Every successful business needs talented people and wise planning. Most entrepreneurs are coming out of the myth of achieving success by doing everything themselves. Smart entrepreneurs spend time creatively scaling up their businesses by outsourcing most of the mundane tasks to others.
Real estate businesses involve chasing leads and closing deals, but, there is a lot more to it than just closing deals. Real estate businesses have to promote their projects rigorously, build and manage massive databases, and manage their contracts.
To get the above tasks done, hiring virtual assistants is on demand. Many firms choose to appoint a real estate virtual assistant over a full-time in-house to save on wages and perks.
How much does a real estate virtual assistant make?
A virtual real-estate assistant may come for 8$ to 12$ an hour depending on work experience. Of course, there are no overhead expenses to be borne like infrastructure, taxes, insurance, and other benefits. A persistent virtual assistant can come in handy, and they surely help the business’s critical runners to buy more time.
Now, moving on to another popularly asked question,
What can my VA do?
Here are the top 15 options to choose from. This is what precisely real estate virtual assistants do.
1. Market Research
There are tons of researches to be done to sell real-estate property built in millions. The answers to the following questions are commonly looked for before selling the properties:
- Who are the target group buyers?
- What are the living requirements of the target group?
- What commercial areas are in the vicinity of the property that can help in selling a property?
- Where should the property be listed?
- How to market the property? How to promote it online?
- What are other properties in direct competition?
Finding answers to such questions is essential for closing deals. Virtual real estate agents often work as an inside sales agent and work on tracing the current market trends and pricing points for various locations.
2. Online Content Management
Managing online content is essential for businesses to succeed these days. Right from searching for a restaurant to searching a property close by, everything is done on Google.
If you go around asking people who have shifted to new houses, you would know that 90% of people looked for properties online.
Here are some of the tasks that you can easily outsource to virtual assistants.
Listing the property online: A real estate virtual assistant is as good as your in-house team. Virtual assistants are continually scanning the new real-estate marketing trends, looking out for new listings, and managing your online brand presence.
Digital Marketing: Promoting your real estate brand online requires consistent efforts in making a presence online. A Virtual assistant can help you create blogs or video content for your online promotion.
Running ads on Google, Facebook, or other social media websites to promote your real-estate brand is popularly outsourced to virtual assistants.
Graphic Designing and photography: Virtual assistants can help design graphics for your websites, brochures, and blogs.
You can even hire a professional photographer to click the pictures of your property and list them online.
Customer Service Support: Real estate virtual assistants can keep track of your project’s reviews online and provide regular feedback.
It is best to outsource content management to others as it requires consistent focus, time and efforts. Moreover, professional service providers are well-trained and have the relevant exposure to promote businesses online.
3. Database Management:
The virtual assistants can create online data of your prospective and existing clients. They can engage in cold calling and email-marketing and may record the leads on the list.
A real estate firm also needs to maintain its clients’ entire set of details like their financial details, property details, profession, current residence, etc. Maintaining these details is time-consuming and cumbersome, and so it is best to outsource them.
Virtual assistants are usually professionals who have mastered the skill of dealing with spreadsheets with years of experience. So, they can handle such administrative tasks efficiently.
4. Appointment scheduling and site visits
It requires persistent efforts in inviting your prospective customers to visit the property site.
A virtual real estate assistant can be helpful in:
- Fixing appointments and scheduling meetings
- Organizing property site visits.
- Arranging the meeting between the buyer and the seller
- Give timely meeting reminders to you and your customers.
A virtual assistant is a real hands-on in managing your calendar and in scheduling property sight-seeing.
5. Email handling and responding to Queries
Real estate firms get bombarded by thousands of emails every week. If you sit down to answer them yourself, your business is undoubtedly at stake, as you surely cannot focus on driving it.
Thus, it is essential to outsource email handing and live chatbot responding to a virtual assistant. By doing so, you get to focus on important emails.
6. Recording Financials:
Receivables, expenses, taxes, bills, reimbursements, etc., need to be recorded promptly. These tasks are time-consuming yet essential. It is best to outsource this to a professional service provider to ensure that your books are always updated.
7. Property Research:
Looking for new properties is a regular affair for a real estate firm. It is best to outsource it to save a great deal of time.
8. Relationship Management:
A real-estate firm can also use a virtual assistant to manage relationships with your prospective clients. Sending birthday wishes to prospective clients surely help a brand live longer in their customer’s minds.
9. Sponsorship research:
A part of your success in the real estate industry goes to how deeply ingrained you are in the industry. People feel a lot more connected to people who are positively engaged with society.
The best way to identify genuine sponsorship opportunities that will help you connect with your target customers at once is to outsource this task to a virtual assistant.
The virtual assistant can also help to build ads or banners to promote your brand in such social causes.
10. Consolidating and summarising industry news:
A smart businessman is always pro-active in his business planning and decisions. Any business leader needs to be aware of the industry news, competitors’ moves, changing trends, and industry policies to make the right decisions at the right time.
But, scanning the national dailies or online resources every day is hugely time-consuming. A far better option is grabbing a virtual assistant who can consolidate all the relevant news from different sources and present it to you.
11. Product Price comparison:
Just by building excellent properties, you may not achieve the success of selling them unless you price them appropriately.
A virtual assistant may come in very handy to help you understand your target market’s willingness to spend on buying property, the price charged by the competitors, etc. This information will help you strategize your positioning in the market.
Keeping a close watch on your competitors will also help you position your brand better by working out its uniques selling preposition.
12. Lead Generation and follow-ups:
Using various online and offline sources, it is essential to follow-up frequently with those who have shown interest. A virtual assistant is of great help to follow-up with people who have attended a presentation or a seminar or have visited a property.
Constant follow-ups are much needed to grab the vested interest of your prospective clients in the property. Hiring virtual assistants will ensure that you generate leads much faster.
13. Organising webinars:
Powerpoint presentations are a powerful tool to attract customers. These presentations are usually played in meetings with prospective clients.
You can always look for support in a virtual assistant to help you organize seminars.
14. Branding Services:
Designing tag lines, slogans, brand logos can be outsourced to a professional service provider.
15. Product launches:
Launching a new property requires much preparation. Usually, these days property builders announce pre-launch and soft-launch before the project is rolled out.
Smart buyers are always on a lookout of buying property before its official launch to get a good deal. This is possible only if there is enough noise made in the market about the property.
A lot of effort has to go into launching a property. Usually, a renowned personality is invited for the inauguration. The property is open to free visits and refreshments are arranged for the visitors to extend courtesy. Hiring people to take care of property launches can smoothen the entire process and can prove out to be extremely convenient.
Hiring remote real estate virtual assistants are extremely convenient, time-saving and cost-effective. It is essential to seek support in hiring the right people to take businesses to new heights.
