Expanding your business the right way means balancing your workload and your capacities. It would be only logical that when your workload increases, you hire more people, get more equipment, and pay for additional licenses. While this is logical, it’s not always the best action.
Nowhere is this as evident as in the real estate business, where you can’t just hire another real estate agent as soon as you get a single client more than you can handle. Instead, you may want to hire a virtual assistant. Here’s how this would help you.
1. Focusing on your core tasks
As a real estate agent, your time is invaluable. Sure, your job can’t work without lead generation; however, is this the best use of your time and resources? Just think about it: most of the time, this task comes down to researching potential leads, gathering contact info, and initiating outreach (sending the first few messages). A virtual assistant can do all of this.
The benefits of this became clear when you try to calculate how much time these tasks usually take.
It’s not just the time; it’s the focus and energy. This is something that people often overlook, but if you spend four hours responding to emails and searching for leads, how productive do you believe you will be for the remaining four hours? These menial tasks drain a person, especially their creativity.
A virtual assistant can also do what a regular assistant does. They can organize and run your schedule and even be a bridge between your private and professional life. You don’t want to burn out or neglect your private life so much that it burdens you.
2. Great at helping with specialized tasks
When they say that a virtual assistant can help you focus on core tasks by taking on minor responsibilities, most people think about email checking and data entry. This is not always the case. A specialist like a real estate assistant can take a much more active role in some of your core tasks.
When hiring specialists in fields like real estate, if you were to bring another agent, chances are that your workload is still not big enough. So, what do you do in this transitional period? The simplest answer would be to hire someone who knows the ropes but still lacks the experience to act as an independent real estate agent.
Also, keep in mind that just because they’re a virtual assistant, this doesn’t mean that, at one point, you can’t hire them in a different capacity if they prove themselves and if you need this type of specialist in your enterprise. This allows you to test their dedication, skill, and allegiance before committing long-term.
They might even aspire to become independent in this field at one point and are still trying to figure out if this is something that they can do. In that case, they will be extra motivated to try even harder.
3. Flexibility
Virtual assistants are incredibly cost-effective as employees. They’re closer to freelancers or independent contractors than they are to full-time employees, and you may want to try and exploit this as best as you can.
First, you need to understand that some of your remote employees (virtual assistants being these employees) work in different time zones. This means that they won’t have a problem pulling long hours, creating a 24/7 availability. While the real estate industry doesn’t benefit from this as much as other fields, it’s still a perk.
Next, you might have different contracts with them than your regular employees. Still, it all comes down to the specific contract you sign. You might also want to have them sign an NDA. This way, your trade secrets will remain as safe as possible.
Most importantly, your virtual assistants can be cross-trained to perform various functions. This means they can fill in any spot, effectively minimizing the potential downtime. This alone is worth taking into consideration.
4. Improving your customer service
Timely communication with your clients is essential. To maintain a reputation as a great business, you must answer your phone calls (or VoIP calls) and respond to your emails as soon as possible. Many people argue that they’re impressed by a brand that manages to respond in minutes.
The same goes for social media interactions (DMs) and comment sections. The sooner you respond, the more efficient you seem. Also, resolving people’s issues quickly is incredibly important, and when done right, this can be your strongest PR asset.
Generally speaking, about 12% of your customers expect a response within 15 minutes. Suppose they respond before that; even better. Now, don’t set unreasonable standards for your customer support representatives. After all, about 46% of your customers will be completely satisfied if the customer support responds within four hours.
This is very important when it comes to things like property showings. People usually need to free up their schedule, get a day off, or something like that.
At the very least, they just have a quick question. To a virtual assistant, this is just a few minutes of their time, but to you as a brand, this is a free opportunity to leave a good impression.
5. Client follow-up
Real estate is not a property-centric industry. Like any other commodity field, it’s a client-centric field. Your virtual assistants can be put in charge of maintaining client relationships through these follow-ups.
For instance, market updates may interest some of your clients, and this is a great excuse to contact them again and see how they’re doing. All these skills and even outreach templates can be taught to your virtual assistants.
Keeping up with client feedback will give you so much data to sort, process, and interpret. You need to organize it to use it the next time you interact with the same client. A CRM tool can be of great help here. This shows that you also need to invest in these tools, not just fixate on the form of human help you’re getting.
Satisfied clients might refer their family and friends. However, you need to contact them and get this contact info. Sometimes, you’ll even have to promise an incentive.
Wrap up
Virtual assistants are cheap and efficient at what they do. They’re easier to employ than conventional full-time employees and can be just as good. Most importantly, they free you up to do the core tasks while tasks like client follow-up and lead generation go to virtual assistants. This way, everyone wins, including your clients.
