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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 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

Let's talk about something today that might sound a little bit intimidating, or maybe even a lot a bit intimidating for some of you, and that is discovery calls. Now, if you're new to the virtual assistant world, you might be thinking to yourself, like Laura, what the hell even is a discovery call? Is that like a job interview? Is someone going to be quizzing me? So here's the deal. Okay, a discovery call is a short, typically Zoom call. Sometimes you might just do it on the phone, but a lot of times it's a video call where you and a potential client hop on for 20, maybe 30 minutes to talk to each other and see if working together would be a good fit or not. It's not super formal or scary. It is just a chance for you both to ask each other questions, learn about what the client really needs help with, share how you could support them and, honestly, it's really just a solid chance for y'all to interact and communicate and see if you vibe together. If you're already sweating the idea of having to do a discovery call, don't worry. In this episode I'm going to walk you through exactly how to calm your nerves and feel prepared so that you can actually enjoy these conversations.

Laura Nicole: 1:47

First things first. I want to give you a little more insight into what that discovery call actually is. Okay, so I had mentioned they're quicker calls, they're on the shorter side, usually between 15 and 30 minutes, and most often they're on a Zoom. Sometimes you might do it on the phone, but honestly, I recommend having a video call because there's just a different level of connection that you can make with a potential client when y'all can actually see each other right and like see your body language. It makes, honestly, a really big difference and the overarching purpose of having discovery calls is to see if you and a potential client are a fit for each other. Notice, I said a fit for each other, not just if you're a good fit for them. A discovery call. Y'all is not a job interview Okay. It is a mutual fit check. You are seeing if the potential client aligns with who you want to be supporting, just as much as the potential client is seeing if you are someone that would be a good fit on their team.

Laura Nicole: 2:48

The main goal of a discovery call is to create connection and get clarity for both parties on what this working relationship could look like. The goal of a discovery call is not to be perfect and have every single answer. Is not to be perfect and have every single answer. It's truly to see how y'all align and how you interact and if this is someone you would want to move forward working with. And that's not to say that it's not nerve-wracking. I'm not telling you not to feel nervous or not to have those butterflies in your stomach, because we're freaking human and that's going to happen.

Laura Nicole: 3:24

Typically, the reason that women get so nervous for these calls, especially if it's the first one or the first couple that you've done, is that you either haven't ever done one before or you still just feel like it's such a new experience and situation for you to be in. So, yeah, high nerves. Of course they're going to be there. You also may be feeling pressure to sell yourself, and if you have been in my space for any amount of time, you know that I do not ever want you to be selling yourself. I want you to be focused on making connection, and so when you go into these conversations and focus on the connection aspect and really genuinely having conversation to see how you could support this potential client, that's going to be how you avoid having that feeling like you're selling yourself to them.

Laura Nicole: 4:13

I coach so many women literally hundreds of women in this process, and something that gets brought up a lot when we're talking about discovery calls is that women are afraid of being asked something that they don't know right. Same as we would feel if we were going into a job interview. What if they ask me something I don't have the answer to Number one? It's totally fine to not have every single answer I don't ever have every single answer when I'm on a discovery call but what's important in those situations is how you handle it. Do you just say I don't know, or do you say you know? That's not something I'm familiar with at the moment, but I would be happy to do research on it and get back to you. Do you see the difference there? Right, One of those answers is just kind of giving up and the other answer is showing them that you're proactive and a problem solver and that you're going to go figure your shit out, which means that you're taking a situation where you might not know the answer to the question and you're actually using it to showcase your soft skills that are going to be insanely valuable to that potential client.

Laura Nicole: 5:18

And I know I know from my own experience and also from my years of coaching is that these conversations can feel really high stakes right, especially when it's the first one. If you've been networking for a month or two and you finally get a discovery call, we tend to put that discovery call into a choke hold and put so much pressure on it because we don't want to blow it. But what I want to reassure you of is that if you prepare ahead of time which we're going to talk about in a second and you go into it with a positive attitude, prepared and ready to make a genuine connection with a client, you really can't blow it. Maybe y'all will discover that you're not the best fit to work together, and that's okay because I promise you there will be other potential clients and other discovery calls that arise for you in the future. So the nerves are undoubtedly going to pop up right, but I have some mindset shift tools for you that will help to change everything and make you feel more confident going into these calls.

