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Laura Nicole: 0:02

Welcome to Your Virtual Assistant Coach, the podcast for moms who want to make money from home on their own terms. I'm your host, Laura Nicole, a successful six-figure earning VA and coach who replaced my college professor's salary in just five months back in 2020 after my daughter was born, and I have never looked back. I'm here to help you build a profitable, flexible VA business that fits into your family's lives so you no longer feel like you're living just to work. Let's dive in.

Laura Nicole: 0:33

I totally understand that it can be so tempting to want to drop your rates or make concessions the second that a potential client hesitates about signing and working together. But I want to give you a smarter option, one that works for both you and the client, because dropping your rates just to try to get somebody to sign to work with you is honestly the last thing. It's the last thing that you want to do. And the reason that lowering your rates is not the right move is because it sets the wrong precedent right from the get-go at the very beginning of this new working relationship. It devalues your time before you even start working together, right? You're already making concessions, you're already not holding boundaries, and it can make it a hell of a lot harder and more awkward to try to raise your rates later when you already were so quick to drop your rates. Now that doesn't mean that there's absolutely no wiggle room in your rates.

Laura Nicole: 1:35

I just had this conversation with one of the women in my group coaching container, the superstar accelerator, and we were talking about how if you are chatting with a potential client who is just your absolute dream client, there's so much room for growth with them, and you feel really strongly about wanting to work with them, you can negotiate rates with them, right? But you always want to have like your hard line that you're not gonna go below. And it's usually a very small amount, right? So maybe if your initial rates are $35 an hour, then the lowest you're gonna go is $30 an hour. You're not gonna be like, oh, I can do 25. I can do 20. So there's a difference between negotiating because you feel a strong connection with someone and you think this is really worth doing that negotiation and making it work for both of you because of the long-term potential compared to simply dropping your rates out of honestly desperation of like, oh my God, okay, if I lower my rates, then they'll sign and then I'll have a client and then I can make money. There's a really big difference in that, right? And a lot of times the reason that clients hesitate about signing a VA actually isn't even the finances.

Laura Nicole: 2:49

In some cases, yes, they have a specific budget, but honestly, a lot of times it's kind of more of a control thing. Maybe they've had a VA in the past who just actually wasn't good. And so now they're a little hesitant, or maybe they've never brought an assistant on and they've done it by themselves all this time. And so the idea of actually handing things off to somebody else is scary to them. So I do not want you to drop your rates out of that desperation of how can I keep them? How can I sign them? How can I keep this moving forward?

Laura Nicole: 3:20

Instead, what you can offer is a trial period. So for this trial period, you're not lowering your rates, especially not lower than your negotiation number, right? So per that previous example, if you started at 35, your hard line bottom is 30. You're not going below that for the trial because the trial period in and of itself, that is the risk reducer for the client because they're not locking in to months of working together, right? It's hey, let's do this for 30 days and see how things are going, right? And that actually works for both of you because it gives both you and the client a chance to actually assess how y'all fit together and how you work together.

Laura Nicole: 4:02

But it often feels way less scary to a client, especially again if they've never had a VA before or if they've had a bad prior experience, to say, like, okay, yes, let's do a month and let's test it out and let's see how it goes. And then we'll revisit at the end of those 30 days and decide how we want to move forward. So you get to keep your rates intact. It positions you as being confident and professional. And it shows that you care about the relationship, the working relationship, not just the sale, right? Not just signing the client to make the money.

Laura Nicole: 4:35

And an example of how you could bring this option up to a potential client, whether this is on a discovery call or maybe y'all are, you know, DMing or messaging back and forth after a discovery call is something as simple as, hey, I totally understand wanting to make sure that this is the right fit. I do offer a short-term trial period of 30 days with new clients so that we can both get a feel for the workflow and our working relationship and make sure that it's a good match. I do charge my regular rate for this trial period and then we'll revisit at the end of it and decide what our next steps will be. So again, even with a trial period, we still want to be putting our initial full rate up front. And if they push back on that, then you have that little negotiation wiggle room, but we're not giving like a 25% discount for the trial period or a 50% discount for the trial period. Because again, the actual fact that it is a trial period and they're not locking into a long-term contract, that piece is the risk reducer for them.

Laura Nicole: 5:34

And if you're not sure how to even price your services or what to say and these kind of combos or what to say to even pitch a potential client to get to the point that you're having this kind of conversation, those are exactly the things that I teach you inside of my full program, the Superstar Assistant Academy. And you can find all the details about that down in the show notes.

Laura Nicole: 5:55

Thanks for hanging out with me today on your virtual assistant coach. If you love this episode, be sure to share it with your best friend, your sister, or even your favorite coworker who you know wants to start making a flexible income. I'll see you all next time.