Our presenter at Agent First Summit this week was Joseph Gonzales! He runs Joseph Gonzales Real Estate Marketing, a business devoted to helping new (and veteran) real estate agents succeed through innovative marketing strategies to find financial freedom. He also provides many of his agents with support in finding and working with great virtual assistants.
Our Agent First Summits happen every Tuesday morning! It’s a perk for all our real estate team members and any of their guests who want to be part of something bigger and grow their real estate business. To secure your private invitation, RSVP here: Save Your Seat!
Joseph shared with us how to hire and work with virtual assistants for our real estate business.
How To Get Started With Virtual Assistants
The first thing to consider when getting started is what your virtual assistant (VA) can do that will make you money. You can’t hire VAs if you can’t ultimately pay for them. Find things that will make you money (e.g. calling leads, marketing, blogging) and hire them to do it for you.
Next, make sure you can teach your virtual assistants what you want them to do. They don’t live in your business every day like you do. They need you to help them understand HOW you want them to work for you.
Consider using a tool like Trello to show your VAs the process to complete every task you assign them. You want to have a way to outline your process, the desired result, and the real final results. You likely also want to use Slack or a similar communication channel to keep in touch regularly.
How To Monitor Your Virtual Assistants
It can be challenging to know if your VAs are doing their best work for you. Thankfully, there are ways to check. You can use a screen-monitoring system to keep your VAs in check and make sure they’re doing what they are supposed to do. You can also provide a checklist for them to fill out each day to make sure they can complete all the tasks you need them to complete and report back at the end of the day.
Providing your VA with KPIs and end-of-day checklists helps keep them on track so you know they work well with your team. If, after the first month or so, things aren’t going well, you’ll have evidence you should probably stop working together.
It’s best to start out strong and strict so VAs know what you require from them. If you start stricter, you can always cut back as your VA gets used to the work and continues to excel.
How To Know You Need A Virtual Assistant
It can be hard to know exactly when to start hiring VAs. As you get your business going, you may have to take some time to get settled before you can afford to hire other help.
The best way to know you’re ready is to calculate it by the money you’re making. If you can afford to pay, say, $3,000 for six months (in salary to your VA) and you know you can close at least one deal with a VA in that time, you’ll know you can afford to hire a VA without any trouble. If you have the money and know the money you spend will make a difference, you should hire a VA.
One of the key benefits of a VA is having more freedom. With that freedom, you can spend more time on your business and personal needs. You can improve your skills where you’re lacking and focus on aspects of your business that need attention. In the end, you know you can hire a VA if you have some money to spend and need more time to build up your business.
What Virtual Assistants Can Help You With
VAs can help you with all kinds of tasks that you just hate doing. Most of them are specially trained in performing tasks that you might not have received any training in when learning to be a real estate agent. Some of the most common tasks VAs help with include:
- Cold calling. If you hate it, pass the task on to a VA. Require them to make a certain number of calls each day or week to keep you on track.
- Prospecting. It can be a challenge to prospect and keep up with all your leads, whether you get them online or in person. Sometimes, you need some support from a VA who can email, message, and call your prospects while you’re busy with current clients.
- Transaction coordinating. Most of the work of transaction coordination is in the paperwork. Your VA can easily help you coordinate that process once you’ve run them through your proper Standard Operating Procedure (SOP).
- Helping you nurture. You probably know that it’s important to keep in touch with your clients and nurture a strong relationship with them. Thankfully, you can do this with help from a VA. Make several videos for different steps in the buyer/seller process to send to your clients as a way to nurture them. Then ask your VA to send the videos out to your database as a way to stay connected.
- Helping edit videos, blogs, etc. Most real estate agents didn’t get training in copywriting, video editing, building websites, or other technical online skills. But many VAs know exactly how to do all those things without help. If you’re interested in expanding your online presence and don’t want to do it alone, you can easily find a professional VA to help you.
How To Find Cheap VAs
One of the best ways that Joseph has found to get cheap VAs is to go into online Facebook or YouTube groups and ask for low-priced VAs. Set a VERY low price in your request–while most real estate agents won’t be able to recommend a VA that cheap, many VAs who are waiting and watching for opportunities in these groups will reach out to you with their work and pricing.
Keep in mind where you want to hire from. Each country will likely provide different rates for hiring VAs. If you hire VAs from the Philippines, you’ll likely pay them between $3 and $5 an hour. If you hire from South America, you’ll likely pay them between $5 and $7 an hour. Hiring VAs in America will probably cost you more, depending on the circumstances.
Finding cheap VAs is pretty easy if you know where to look. One of the best sites for finding reasonably-priced VAs is through onlinejobs.ph. You can find all kinds of talented VAs from the Philippines eager to help you get started in your business.
Making VAs Work For You
Hiring VAs can be a challenging process, but it will offer you huge benefits to your business. You’ll save time, money, and stress by handing out mundane and repetitive tasks to people who want to do them.
Just remember Joseph’s top advice:
- Keep track of your VAs work process to make sure they’re being productive FOR YOU.
- Hire VAs only when you can afford it and when you need to use them to make you more time and money.
- Provide extensive SOPs so your VAs know exactly what you expect from them and how to do it.
With Joseph’s advice in mind, go out and implement the practices you need to build strong relationships with your VAs and start building your business!
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