Laura Nicole: 6:20

Number one you are not begging for work, right, you're not selling yourself. You're not being car salesman-y. You are a service provider who has a service that you can offer to this potential client that they need in their business. So show up with genuine excitement about how stoked you are at the opportunity to support them in their business. Number two you're not auditioning. This is not an interview. You are collaborating with this person. They are not going to be your boss, they are going to be your client. So when you're walking into a discovery call, I need you to hear me say this right now, and then I need you to remember it the potential client does not hold all of the cards. Okay, you hold half the deck and they hold half the deck.

Laura Nicole: 7:12

There is a very real chance that you could go into a discovery call super excited about a client and then y'all talk in real time for 30 minutes and you're like, um, no, nope, either that person's not really what I thought they were going to be. Their business isn't quite what I understood it to be, or the things they want me to do are things that I'm not willing to do, or maybe my price point and my rate is just out of their budget, and we can't compromise and find a happy middle ground, and you could be the one saying no to them just as much as they could be the one to say no to you. They are there to hire someone and you are there to offer a service if, and only if, y'all are a good fit together, and you have to feel that in your bones, because this is your business, this is your income, this is your livelihood, or your supplemental income to your main livelihood. So you get to ask questions too. You have control of the situation too, and these clients are coming into these discovery calls. They want to hire somebody that they like and they trust, not somebody who is perfect and won't ever mess up and has every single answer ready to go.

Laura Nicole: 8:27

So please, consciously sit down and force yourself to actually reel back and scale down the level of pressure that you're putting on yourself and instead just focus on being excited at getting to explore this connection and having a conversation with this potential client. In addition to that, though, I do need you to do some prep ahead of time. I want you to know how you're going to introduce yourself and your services right. There's a good chance that, before y'all even get on this discovery call, you've been chatting somewhere, whether that's in a Facebook group or in the DMs on Instagram, or you were connected to them by a mutual friend. So it's very likely that you're getting on this call because you guys have had some level of communication. But I want you to have your list of services there and ready to go Along with at least two to three questions that you're going to ask them. Right.

Laura Nicole: 9:26

We don't want to show up and just hope that, like they run the call because, again, this is not an interview and just hope that, like they run the call because, again, this is not an interview you are figuring out if this is a client you want to spend your very precious time and energy supporting, so have some questions ready for them. A couple examples that come to mind are asking them, like what tasks are taking up most of their time right now, or what thing do they have to do in their business that they would be so happy to not have to do ever again. Asking them what level of support are they hoping to find, how much help do they think that they need? And I always like to ask if they've worked with a VA before or not, because that will really affect my onboarding process with someone and it gives me some insight into how much I will need to kind of educate this potential client around what this working relationship looks like and also will get me to be able to start thinking about. Do I want to introduce a trial period option? Right? Because sometimes if someone's never had a VA before, that can be super helpful. But have at least two or three questions written down. Sometimes those questions will just come up naturally in the conversation and y'all will talk about it, but if not, toward the end of the conversation you can bring up the questions that you had written down that are not yet answered.

Laura Nicole: 10:42

I also want you to have your rate very clear. You need to know what you're charging and how you're charging, whether you're doing hourly, a bundle of hours, a package, a retainer. You need to know your rates and I typically go into discovery calls with the rate that I'm going to bring to the table. But then I also have a number in the back of my mind that is slightly lower. That's like my negotiating number. So if I go in with a client and I'm telling them that my rate is $60 an hour, that's going to be what I bring up in conversation when rates first arise. But if they push back on that at all, I know in the back of my mind I'm willing to go as low as 55, but that's my cutoff point. I always want you to know your worth and know your value. But that doesn't mean that you cannot ever negotiate or come to a compromise on your rates with these potential clients, and a lot of times these discovery calls are where those rates get discussed, or at least where the discussion of rates begins.

