Now, the question is. What can you delegate?

When working with a VA, you do not want to have yourself stuck with all the other issues that you can think of. Focus first on asking yourself the following questions:

1. What tasks are time-consuming that are taking most of my time?
2. Do those tasks need my expertise or include decision making?
3. What tools will I need to train someone to work on these tasks?
4. When is the best time for me to do the training?

Make a list of the tasks that you think are consuming your time but do not need your Real Estate expertise. Let me give you some tasks that you can delegate as an example:

• Appointment Setting – Call people or businesses on your list and set an appointment so you can speak with them at their most convenient time. If you are investor who are buying REO’s or Non-Performing Notes, you can have your VA call the banks and get in touch with the Asset Managers so you can discuss with them your offer. For Real Estate agents/brokers, you can have your VA contact your Clients (Sellers or Buyers) so you can set up the best time that you can meet them for Property presentation or showing the properties.

• Inbound/Outbound Calls – Your VA can make or take calls in your behalf to answer simple questions about your Clients’ inquiry or prospect Clients. This way you will not need to be on the phone to answer all calls but your VA can actually screen the calls and put you with those calls that are important and that needs your attentions.

• Follow-ups – Your VA can make calls in your behalf to followup on documents that you need from another Real Estate agent, Banks/Lenders, Buyers or Sellers. In order for you to Close deal faster, there are files that you need signed, files that you need to send or just files that you need to organize. Your VA can do the necessary follow-ups for you to ensure that you have the files that you need, when you need it and how you need it.

• Data Entry – Your VA can do Data Entry for you. Fill-up forms, Create Purchase Agreement or Listing Agreement, Input Data in the MLS and other sites such as Realtor.com, Trulia, Zillow, Cyberhomes etc.,  Organize your Data base of leads and Properties in an Excel Spreadsheet.

• Social Media Management - You can also have your VA manage your Internet Presence by updating your Blogs, Providing updates in other Social Media Sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Active Rain, YouTube etc.

• File Organization – You can also have your VA organize files for you. I often use Dropbox with my clients in order for me to carefully organize files in his folder and it automatically syncs with my Client’s computer.

..and some other tasks that you may find.

When delegating, start with simple tasks and then slowly introduce different Real Estate concepts, before you know it your VA is like an extension of yourself.

One more important thing to remember is to inform the VA of the task, why it is important for her to do this right and how important this task is. Some VA’s tend to work on some stuff just for the sake of doing it, but there are VA’s who will work as if they also own the business and will do everything to make things happen for you. Once you find that VA, you will never go wrong.

If you need help with finding the right Virtual Assistant for you, I will be more than willing to help you find a VA that is fit for you. Just send me a message and I will help you with creating a system that will be beneficial for you and your Virtual Assistant.

Outsourcing could be in any form of administrative support. The most common types of outsourcing are call center agents giving support to customers as customer care agents and office support or virtual assistance.

Virtual assistants, or “VA,” are independent contractors that provide administrative, technical, creative, or consulting services to other businesses, usually working from their own homes. The clear advantage is that as a business owner, you save money on office rent or maintaining a roster of employees, etc. Most virtual assistants support their clients via the Internet, phone, fax, and email.

There are Virtual Assistant Companies who have a chosen niche to provide better service. In the Real Estate Industry for example, you might need someone who understands Purchase Agreements, Short sales, BPO’s and all other Real Estate terminologies. This way, the time spent training your Virtual Assistant will be lessen since you do not need to explain everything to them. You just need to lay out the process that you are using so they can be trained and then they start working.

Working with a VA has been a challenging task to most Business Professionals that are new to this field, the question that you need to answer mostly are:

• What to delegate?
• Who to delegate it to?
• How many hours should I need to have this task done?
• Can I trust my VA to work on these stuff for me?
• How do I know that the VA is working?

How about you? What are the challenges that you’ve encountered before? Join me in my next blog where I will discuss the challenges that a prospect client has and how to overcome those challenges!

Sites like Facebook® and Twitter™ are more important to your reputation, relevance and future clients than ever before. More than 250 million* people are using Facebook® to connect every month, and Twitter™ usage has grown 88% among users aged 55 – 64 years old. Are you wondering where to start? 

