5 Reasons Why Your Real Estate Business Needs a Virtual Assistant -

If you are a Real Estate agent, TIME is your most valuable asset. Most of the key performance tasks in your business are dependent on time and your competitive edge should be that you are one step ahead of the competition.

Real estate agents, with a customer interfacing role, are just one part of an effective real estate business. Due to the nature of the work – helping buyers and sellers with their property needs, it’s inevitable that you’ll need administrative help to efficiently run your business.

Hiring a real estate virtual assistant is the answer.

Instead of giving you the obvious reasons – like spending less on staff salaries, no longer taking work home, efficiency, and increased productivity, let me provide 5 even better reasons why you need an offshore virtual assistant in your business now.

1. Get ahead of the curve

Currently, we’ve been troubled by the Royal Commission recommendation – superannuation and investment advisers are losing some commissions, mortgage brokers may lose commissions… what do you think is going to happen to real estate? Perhaps it will go to fee-for-service for real estate agents as well. It’s a recognisable pattern.

It comes as no surprise that some real estate firms are springing up with a fee-for-service feature. Real estate businesses such as Purplebricks, Upside, and Property offer this remuneration scheme.

The industry is already changing, putting downward pressure on your revenue. It may not be as affordable to hire Australian back-office administrative staff in real estate in the next five years or so.

Now is the perfect time to get ahead of the curve and start implementing changes to your business now.

2. Sales and focus

One of the problems real estate businesses are facing is that sales agents try to be a jack-of-all-trades.

Here’s a suggestion – make your onshore office a real estate sales office, and bring all administrative work to an offshore virtual assistant company.

Real estate agents need the freedom to maximise their sales and marketing creativity, whilst not being bogged down with administrative work.

With technology and talent, offshore staff can take on all administration-related work such as taking incoming and making outgoing calls, data entry, scheduling appointments, and post-service client care.

Dividing and streamlining business activities creates transparency and accountability. This gives you a clearer, more up-to-date perspective as to how your sales funnel is flowing, and measures the success of your business.

3. Access to expanded servicess

If you hire through a virtual assistant service provider, you have easy access to expanded services. You can have specialised work done, such as digital marketing, website fixes, design and graphics, accounting, and bookkeeping, to name a few.

If you simply need some quick work done to update your social media profile or optimise your LinkedIn, YouTube, and other social media platforms, you can approach your virtual assistant company to have the work done by someone within the team.

The bonus is that you are getting help at a lower cost compared to hiring freelancers online. You also avoid the trouble of going through another hiring and onboarding process because the company is already familiar with your business.

You may commence with expanded services on a part-time basis until you feel the need to transition to a full-time virtual assistant. The company can also have your part-time specialist train a full-time staff member to become your dedicated support.

4. Becoming competitive

Other firms that hired virtual assistants several years ago have received enormous benefits.

As reported in the Australian Financial Review in February 2018, Ernst and Young started a trial in 2016 with 20 Executive Assistants based in Manila, and the number has been steadily growing. Ernst and Young now have 38 Executive Assistants in Manila working for executives in Australia and New Zealand, which comprises 15% of the company’s Executive Assistant workforce.

This is a great example of a globalised business that has gained a lot from offshoring.

In principle, if your labour cost is less, you can redirect your funds to other business activities such as sales and marketing, which more directly influence sales conversion.

Being competitive is good.

5. Enjoying flexibility

When you are working with an offshore team you’ve got far greater flexibility.

Let me explain…

First, you have the flexibility to negotiate better fee-for-service due to spending less on overhead cost per staff member.

Hiring a full-time person in the Philippines is going to cost one-third of what it’s going to cost you if you hire someone in Australia for the same function. As a result, the less you spend on staff salaries, the better position you are in in terms of negotiating fees with your clients.

You can have 3 superstar virtual assistants for the cost of one Australian-based staff. Isn’t that a great bargain?

You also have the flexibility to grow your business and strengthen your operational systems if you offshore with an established virtual assistant service provider.

Specifically, VA Platinum’s value-added service includes access to 200+ systems and documents that help build and enhance your business processes. We even have a step-by-step guide on how to document your process – in case you don’t know where to start.

If you’re always on the road and can’t find time to put structure around your operation, I guarantee that taking advantage of this extended resource is amazingly helpful.

Hiring offshore superstar staff to work with you is an amazing business solution. More than the value they bring to your business, staff in the Philippines are fun to work with!

To date, we have 35+ clients who are enjoying the difference.

If you want to meet a few of our superstar staff, or want to chat with us about getting started with your first staff member, contact us today.