Laura Nicole: 11:47

I also want you to have your quote unquote next step ready. Right, we never know exactly how a discovery call is going to go until we're on it, but I want you to go into a call having an idea of what you think would be your likely next step sending over a proposal, scheduling a follow up. That way at the end of the conversation you have an idea of kind of how you're going to lay it out for them, for what will be the next thing coming? Oh, one important thing I can't believe I almost forgot Before you go into these calls, I also need you to do some research. Okay, I had mentioned previously that I want you to be prepared. I want you to do a bit of a deep dive into this potential client's business. Obviously, you're going to have at least some idea, right, because you're getting on this call with them. But I want you to take it one step further. Go through their Instagram, go through their website, listen to a couple podcast episodes, if they have one. Get really clear on what they offer, who they serve, what is their business mission. Have an idea of how they deliver in their business, right, Is it a course? Is it coaching? Is it a physical product? You want to have a really good knowledge of their business so that you can speak intelligently about their business on their call with them. Speak intelligently about their business on their call with them. Again, this is just going to be highlighting for your potential client exactly how thorough and detailed and how much you really get into the nitty gritty and pay attention.

Laura Nicole: 13:25

I just had a discovery call last week with a potential new client who, prior to setting up this discovery call, I actually wasn't super familiar with her business. I found her as part of me implementing my networking strategy on Instagram and going out and seeking business owners who fit the ideal client that I want to work with, and so, before I got on this call with her, I took not an incredible amount of time, maybe 20 or 30 minutes I pulled up a Google Doc on my computer and then I did my deep dive and I took actual notes from her website what are her offerings, what is her price range, what's her background, what are her accolades? She had something available I could listen to, so I sat and listened to that for 10 minutes to have an idea of who she really is. And so when I got on that call with her, I wasn't expecting her or needing her to lay everything out for me and explain to me what her business was and how I operated, because I did my due diligence.

Laura Nicole: 14:23

Not only y'all is that going to impress your potential clients, it's also going to make you feel more confident because you're going to have just more knowledge about what y'all are talking about, some other ways that you can also calm your nerves. It's also going to make you feel more confident because you're going to have just more knowledge about what y'all are talking about. Some other ways that you can also calm your nerves are remembering that your nerves are just a mix of excitement in the unfamiliar territory and that they are totally freaking normal. Again, it would be like a little bit weird if you didn't have any nerves around hopping on a discovery call, but I need you to reframe it that you're chatting with someone who might need help, that you are building a connection with a potential client and also reminding yourself that you are just as much in control of this situation as they are. If you want, you can write yourself a simple checklist or an outline.

Laura Nicole: 15:12

Don't go into it winging it right. Have your questions, have your plan for afterward, have your research on their business, and just have it written down next to you or in a separate tab on your computer that you can switch over to quickly if you need to glance at it While you're on the call. Smile, breathe, take pauses. You're allowed to slow down and I also want to make a very important point here that no decision has to be made by either party by the end of a discovery call. It is totally fine for you and the potential client to leave the discovery call without having even decided if you're going to work together or if you both love each other and you know you want to work together. But you don't have time to really hash out all the details of services and rates. That is okay.

Laura Nicole: 15:57

Y'all can have more conversations, and I don't know if you had listened to the episode where my daughter came on, but if you haven't yet, I recommend checking it out. I think it's episode five, but she made a really good point in that episode about how practice makes perfect and that we all need to use our practice power. In the situation of discovery calls. Practice is not going to make perfect because guess what, you don't need to be freaking perfect, but practice is going to equal confidence. The more of these calls you do, the more confident you will feel going into them. And just remember that every call is progress. Every call is a step forward in building your VA business, even if it doesn't result in a client.

Laura Nicole: 16:40

I would absolutely love to hear from you, and hear from you directly, about what your favorite tip was from this episode and what you either plan on implementing before your next discovery call, or maybe you've listened and already implemented it and you want to tell me about what worked best and what really helped you.

Laura Nicole: 16:59

Either way, I would genuinely love to hear from y'all, and we have a really fun, cool new way that we can do that. If you look down in the show notes, underneath where this episode is playing, you will see on the very top line that there is a clickable link that says send us a text to share your biggest takeaway from this episode. If you click on that, you're going to be able to actually send a text directly to me, but don't worry, I don't like actually see your phone number. It's just such a cool way to be able to get feedback from y'all on what you're enjoying about the show and what has been helpful to you. So please pop down and go send us a text.

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.