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BlogArrowBusiness ManagementArrowPut Your Business on Autopilot With Virtual Assistants
Business Management Aug 01, 2020

Put Your Business on Autopilot With Virtual Assistants

Bob Lachance
Expertise:
6 Articles Written
virtual-assistant

As real estate professionals and entrepreneurs, we’re always trying to get as much work done as possible and have a highly productive day. However, it’s easy for all the tasks to start piling up and eating away at your time.

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Generally, these tasks are repetitive, mundane, and not the best use of your time. In turn, they start getting pushed back, not done at all, or done poorly because you don’t enjoy them.

When you’re constantly doing things you hate or are not good at, it starts to drain your energy and morale and ultimately affect productivity. As your business grows, the volume of tasks and responsibilities also surges. Many of these tasks are necessary for your business, but it’s not necessary for them to be done by you.

There are a few main reasons for implementing virtual assistants in your business.

  • It’s cost-effective. You do not have to pay for office space and utilities. VAs can work from anywhere as long as they have a stable internet connection, phone, and decent working space.
  • It allows you to focus on the income-producing tasks that scale your business. Your main focus should be growing your business, and you can’t do that when your day is full of scraping leads, cold calling, marketing your brand, etc. Stop working in your business and start working on your business.
  • Boost your operational efficiency. Thanks to advancements in technology and automation, businesses are able to perform more efficiently than ever. Virtual assistants are a key solution for boosting the productivity and efficiency of your business.
  • Get your time back. Time-freedom has a different meaning to us all. Whether you want to focus on growing your business, spending more time with your family, or just getting away from it all, virtual assistants provide you that option.

virtual-assistant-notes

Determining What Tasks To Outsource

This is a question asked all too often. You feel overwhelmed and know you need help, but you’re not sure where to start.

One way to determine your first tasks to outsource is to track and list all your daily activities. Make notes of what tasks are repetitive, how long they take to perform, and whether they are able to be outsourced. Almost any task done on the computer or phone can be passed off.

It can also be helpful to rank the tasks from one to five, with one being the tasks you hate doing and five being tasks you love doing. After a week or two, you should have built a solid list of tasks you perform daily and weekly.

Lastly, start highlighting the ones you can immediately start handing off to a VA and start with those tasks. You can always add new tasks for your VA to accomplish.

A few popular tasks real estate professionals outsource:

  • Cold calling
  • Follow-up calls, e-mails, and texts
  • Text message campaigns
  • Updating MLS listings
  • Appointment setting
  • Lead scraping
  • Transaction coordination
  • Property management
  • Podcast management
  • E-mail management
  • Calendar and schedule management
  • Social media management
  • Data entry
  • Research

Related: 7 Tasks Wholesalers Can Easily Outsource to Virtual Assistants

Hiring The Right Virtual Assistant

This is a crucial step, and some entrepreneurs fail to get the right fit for them because they don’t set the right standards. It is important to set some requirements to successfully hire a VA.

Work Experience

For real estate professionals and entrepreneurs, it’s helpful to look over the virtual assistant’s work experience to get a better idea of the work they’ve previously done. If you plan to have your VA on the phone for you, call center experience would be good previous work experience to look for, although not always necessary. With systems and processes in place, it’s easy to train your VA to do almost any task.

Skill Set Check

If you are planning to delegate reporting tasks, your VA must be efficient in using apps like Excel or Google Sheets, PowerPoint, or graphical reports like SmartDraw, Measureful, and Google Analytics.

Understanding what apps and software you’d like your VA to be familiar with will set you up for a successful working relationship.

Personality and Cultural Fit

Besides the skills that you are looking for, it is important that you and your VA get along well. Having the right personality and cultural fit can play a big role in whether or not you will have long-term success.

short-selling

Establish Systems and Processes

This requires some time and effort up front, but it is very much worth doing and you’ll be able to use these procedures for years to come.

Here are a few best practices.