As you know, a key factor in being a realtor is building and maintaining personal relationships with your clients.  Gone are the days of door hangers and flyers and here is a new wave of technology that allows you to interact and connect with millions of people everyday on a ONE on ONE basis.  In fact, one could say, the more people you interact with and promote yourself to, the more sales you could generate.  So why not take advantage of the massive amount of networking opportunities via the internet, they’re free and easy to use BUT…using these tools requires frequent updating and TIME.  

Buyers and sellers crave conversation, engagement and a personal connection to the agents they work with. And if you don’t offer it to them, they’ll sprint to the next agent who does.

Now, as you can imagine utilizing these awesome tools can get time consuming especially with an already hectic schedule.  So, how do you utilize the vast amount of social media tools while keeping your schedule open?  This is where we come in.

We offer…

SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT 

As I’m sure many of you have heard: social media marketing is here and making a BIG impact on your real estate productivity. Let your virtual team handle all the hard work and follow-up. Your team will provide status updates on your behalf and make your social media life rewarding. Give us a try today…

Until next time,

Brandon

Often times at the beginning of a new relationship with our real estate clients, we ask “what is the name of your current customer database?” In response we hear a range of answers like MS-Outlook, MS-Spreadsheet, Email Accounts, ACT, Top Producer, and Agent Office.

As a business owner, one of the greatest assets a person/company will have is their database. Never underestimate how powerful a list of repeat clients and/or list of prospects can improve your bottom line each year. There are many ways to market to an active database of customers and prospects that have already shown interest in your service.

We take a quick review of what is needed then begin to discuss different options to help improve this key piece of your business. For real estate agents, we found that Agent Office and Top Producer are commonly used throughout the realty world.

Agent Office vs. Top Producer

Which one is better? The answer is, “It depends”. It depends upon your needs and your budget, also whether or not you need to be online; having the ability to login through internet and do business from any location or offline by just having the software on your personal PC. Top Producer has a web-based platform which allows our Virtual Assistants to be able to login through the internet at anytime to update the database as new business or closings take place in real-time.

Basically, we find Agent Office being a desktop product would either host on your personal desktop PC or server for small office use. When outsourcing a project or task from outside the primary office this could be a challenge.

Our common practice is to work any database our clients may have; however, we enjoy the benefits of a web-base platform similar to Top Producer because of its online presence. If you’re going to start fresh, the tools of a web-based system is the best way to go.

Top Producer
http://www.topproducer.com/products/8i.aspx

Agent Office
http://agentoffice.com/

Till next time,
Brandon

From our research we found several lenders that will accept loans on flips within 90 days!

We are always here to Help till next time, 

Brandon

The entire idea of being able to hire someone to work for you without having to physically be in your office is relatively new. For the past ten years, virtual assistants have really been making a mark in a number of different industries. They are particularly helpful in the real estate industry. Agents and brokers become inundated with work. They need to successfully split the day between their administrative work and their business of selling properties.

Hiring a real estate assistant gives agent or broker more time selling homes. Virtual assistants do not come with the same high costs of hiring an employee to do the work. There are no benefits to pay and the real estate professional does not have to keep a payroll account. All that is needed is to assign an task for the assistant and it is provided virtually.

Virtual assistants are already trained and have the skills to assist in any kind of real estate project. They can assist with the marketing plans of the company. They can update MLS listing. There is a wide variety of tasks that they can perform.

There are online services where RE professionals can go to submit job orders. Many of these sites are solely devoted to individuals with skills and training in various aspects of real estate. The client simply has to post the job and the skills they require and the virtual assistance service will see to it that the order is filled similar to an BPO/REO assignments.

The types of projects that virtual assistants work on will vary. It all depends on what the client wants. They can help with the accounting records. They can assist in the marketing and promotion efforts. Assistants can also type up any of the contractual agreements and schedule the appointments for meetings.

Their main job is to make the life of the RE professional easier. The terms of their assignment are clearly stated before the assistant accepts the job. Some assignments are long term and may last several months or years. Other assignments are short term and may last only a few days. In order to keep the work flow going, many virtual assistants sign up with more than one service.

Hiring a Real Estate Virtual Assistant reduces the amount of work agents and brokers have to do. Their main focus is selling homes; if they get caught up with all of the administrative requirements in the office they will not have time to focus on the deals that will generate income for the company. And this industry heavily relies on commissions. The fewer homes they sell, the less commission is made. Virtual assistants alleviate a lot of these problems and are easy to hire through the various online sites.

