances, and we share some marketing materials they are free to customize and use in their practices.

What I know is that, when starting something new, it’s impossible to have great language for those situations, and there's next to no way to create truly unique marketing pieces, because there’s not enough knowledge or experience to do so.

So copying, or mimicking, or using templates are all very good ideas for newbies, because it gives them a way to make a strong start, and a way to think about working into having their own thoughts about those same topics. The problem I’ve seen is that many far more senior VAs are still copying, mimicking, and using templates--whether AU VAs who have gotten them from us, or non AU VAs who have gotten them elsewhere. What’s up with that?

In conversations with VAs over the years, some have told me they can’t think of how to express things better (the “why reinvent the wheel” argument). Others have said they know they should come up with their own stuff, but can’t get around to it (the “I’m too busy to worry about my presence” argument). Still others say their PCs seems to like what they read and they don’t see why they should change it (the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” argument). None of them hold water. Really.

Be yourself. Speak for yourself. Do you. Everyone else is already taken.

Bit O’Moxie: If you’ve been in your business for more than a year, you really owe it to yourself, your VA colleagues, and the client population to find your own voice and talk about what you do and offer in your own unique way. Continuing to copy, mimic, or use templates makes you look untutored, and unable to critically think for yourself. And while that may be fine for a newbie, that’s absolutely the wrong way to go for you.

Comments

[Shane Bowlin]

Great topic!
Once during a new client "interview" the potential client asked me "Why do all the VAs I talked to sound alike. Everyone is trying to convince me that they're different, but it doesn't sound that way." From that moment on, I made sure I sounded "different."