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Real Estate Agent Virtual Personal Assistant
Generalist Virtual Assistants to Help Outsource & Streamline Your Day-to-Day Workload
REVAS provides "Fully Managed" US-based and Overseas Virtual Assistants, specialized in working exclusively with Real Estate Companies. We can help you implement this, and a variety of other Real Estate Workflows, on autopilot!
Goal:
The main goal of adding a Virtual Personal Assistant to your Real Estate Business is simple:
To help free your time & attention from menial low-level Tasks!
This can be accomplished in several ways, but ultimately the objectives will be things like:
- Filling gaps in your day-to-day activities,
- Handling random one-off “assistant” Tasks,
- Helping manage your calendar & scheduling,
- Keeping your CRM up-to-date,
- And more…
Since this is a generalist role, what’s most important is that the Virtual Personal Assistant allows you to focus your time on its highest & best use, while delegating the menial duties that are below your pay grade.
How It Works:
A Real Estate Agent “Virtual Personal Assistant” is really a catch-all term for a variety of specific Real Estate Virtual Assistant Tasks.
Therefore, the two most important factors to achieve success will be:
- Clearly defining the responsibilities of the role, and
- Carefully hiring the right Virtual Assistant for the job.
Due to the generalist nature of this type of role, and the broad potential Task List your Virtual Assistant might need to manage, hiring the right VA here is more important than with most other outsourced roles.
Part of the reason for that is your Virtual Personal Assistant will likely need to handle one-off Tasks for which there is no Standard Operating Procedure (SOP)!
For this to succeed, you’ll need to hire a Virtual Personal Assistant who is not only self-directed & a good problem solver…
… You’ll also need someone with whom you have a good rapport, since you’ll be working with them day-in and day-out for (hopefully) years to come.
Once you have the right person, you’ll need to decide on whether a part-time role is adequate, or if it can make sense to have them as your full-time Assistant. In general, full-time is preferable, since then you’ll know your requirements are the Virtual Assistant’s #1 occupational focus (someone who has to split their attention between your business & other responsibilities will never be as dedicated or committed as someone who is 100% full-time for you).
Pros:
A Virtual Personal Assistant is going to be cheaper than hiring a local Personal Assistant in almost all scenarios.
Most likely, you’ll be able to use someone who is Overseas, meaning the cost difference will be substantial.
Plus, by having the same dedicated Virtual Assistant with you day after day, you’ll achieve better and better performance over the months & years to come.
Cons:
Depending on what tasks you require of your Virtual Personal Assistant, you might find yourself spending time regularly training your assistant to ensure theyāre performing to your own exacting standards.
Also, since this type of generalist role requires an Assistant who is a near “perfect fit” for your business & work culture… you’ll probably have to go through several VAs before you find the right one for the long-term.
This means getting the perfect Virtual Personal Assistant can be a lot of work for the first several months.
Work Estimate:
One potential pitfall with a Virtual Personal Assistant is scheduling & availability.
In an ideal world, you have a busy enough workload that your VA can go full-time right out the gate.
If that’s not feasible, ideally you can keep someone busy part-time for at least 4 hours per day (20 hours per week)… which means if they are working elsewhere, at least it’s only for half of their time or less.
So, the simple back-of-the-napkin Work Estimate can be simply 80 to 160 Work Hours Per Month (approximately), or about 4 – 8 Work Hours Per Day.
On the other hand, if you really need a Virtual Personal Assistant, but you only have a few Work Hours Per Day, the real challenge will be finding a VA who has the right schedule to match your needs.
If you do have a very light workload, but still need a Virtual Assistant, this might be a scenario to consider using an Agency who can help provide multiple VAs, and replace a very part-time VA who might get hired on full-time somewhere else while you were depending on them.
The main other consideration when it comes to Work Estimates are the set up time required.
Keep in mind, since this is a more generalist role, there will almost definitely be occasional one-off Tasks for which there is no SOP (and no justification to build an SOP for a Task that might never happen again).
In these situations, you’ll need to invest extra time & energy into training your VA… which is always a risky investment if you’re not sure how much longer they’ll be around.
In the best case scenario, you’ll continue to evolve the role with your Virtual Personal Assistant until they’re working for you full-time, doing a great job, adding a ton of value, and giving you the feeling you can’t live without them!