Trying to be in two places at once? Guess what - you can do it! Here's how to hire a virtual assistant and get twice as much work done in half the time.
How would you like to grow your real estate business, increase your number of listings and also have more time in your professional and personal life?
Does all of this sound entirely too good to be true or too lofty a goal? Maybe you’re thinking to yourself, How can I do that!? I can’t be in so many places at once. I’m already overworked and overscheduled!
That way, you could divide up important tasks and just do half of them — but still be able to grow your business. Now, I admit this might sound a little crazy. But in reality, it’s completely doable with the help of a virtual assistant.
Before you start questioning the whole idea — how you’ll afford an assistant, or how you’ll find one — let me assure you how easy it is. I want to share a small clip of myself talking to a real estate agent I just interviewed on the East coast, Merydith Endelman, who is having tremendous success with her own virtual assistant. Pretty cool, right? Here’s how she found him.
Here’s a short summary of the jobs Merydith’s assistant can handle for her.
As you can see, Merydith is having success with her virtual assistant, and he takes a sizeable amount of administrative work off her plate.
The truth is, we tend to forget how many small tasks we have to do on a daily basis to succeed in real estate. And when all of these smaller tasks are crowding our head space, we often let other important “big picture” matters fall through the cracks — maybe we lose a surefire listing; maybe a closing falls apart; maybe someone steals part of our sphere of influence because we weren't proactive in maintaining it.
Can you think of a crucial task you're guilty of putting off? Maybe it’s building your brand — things like posting an update every week on your website or a real estate article for your Facebook fans. Maybe it’s crafting a local newsletter for your sphere of influence. With a virtual assistant, these items can be scheduled. It’s a great way to handle tasks that need to be accomplished on a regular basis.
VAs can also do your lead research. You can have them pull up expireds or FSBOs, for example. While they cannot log into your MLS in most states, there is still plenty of information they can pull for you each day from various sites. If you find yourself spending a lot of time in the mornings pulling lists together before you can really start evaluating and contacting leads, a virtual assistant will help you tremendously.
As for where your own virtual assistant is located, popular countries include the Philippines and India, and these VAs tend to be affordable. Many agents I talked to have virtual assistants in the Philippines, and the VAs speak English well, so they are helping with cold calling. You can go to odesk.com and create a profile stating what you're looking for. Then, you simply interview the best applicants and get a virtual assistant.
Don't Miss This Hidden Benefit
Here’s another benefit of hiring and working with a virtual assistant — it helps agents step away from the business and look at things objectively. Many times, as agents, we're working hard on our businesses, and we don't see which strategies need to be tweaked to reach optimal performance. That said, when we have a virtual assistant, it can change our perspective and help us view strategies clearly. Of course, it also gives us more time in the day, week, month and year, ensuring we can be more productive at what we're doing. With a daily process in place and the help of an assistant, a real estate business can flourish.