Shared Work Documents

Give your VA access to your Dropbox or Google Drive to share instructions and documents. You can also utilize a workplace online collaboration tool like Trello. Make sure your VA has access to all necessary documents, training, and tools.

Prepare VA Tasks

Ensure that your VA has a clear vision of the tasks you want them to handle and what your expectations for them are. Provide a daily or weekly activity tracker, whatever works for both of you. Project management tools such as Asana, Slack, or Monday make it easy to delegate tasks to your VA or team of VAs and see the progress being made.

Tutorials

Having clear instructions for your VA to follow makes teaching new processes a breeze. Provide a step-by-step process with screenshots for your VA to follow. Video tutorials can also be very helpful to speed up a project or complete the tasks efficiently. There are many user-friendly screen capture software such as Free Cam, CamStudio, and Screencast-o-Matic.

You can even assign your VA to create their own standard operating procedure for new tasks.

Related: 7 Profitable Side Hustles in the Real Estate Field

Conclusion

As advancements in technology continue to change how businesses are run, virtual and remote work has increasingly become more popular. Utilizing virtual assistants into your business can have a profound impact on your growth and efficiency.

Employing highly trained and dedicated virtual assistants is an extremely affordable option for business owners to grow their business, increase their operational efficiency, and achieve time-freedom to focus on the things that are most important to them.

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Do you use a virtual assistant? What have you found most helpful in managing them?

Let us know in the comments.

By Bob Lachance
Bob Lachance has been an active business owner and real estate investor since 2004. Entrepreneurial by nature, he currently owns and operates many different businesses around the world. He helped t...
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Bob Lachance has been an active business owner and real estate investor since 2004. Entrepreneurial by nature, he currently owns and operates many different businesses around the world. He helped to create the top real estate education and mentor program in existence today. He is also the founder and CEO of premiere virtual assistant staffing company REVA Global.
Read Less
8 Replies
    Jennie Berger Investor from Chicago IL
    Replied 6 months ago
    Thanks for the article and insight Bob! What are average/fair going hourly rates for VAs?
    Bob Lachance Specialist from West Hartford, CT
    Replied 6 months ago
    Thanks Jennie! It can really vary depending on what you're looking for. There are companies that pre-train their VA's in real estate specific tasks and language, and usually cost a bit more per hour. However, they handle the sourcing, recruiting, training, and placement for you, so they're typically ready to hit the ground running for your business. Other places such as Upwork you can find VA's for cheaper, usually $4-$6 per hour or so, but you have to do all the sourcing, interviewing, training, etc. Hope this helps! Feel free to PM me if you need any help!

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    Dustin Lee Cotliar
    Replied 6 months ago
    Can someone recommend a good site to look for VAs?
    Nick Naik
    Replied 6 months ago
    I would recommend upwork where you can hire VA's on hourly basis

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    Kevin McLaughlin from Houston, Texas
    Replied 6 months ago
    Belay Solutions

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    Bob Lachance Specialist from West Hartford, CT
    Replied 6 months ago
    Hey Dustin, there are sites such as Upwork, Fiverr, or Onlinejobs.ph where the rates are typically lower, but you have to handle all the sourcing, interviewing, training, etc. This works better for some and not so well for some. Then there are other companies that have VA's pre-trained in real estate but their rates are typically a bit higher. They handle all the sourcing, recruiting, training, and placement for you so they're ready to hit the ground running.

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    Aaron Jacobs New to Real Estate from Indianapolis IN
    Replied 6 months ago
    Awesome article Bob! Exactly what I needed to hear. I was brainstorming the other day how to organize and become more efficient with these repetitive tasks. VAs are the answer!
    Bob Lachance Specialist from West Hartford, CT
    Replied 6 months ago
    Thanks Aaron! That's awesome to hear you're looking to make operations more efficient! VA's are an incredibly affordable option to make this happen. It's always good to have some Standard Operating Procedures in place beforehand so they can quickly get up to speed according to your own systems and processes. Good luck with everything!!

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