What is the number one thing holding most agents back from success?
It’s all the $10 an hour work they have to do.
I have a question for you. Are you building a business? Or building a job?
Are you spending all your time doing $10 an hour work that someone else could be handling for you, like researching leads, researching property data, finding phone numbers, or contacting leads?
Somebody else can handle these smaller tasks.
There are a bunch of websites where you can find an assistant to work for you for cheap.
Here is our list of 18 things a VA can do for you.
1. Pull Leads and Scrub Them
You can have your virtual assistant start with the typical, well-known leads, which are Expireds and FSBOs. They can help manage, pull, and prospect those leads.
Your assistant can work with Redx, which is what I recommend, to get the Expired and FSBO leads. In addition to those standard leads, they can also help you get the much easier-to-list leads like vacant homes, inherited homes, divorce homes.
All of these leads are much easier to list. A virtual assistant can do all the work to find and pull those leads for you. They can find the leads using public records.
2. Manage Your Social Media
They don't (and shouldn't) need to manage every aspect of your social media but they can repost articles or listings and make sure a steady flow of content runs through your platforms.
Have them routinely post relevant stuff to your pages a few times a week. Eventually, they could start to run Facebook ads for you.
Then you can have them leverage Instagram and start posting pictures there. For example, they can announce your new listings, or that you just sold a listing, or provide something interesting about a new listing that you secured.
3. Prospecting
If you want to have an assistant use traditional prospecting, like a script, you can have that person call and set up listing appointments for you.
I prefer to hire someone to call sellers.
The assistant can do all the work to prospect, and they can also follow the warm leads method that you recommend to prospect then set up the listing appointments for you.
4. Lead Follow Up
When you get really busy, you're not going to have time to do your own follow-up work.
Have them stay in touch, and you'll get more listings because when we're really busy, we don't have time to follow up as we need to.
Virtual Assistants can help fill in the gaps, because they're not busy going on listing appointments.
5. Prepare Seminar Materials for You
You could create a free one-hour seminar about what people need to know before buying a house so you could meet now potential clients.
This is a type of guerilla marketing technique that can establish you in an area.
Your VA could create the PowerPoint presentation, some handouts, even find and book a space to host your seminar.
6. Email and Contact Old Clients
Referrals are the lifeblood of your business and a lot of the legwork that goes with this can be done by a VA.
Your virtual assistant could go through your contacts and identify a list of your old clients to contact for getting new referrals. Your only concern is to ok the email template for them to send out.
7. Help You Get Awesome Pictures for Your Listings
Virtual assistants can also help you with enhancing your listing photos. If you want to hire a professional photographer, the assistant can find the best professional photographer in your area.
So, naturally, you want to find an assistant that possesses great skills in graphic design. He or she should know his way around Photoshop, or any other platform for graphic design you want to use.
Or they can help you find someone cheap to enhance the photos. Here's how they can help you enhance your photos.
8. Convert Buyer Leads
A virtual assistant can help you convert your buyer leads into buyer clients.
They can help with the buyers by calling or emailing them, setting listing alerts, and developing rapport.
They just need to get the information about the type of house the potential buyer is looking for, then send that information over to an agent who can find the buyer the house that works for them.
9. Run Offline and Online Ads for You
Once they are trained they can manage the bulk of your Facebook ads for you.
They can order the signs and publish you or your listing in any local publications as well. This frees you up to focus on getting your listings sold.
What your assitant can do for you.
10. Stop Interruptions
Every single time you're interrupted, it breaks your train of thought and keeps you from thinking about the task at hand. Thus, you're not as productive.
This is why I turn off my phone ringer when I go on a listing appointment. You can have a virtual assistant filter your calls.
All of the inbound calls to my office go through a virtual assistant.
If you have the right phone system, then the assistant can filter the calls and transfer the important people directly to you. If a seller is calling, the assistant can transfer the seller over.
11. Research the Neighborhood a Listing is in.
Are there any businesses on the neighboring streets that some people wouldn’t want close to their home? Once again, your virtual assistant can find out this before your meeting.
Your virtual assistant can easily find out this before your meeting. The same with finding schools. Have them look these up.
Simple things like this just save you minutes that add up quickly.
12. Update Listing Changes
Train them on updated and writing your listing on each platform it will be on. The most often needed change is the one related to the price of the property.
All you need to do once they are ready for this is shoot them an email with what you want.
13. Build and Manage Your Website
A virtual assistant can help you with all of your online marketing. They can blog for you, or find good blog articles.
They can work on your SEO. They can design, layout, and build your entire website.
Have you been dreaming about building a great online presence for years but never found the time to get around to doing it?
Your VA can create a WP blog for you, adding a few pages about your team, listings and buying/selling process.
14. Research the Comparable Listed Properties within the Area
Your VA can find out before your meeting what’s the listed price for similar properties in the area.
Then he can put together a list for you to bring into the presentation.
15. Accounting and Bookkeeping
You can have this person work either as an accountant or bookkeeper to help you manage your finances.
A virtual assistant can perform all of the following tasks:
- They can track your bank accounts.
- They can track your bank account debits and credits, and put all of that information into your accounting software.
- They can track your expenses.
- They can tell you how much money you are spending.
- They can tell you how much money you can expect to come in from your current listings.
- They can reconcile credit card statements, vendor statements, bank account statements.
- They can make sure that all charges go into the accounting system and appropriate files, minimizing the amount of taxes you have to pay.
16. Custom Comparative Market Analysis
Your real estate virtual assistant can prepare your CMAs so you could have data supporting your presentation on market trends and the surrounding areas. You might have them pull some comps, and then tell you what comps they think could be used for CMA.
They can also dig up old information on a seller.
Maybe you didn't realize that the seller had the house on the market two years ago, at a much lower price than what they're selling it for now, and you can gauge the seller's motivation using that information.
17. Listing Coordinator
You can have an assistant help you with paperwork. They can make sure the disclosures are filled out and signed.
In addition, they can help you prepare for listing appointments by filling out disclosures and listing agreements before you meet with a potential seller.
Because assistants are allowed to be part of the MLS, you can sometimes give them direct access to the site.
They can put your listing onto your website. They can put together fliers for your listing. They can put together marketing. They can run ads promoting your listing.
They can schedule an open house. They can put together open house paperwork. They can invite other agents to the open house. The list goes on and on.
18. Find a Home Stager
Your real estate virtual assistant can help you find a specialist in your area to help you get a home staged and ready for a showing.
So these are all the tasks you can get done with a VA. But how do you hire them? What do you pay them? How does the training go?
Imagine You Had A Business Like This:
- You didn’t have to set up the appointments.
- You didn't have to mail out anything or email your list.
- All the grunt work is handled perfectly.
Our team has written a book that show you how to build a business that runs itself. We go over hiring, paying, training and anything else you need to know about VAs.
Joe Nickelson is a real estate professional dedicated to helping home buyers and sellers achieve their dreams of owning property, and helping real estate agents stop using the sometimes-vicious tactics that weigh on their consciences. He believes that the Smart Agents books will, quite literally, change people’s lives for the better. Check out his full bio here!
