Email, for Virtual Assistants, is often our first point of contact with potential clients. It works like an amabassador for our businesses.
Many experienced VAs, like myself, get a lot of emails from would-be VAs wanting to get work outsourced to them, or wanting to find out if they can work with us as a sub-contractor or similar. We are, in effect, a potential client for them.
So it concerns me considerably when they don’t take care to read their emails properly before hitting send, correcting any obvious errors. Nor do many of them sign off their emails properly either.
It doesn’t take a great deal to take a deep breath, read through the email carefully, correct any grammatical or spelling errors, and then make sure the email is signed off before sending it on its way.
Poorly written or constructed emails will be an immediate turn-off for those whom they are contacting. The same applies for any networking forums they belong to online. The way they communicate via the forums gives others an idea of whether they could work with them. The written form of communication has become very important in the way business is run online these days. If you are unable to communicate properly via email you stand to lose opportunities for work simply because the recipient won’t have any confidence in your abilities – irrespective of whether word-processing is one of your service offerings or not.
I know that many say they can copy type accurately but I do believe/feel that if that is the case, then they should have learnt something from the copy typing they’ve done in the past. Take time with your written communications and you’ll find you will be rewarded.
In some countries the day is written first and the month second, and in others the month first and then the day.
