Realty Times: Is Your Assistant Stealing Your Customers?

Interactive

February 2, 2000

Is Your Assistant Stealing Your Customers?
Posted By: Blanche Evans - 02/02/2000

Hiring an assistant can be like a double-edged sword. You need one or more to help you grow, but the more you have, the further away you get from hands-on customer service.

When your customers give a glowing report to their friends about their home buying or selling experience, do they recommend you...or your assistant? Are you unconsciously building a customer base for your assistant by putting him/her between you and the customer?

That assistants increase productivity is without question. They are the gatekeepers between you and the daily interruptions and chores that eat at your time and energy. Assistants can be invaluable, trained to perform the time-consuming tasks that assist you to make income. You can delegate tasks such as placing ads, putting signs in yards, photographing the home, and processing feature sheets and other tasks.

For many superagents, the assistant becomes an invaluable second hand, trusted to assist clients and customers with personalized service. But to the client, the assistant could be the one with whom they interact the most.

It can happen insidiously. You may direct the assistant to screen your calls. Now you have time to do more important things. But soon, your customer is no longer able to talk to you directly, without talking to the assistant. Then, after the assistant tells you what the client wants, you ask the assistant to call the client back with the answer to whatever it is they wanted to know.

Before long, your customer relations are all in the hands of the assistant. S/he is answering all the questions and meeting the needs of the client. Before long a bond forms, and you are on the outside, even though you are the agent of record. And the irony is, no one necessarily meant for it to happen. But one day, your assistant moves on, and you have handed him/her a juicy referral on a silver platter.

So how can you have your assistant and hang on to your business, too?

The answer depends on what level of competence you want your assistant to have, your expectations of how long your assistant will stay with you before "moving on," and how much you are willing to pay to turn a good assistant into a business partner instead of a competitor.

Here are some points to consider:

You can't keep a smart person down. Is your assistant licensed to sell real estate? A smart rookie will be able to shorten the learning curve in real estate by observing you and what you consider important, and s/he gets paid at the same time. One day s/he will launch his/her own business, perhaps taking a percentage of your customers away.

Good people will eventually leave, probably within two years or less. That's always a risk, but the reward can be great if you offer this rookie a piece of the action to stay instead. A smart rookie will always want to make more than entry level money, so give him/her the tasks that you know s/he is good at and pay a percentage of the commission for a job done well. That will beat any other offers out there, and the smart rookie may stay with you longer than you think.

Be prepared to pay for talent. If your assistant is really helping your business, pay accordingly. Give him/her a reason to stay, and to be loyal. Make sure working conditions are pleasant and stimulating. Don't be unreasonable in your demands, or give your assistant a reason to say "The heck with this, I'm better off on my own!"

Don't let the fox guard the henhouse. The gold standard of your business is your relationships with people, so don't let anything come between you and your future - referrals. Protect yourself by serving clients personally, and delegate everything else. See to it that clients have easy access to you. Have them put through to you immediately when they call. Make sure that no matter how busy you are that you take time to talk or email your clients personally every day.

Do your own prospecting. Does this one really need to be explained? Prospecting is the most hated, yet necessary chore in real estate. If you train an assistant to do it, you are training him/her to leave you that much sooner and take much of your favorite farm area as well. If you really want to delegate this task, pay a commission to the assistant for every lead that brings in a sale, so s/he will see the importance of the back end of the transaction.

Hire specialists Play to your assistant's(s) strengths. If you have a great technology person, put him/her in charge of your web marketing, but don't give the same person the keys to your other business. Reserve some things that only you do, and do well. That way an assistant who leaves, doesn't leave with your whole bank of knowledge.

Track your referrals. Keep in frequent contact with your past clients and your referral network. You may be surprised at the numbers that come from before and after you hired an assistant. If you are doing more business, but have fewer referrals after hiring the assistant, your customers and clients could feel distanced from you. That's a cue that you've let your assistant do too much gatekeeping.