This type of virtual assistance has proved a boom for all consumers. Just a simple web search can produce a variety of real estate-based websites and companies that provide robust information in databases which can be searched, producing detailed data on each house along with photos and panoramic views of perhaps the entire neighborhood.

Some of the very tech savvy real estate agents have figured out how to stay in constant contact with prospects and customers alike. When real estate websites were originally established maybe 10 years ago, contact information was usually added in hypertext form leading customers to an e-mail system or generic contact us page. Technology has now turned that antiquated system into something totally useless and has upgraded to web pages that allow the broker to be contacted by text message, cell phone, Twitter or even Facebook messages.

The customer can expect almost immediate turnaround, no longer needing to wait hours hoping that somebody got a message to call back. Some of the websites are actually program with WebCams so that customers will be able to have a virtual meeting with the real estate agent and have a real-time conversation about properties, financing, and appointment availability.

Almost every real estate agent has his or her personal webpage in addition to being referenced on the air company website. Most likely these two websites are linked together and forwarded to one another. This increases the opportunity for contact information to be transmitted quickly and effortlessly without needing the assistance of secretaries taking messages or even voicemail systems that might have their own technical problems. Being able to use this type of virtual assistance offers the ease of use that was unheard of only a few years ago.

Virtual assistance doesn’t get limited to a webpage either! There is even new technology that can be coded on signs that are put up in front of homes for sale. For instance if you happen to be driving down the street, see a for sale sign at home that draws your interest, you can pull up and see if the sign has a little electronic box on the side.

These boxes are reminiscent of old-fashioned pagers; you simply press the button, type in your cell phone number, and the real estate agent will call you back immediately. If you are interested in seeing the inside of that home she may even be able to call the owner and arrange an appointment while you’re there.

This technology has saved brokers innumerable hours of wasted time with customers and prospects who really were not ready to buy and didn’t understand the entire buying process.

Welcome To Your Virtual Assistant–The Smart Solution for Time Starved Executives

If you’re a business owner who’s looking for a way to save more money, have more time–and be a lot less stressed, then you’ve come to the right place!

One of the most common complaints among busy executives is a chronic lack of time.

And for many, there aren’t enough hours in a day to take care of all the routine tasks that keep a business alive.

That is, unless they’ve hired a virtual assistant from Your Virtual Attache.

You see, the outsourcing of virtual assistants is not a new concept–but it’s a very powerful one.

At Your Virtual Attache we help businesses succeed by pairing them with top notch, qualified professional assistants who become a vital part of the team.

Each assistant is handpicked and trained in house– to our exacting standards.
So they’re ready to get down to business when they start your project.

And, since they perform their duties off site–you won’t need to provide office space or expensive equipment.

Thanks
By the way, we have virtual assistants that can do this for you.

Make your video and post it in different websites or your blog

This is good stuff for selling products and services

Ok, let’s be honest with each other. Even though being a virtual assistant is enjoyable, it is undeniably one of the most demanding jobs out there. I mean it is really a cool job. You learn cool stuff everyday but maintaining high quality work, multitasking, and other related matters require a certain amount of energy.

Despite of all these, how did ace virtual assistants succeeded in this field?

The answer to this query used to be super secret stuff. However, lucky us we have our very own ace virtual assistants and they’ve shared their super secret stuff to us. Hooray!

Here is a collected response from ace virtual assistants themselves.

Note Taking

-Aces seem to have a knack for details. They never want any detail to be left out. While talking to a client, a word processor is waiting to be filled information necessary to the task to be delegated.

Minor or major details, nothing should be left out. After they’ve jotted down the instruction, they polish the word file into a succinct and comprehensive word document.

Some virtual assistants even make an audio recording of their conversation with their client for the purpose of review.

Learn your Craft

-Aces spend their free time browsing the internet looking for informational materials. They scour the net for virtual assistance videos, industry news, they actively participate in relevant forums, and they read a lot of blogs just like this one.

They recognize the very sensible belief that learning should be continuous. Well, that makes perfect sense. Otherwise, if they aren’t updated they would be left out by the competition.

Dedication

-They are happy and content with what they do. Nothing more to it. They’ve found a way to enjoy, excel, and love their chosen profession. Ironically, this quality is one of the hardest to attain. Aspiring virtual assistants should really put their minds and hearts into the job.

But if you’re just starting, don’t be disheartened. Being adept requires some experience and making the most out of it after all. Just keep at it and you’ll ace it.