Denise Cagan: Opportunities of the Remote Business!

About Denise Cagan: Denise Cagan is the Founder of DCA Virtual Business Support. Her company offers VASuperheros, social media management, graphic design, and website support for growing businesses. Denise Cagan started her first company while still working as a QA Manager at Coca-Cola. After a year of doing both, she moved on to become a full-time business owner at DiCi Services. She grew DiCi for 10 years, selling it in 2011. At that time, Denise established a second and third company. Only one of these remains today which is her current business. She attributes her success in navigating the business world to her strong operational and management style and being an incredible business advisor. Denise graduated from James Madison University with a BS in Quality Systems Development. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Denise.

 

In this episode, Nancy and Denise discuss the following:

• Denise’s definition of a VA superhero. 
• Recognizing the undervalued role of virtual assistants in sales.
• Overcoming entrepreneurial fear: transitioning from offline to remote business.
• Exploring accountability methods for successful remote work. 
• The rewards of having a remote staff.
• Reviewing potential pitfalls associated with remote work.
• The advantages to the business owner of having a remote staff.

Key Takeaways: 

 

• In the world of Executive Assistant, KPIs are a little bit hard to come up with.
• When you're doing it by yourself, it's so much simpler, but when you have a team, it becomes less simple.
• We have mental health benefits because, without that, I'm sure you know that if people aren't doing well outside of work, they're going to carry that into work.
• When people come to us for services, when they try to negotiate less than our six-month minimum, they're not fit, and I try to very politely tell them that they're not.
• Keep asking questions.

" VA has a few names that people recognize: virtual assistant, executive assistant, virtual executive assistant, virtual office assistant. A VA superhero is somebody who comes in and basically takes things off the plate of a business owner, a CEO, the president of the company, or someone in the C-suite. So, you're busy, you've got day-to-day things going on, and as you are a small business and you start growing, those to-do things become more. And that's exactly what these people do for you. Take those off your plate." – DENISE

"We have had to guide team members on how to maximize their time. We have a very flexible schedule first off, okay, so, and we use a system for them to clock their time, so we know their time down to the second. So, one of the things is that they sometimes feel like they need to be on all the time. We explain to them, no, that's the purpose of having a flexible schedule. We don't expect you to respond in three minutes to an email because part of the prep we do is explaining to people what the response time would be. So, prepping them, and that seems like such a small thing, but that really, really goes to how they just manage their day. And if they're starting to feel burnt out because they feel like they're having to be on for all day, they're only paid for the hours they work, that's, you're going to have a lot of turnover." – DENISE

 

"The thing is that you have to be a good communicator and a good listener. It goes with anything. You have to be willing to have even the tough conversations, the ones that are not easy. Because sometimes you need to dig in and find out what they're not telling you. I know you can relate to that. And I know that because you do Conversational Selling and it's the “Who, What, Why” digging in and finding out the pain points. It's the same thing for your team members." – DENISE

Connect with Denise Cagan:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/denisecagan/
• DCA Virtual Business Support: https://dcavirtual.com/

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Connect with Nancy Calabrese: 

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• Email: leads@oneofakindsales.com