Your time is a very precious and limited resource. A virtual assistant can help take care of tasks that are less important so that you can focus on more important activities.
As a real estate agent, you may feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day to accomplish everything. The more successful your business becomes, the more likely you are to attract more customers. They make it sound as if having a hectic schedule is something to be envied. Many real estate agents make it sound as if having a hectic schedule is enviable by calling it “living on the fast lane.”
If you’re a workaholic, you might eventually hit a limit on how many deals you can handle at a time. At least not without some help.
If you want to be successful in your real estate career, you need to let go of the mindset that you have to do everything yourself. If you want to close more deals, you should hire an assistant.
What is a virtual assistant for real estate? (And why you need one yesterday)
In business and life, it is all about growth. There are many benefits to hiring a real estate VA, including endless growth potential.
A real estate virtual assistant is essentially a business administrator who acts as your right hand. A real estate virtual assistant can provide various business services either in person or remotely. Having a virtual assistant that is well-rounded and can handle many different tasks can be very useful. They can cover tasks like lead generation and database management, or even finance and marketing.
According to Daniel Ramsey, founder of MyOutDesk, the key to having a good work-life balance is delegating tasks and creating processes and procedures. By doing this, you free up time for other aspects of your life. This means that you can free up time for the rest of your career by creating a process that others can follow.
If you’re stressed or not making progress, it’s time to stop thinking that it’s easier or cheaper to do everything yourself. It’s not.
Think about it. If you didn’t have to spend time scheduling meetings, organizing paperwork, or updating your listings, what could you do with those extra hours?
- How many calls could you make?
- How many follow-ups could you do?
- How many more deals could you close?
If you use a VA, you can get your time back and focus on the work that makes money for your real estate business. The best-kept secret of top agents is that they use VAs to get to 7 and 8-figure status. You have to be able to do it correctly.
Before hiring your first virtual assistant, you should have a process outlining what tasks you need them to complete. There are many real estate VAs, but it is difficult to find one that is excellent and can do the job well.
Real Estate Virtual Assistant Services
What real tasks should you assign to a real estate VA?
You might be tempted to hand over everything to a VA if you’re like most agents who are thinking about hiring one. This would include tasks such as lead nurturing, content production, and transaction coordination.
The key to success is to have a clear understanding of the tasks and goals you want to achieve.
A dedicated VA can help you with lead response by mapping out a list of tasks and responsibilities. A separate skill set is required if you want a rockstar VA who can keep clients happy from contract to closing.
If you’re looking for an administrator who can take care of small tasks so that you can focus on more important things, you should narrow down your real estate VA job description to the 3-5 most important tasks in each key area that you need help with.
Here are some of the many things a virtual assistant can do to help you scale your real estate business:
- help you with administrative tasks
- manage your schedule
- set up appointments
- make sure you’re staying on top of your tasks
- help you prepare for meetings
- take care of follow-ups
- research potential leads
- help you grow your business
Marketing
Marketing is essential for your business, but it can also be very time-consuming. A virtual assistant can help take care of marketing tasks, so you can spend more time on the things that only you can do. A VA can help with marketing tasks like:
- Create buyer’s packets
- Send mailers to your spheres of influence
- Graphic design for digital and print assets
- Schedule (or even write) blog posts
- Research content ideas
- Update your website
- Schedule email
- SEO updates
- Post, update, and advertise on social media
- Track marketing analytics
Why Hire a Real Estate Virtual Assistant?
Would you be able to get more done if someone else was in charge of your scheduling, emailing, updates, paperwork, and research?
How many more deals would that let you close?
That’s all possible by hiring an assistant. You don’t need to hire a full-time assistant to help you with your work. The internet allows assistants to work remotely, providing many of the same services as a traditional office assistant.
You can find great virtual assistants from all around the world which makes it possible to have your real estate business running constantly. Because you have more potential candidates to choose from, you can base your decision on skill instead of just who is close by.
Because exchange rates differ significantly, you could find an excellent real estate virtual assistant much cheaper than you would in the United States.
What Can a Real Estate Virtual Assistant Do For You?
At first, it may feel like you’re not really connecting with someone if you’re assigning tasks to them and they’re located halfway across the world. A virtual assistant can do almost anything a traditional assistant can do, but with more flexibility. There are 11 tasks that you can outsource to a real estate virtual assistant to free up your time.
1. Research
There’s no way around it. In order to be a successful real estate agent, you need to put in a lot of research. There is a lot of data that must be gathered and processed on a regular basis to keep track of things such as property comparables, lending rates, and population growth.
If you want to be successful in content marketing, you need to put in the time to research topics and find supporting statistics.
All of this research is very time-consuming. You could use the time you spend doing research to secure deals, show properties, or simply spend more time with your family and friends.
