Should You Hire a Virtual Assistant If You’re a Real Estate Agent?

Written by Ashley Sutphin Posted On Friday, 18 August 2023 00:00

A new year is officially in full swing, and if you’re a real estate professional, you might be strategizing for how you can grow your business but do so more efficiently.

One option available to you is hiring a virtual assistant. In many ways, a virtual assistant can be like a traditional assistant, except you may never meet the person face-to-face.

You can also use a virtual assistant as needed and hire a freelancer, saving you a lot of money compared to hiring an employee.

The following are some things real estate professionals should know about hiring a virtual assistant to help them manage and grow their business.

When Do You Need a Virtual Assistant?

Hiring a virtual assistant is different from a traditional in-person assistant. They aren’t going to run errands for you, for example. Instead, they’re going to be managing things like marketing, handling paperwork, and scheduling appointments.

A virtual real estate assistant can manage finance and marketing, lead generation, and database management.

Hiring someone to do certain tasks for you, particularly administrative tasks, will free up your time. That person can also develop repeatable processes for getting things done as efficiently as possible.

You can then put all of your attention on revenue-creating, high-impact work.

Tasks to Outsource to a Virtual Assistant

Before you ever consider hiring someone, you need to be very clear on what you need and the tasks you’re going to have them do. This will help make sure that you find the right person and that you’re able to convey the scope of work to them.

Specific examples of things you might hire a virtual assistant for include:

  • Marketing: All-things marketing are so crucial to your business, but these tasks also happen to be incredibly time-consuming. Some of the marketing tasks a VA could take on include scheduling emails, sending mailers, graphic designs, scheduling and perhaps even writing emails, SEO updates, and managing your social media. A VA can also track your marketing analytics to see what’s working and what isn’t.
  • Operations: This broad category of work can include data entry, basic bookkeeping, managing contacts and documents, and scheduling showings and services.
  • Sales: Elements of sales that a VA could help you with include updating your CRM with lead notes, prospecting and cold calling, following up with leads, and setting appointments.
  • Administrative tasks: This is the most common reason you’ll often see agents hire virtual assistants. Administrative tasks can include answering incoming calls, managing your calendar, and triaging your email inbox.

Pros and Cons of Hiring a VA

There are plenty of upsides to hiring a virtual assistant. For example, there’s no overhead cost, so it’s cheaper, and you don’t need dedicated office space. There’s also less time required to onboard someone you hire virtually. They may already, for example, have experience navigating your systems like CRMs.

You don’t have to provide a lot of oversight because the core of a virtual assistant’s job is to work independently and remotely.

You can find someone who’s going to fit your budget and be able to flexibly work within the hours you need them to.

There are a couple of downsides that you at least need to be aware of when you go into the hiring process, though.

First, you may find it hard to maintain a sense of accountability when you work with someone virtually as opposed to in person. You may also find it hard to have a sense of trust with someone you don’t work with face-to-face.

If you aren’t sure, or you’re somewhat nervous about hiring a virtual assistant, a good option is to bring someone on a trial basis and see how things go.

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