No. A small word, two letters, but exceedingly powerful when used in the right way. If you don’t say it, you’ll spend your entire working life being walked all over, feeling miserable, not earning enough money to live off and constantly letting people down. “Really?” you ask. Yes, really. So you do the client-dance. You meet, he tells you he may have need of your services, you explain what you can do, he asks for your rates… And then it all goes quiet. As a good VA, you follow it up and he says “Hm… It just seemed very expensive – I’d only usually pay £7.50/hour for this sort of work.”
Now unless you know how to say no, you’ll end up working at bargain basement prices all the hours under the sun (and some under the stars too!) and never making enough to make ends meet…
But what do you say to turn “No” into a positive?
- No – I need to charge at least £X per hour because it allows me to continue offering adhoc hours so I can make sure I’m still in business when you next need some work doing.
- No – you may be used to paying a temp £7.50/hour, but I’m a professional and will be able to complete your task much faster/to a better quality than someone charging less. Pay peanuts, get monkeys!
- No – but feel free to come back to me if you have any problems though – I often find that when someone is charging a really low rate they aren’t able to offer the back up or continuity that I can offer.
- No – but I can offer you a discounted rate if you buy X number of hours in advance and pay upfront. A proportion of our hourly rate is built in to offset the costs of debt collection and project management on a piecemeal basis – if you’re able to give me the work upfront and pay in advance I can discount it for you (obviously if this applies to your basic rate!!)
Anyone else got a great way of turning NO into a positive?