Many VAs are highly educated and can handle research tasks with ease One benefit of hiring a real estate virtual assistant is that they are often highly educated and can therefore handle research tasks well. There might be some research tasks that you can not give to someone else to do, but your virtual assistant could do most of it for you.
2. Data Entry
There is no avoiding data entry when working in real estate. Your success as a real estate agent largely depends on your ability to manage and maintain your database. This includes tasks such as filling out forms and entering client data into your CRM.
While it’s essential work, it’s also intricate and time-consuming.
Your real estate virtual assistant can help you keep your contact list up to date. This includes adding new names, updating addresses, emails, phone numbers, and sales funnel status.
3. Basic Bookkeeping
If bookkeeping sounds as boring to you as it does to me, then you know how I feel. There is no denying that real estate education is important for a successful career in the industry.
If you are the only person working in your company, or if you are a new real estate agent, it is likely that you are doing your own bookkeeping. Although bookkeeping is likely not at the top of your list of priorities, it is an essential part of being a real estate agent.
If you don’t stop procrastinating, you’ll have to do the task quickly and will probably make mistakes.
Your virtual assistant can help you with basic bookkeeping tasks, like keeping track of your expenses. That way your bookkeeping will be done timely. Whenever you need access to your important financial information, you’ll have someone that can hand it to you.
4. Spreadsheets and Powerpoint Presentations
Why not give these tasks to your virtual assistant? Any virtual assistant worth their salt will be able to manage a spreadsheet, and most of them can also put together a mean Powerpoint presentation.
You could be using your time more productively if you weren’t creating your own spreadsheets and presentations.
5. Prospecting
Prospecting is an essential part of growing your business. Referral marketing is a key way to gain new customers. However, it is easy to procrastinate prospecting when you are overwhelmed with the tasks you need to do to finalize a deal. If you’re not careful, you could end up in a cycle of feast and famine.
You can break the cycle by getting a real estate virtual assistant to help with prospecting. This will help you bring in new customers all year long.
Your real estate virtual assistant can help with prospecting by cold calling, emailing, or reaching out to local businesses.
You could train your virtual assistant to do some of your prospecting for you. Although prospecting requires a certain amount of skill and can’t be fully outsourced, your virtual assistant could help you with some of the work. If you advocate for using scripts to help with prospecting, this is especially true.
6. Managing and Organizing Agreements or Contracts
Although paper paperwork management may not be an exciting aspect of real estate, it is very important. Your virtual assistant could help you to make sure that your clients have submitted all of the necessary documentation for a transaction and provide them with a copy of the contract if they should happen to lose their own.
If you will ever need a document for future reference, your assistant can look for it and send you a copy.
7. Calendar Management
Although there are many free time management apps that are simple to use, you can’t predict when a client will request a meeting. If you are in the middle of a meeting with one client, another client may try to call you.
Having a real estate virtual assistant will help you keep your meetings and appointments straight, as well as help you plan your schedule for the month.
8. Writing Emails and Letters
In most cases, you only need to write emails that are a follow-up on clients, which should only take a few minutes. There will be times, however, when you need to write extremely important emails that could take much longer. These emails, while important, are very time-consuming.
This is especially true if you also need to find files that need to be attached.
A real estate virtual assistant could take care of ordinary emails that don’t need much from you, as well as emails that need documents to be attached.
9. Content Creation
A content creation strategy is an activity with a high return on investment. This strategy will only work if it is consistent.
You have a lot of experience working with real estate in a hyperlocal area, so you’re the perfect person to write about topics that will interest your potential customers. However, creating compelling content is a very time-consuming activity.
If you don’t have anything to write about, coming up with your first sentence can be difficult and take a long time.
If you’re focused on closing deals, you might not have enough time to produce the content you desire. Your real estate virtual assistant could help you create content (such as blog posts, infographics, a compilation of resources, etc.) on those days when you are unable to publish anything.
If your assistant is good at writing and has experience with it, they could take over your content writing and make sure you’re regularly publishing new content.
If your audience is responding well to your content and has any feedback, your real estate virtual assistant could help you answer readers’ questions and requests that come from your content marketing efforts. If any of them turn into leads, they will be directed your way.
10. Proofreading
When you’re rushing to finish important emails, documents, and marketing material, it’s easy to make grammatical mistakes. While word processors have come a long way, there are still some things (like awkward sentences) that they can’t detect.
11. Social Media Management
Real estate businesses that want to be present online should use social media marketing as one of their tools. Uploading a single piece of content to social media is easy, but managing a social media strategy is more time-consuming.
Your real estate virtual assistant can help you by maintaining your social media accounts and making sure they are kept up to date.
Conclusion
Your real estate career is all about growth. You can only do so much by yourself. If you’re finding that you’re unable to do everything you need to do by yourself, you should think about hiring a real estate virtual assistant.
They are cheaper than hiring an in-office real assistant and can do most of the same things.
