Recently a joblead came through the Virtually Yours Network and the client provided a bulletpoint list of questions for applicants. 

Although I imagine that some VAs would have been turned off by the list, I actually thought it was an excellent list of questions to help the client filter out the best responses for her.

Here's what she asked them to do:

• Go check out my Instagram and website and get a feel for my personality and my business offering.

• Briefly tell me about your online business experience. How long have you been an VA, what sort of businesses have you worked with, and how have you made a difference to the owner’s life.

• Please list the software programs/systems you’ve had experience with before (in particular, your experience with each of the ones I’ve listed above).

• Tell me what parts of your previous online business VA roles you’ve loved the most.

• Tell me what part of my services stood out to you the most?

• Why do you think you’re the right fit to be my left-hand person?

• What do you currently charge for your services and how do you structure your packages?

• What is your timezone and what is your availability (days/hours)? {Please note I need someone who can work at least 5 hours per week for me}

• Given your current clients/workload, how will you fit me in to make me feel like a priority?

• Anything else you’d like me to know about you?

Seeing a list like this may have felt overwhelming for some but I was excited! Why? Because you should ALWAYS do this when responding to jobleads. She just plotted it out for you!

Here's an opportunity to show the client that you care about their business while also setting some boundaries - letting her know upfront what you love to work on, what your availability is, your pricing and your current workload.

Getting this out of the way from the get go is helpful to both parties and will save you a lot of angst down the road.

I'm sharing it here today because if you're proactive and want to secure the right leads, you should be copying and pasting the list above and using it as your response template.

Of course there's more to a successful application than simply answering the above questions - your tone, your follow up process and your wording are all really important too. If you want tips on how to improve those make sure you check out the Responding to Jobleads eBook written by Monique Eddy and myself - you'll notice a different straight away once you start implementing the steps!

How have you gone with responding to leads? Do you feel confident or is it scary as hell?