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Real Estate Virtual ISA (Inside Sales Agent)
Dedicated Lead Pre-Qualification, Follow-Up, and Nurturing Virtual Assistants
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 goal of your Real Estate Virtual ISA (Inside Sales Agent) is to help you convert more Leads to Closed Sales through dedicated:
- Lead Pre-Qualification
- Lead Nurturing
- Lead Follow-Up
- Appointment Setting
Where a Real Estate Telemarketer is a specialist in making outbound Cold Calls to generate new Leads…
… An Inside Sales Agent is an expert at working with existing Leads & Opportunities in the database, to move them forward in your Sales Pipeline.
Therefore, a good Real Estate Virtual ISA should help you achieve goals like:
- Getting more Leads to initial Appointments,
- Preventing Opportunities from going stale,
- Nurturing Leads who are far out from Closing,
- Rekindling old and “dead” Leads who’ve gone cold.
Your Virtual ISA is a person — most likely US-based, or at least a high-level English-speaking Overseas VA — who’s making calls, sending texts, and making emails to follow up and nurture all types of Leads, including:
- buyer leads,
- seller leads,
- residential leads, or
- commercial leads.
Keeping your Sphere Of Influence (SOI) engaged with a real person is so essential because it brings a touch of personable outreach that your Social Media and Drip Emails cannot replicate.
We’ve often seen campaigns where the Seller or Buyer is surprised when the Virtual ISA is not there at their final Closing meeting (because they’ve interacted so much to get there).
How It Works:
"Wasted Leads are an Epidemic in Real Estate."
The ISA’s job is focused entirely around Follow Up and Nurturing. They should be working across all channels:
- Inbound & Outbound Calls,
- SMS Texts,
- Social Media DMs,
- Emails, and
- Physical Mail (if possible).
The larger your database, the more valuable an ISA (or team of ISAs) will become.
Some common use-cases for your Virtual ISA would include things like:
- Calling back Internet Leads (Facebook, Zillow, Realtor.com, PPC, etc).
- Nurturing relationships in your Sphere Of Influence.
- Scheduling, confirming, and rescheduling Sales Appointments.
- Conducting Pre-Qualification interviews & questionnaires.
- Chasing down important documents or signatures.
They are also a great resource for calling back and following up with your Inbound Phone Call Leads.
AND they can even answer phones during their work hours, which makes them great for following up on direct mail and sign call leads.
So the ISA is going to be available during a set schedule, spending 100% of their time, focus, and attention on:
- Calling back Leads,
- Nurturing & Follow Up, and
- Engaging with your Sphere Of Influence.
Pros:
By far the biggest value of a Virtual ISA is that they help you convert more Leads to Closed Sales.
Specifically, the Inside Sales Agent is going to do a lot of the legwork to build relationships, nurturing your prospects and Sphere of Influence…
…so much so that they’re ready to sit down and talk about selling or buying their home.
Just imagine having one person dedicating their entire schedule to focusing on following up with potential leads and nurturing your close relationships.
Do you understand how much time you’ll save?
Then you can go back to doing what you do best instead of worrying about everyone you’ve already began the lead generation process with.
An ISA, backed by the REVAS proven process and training, will:
- make you more money by converting more leads,
- free up your own time,
- and allow you to spend less money on in-house staff.
Cons:
There are two big challenges when you hire a Virtual Real Estate ISA.
The first challenge, of course, is the cost.
Since this is the type of role best handled by a US-based Virtual Assistant (or highly experienced Overseas VA with excellent English) you’re going to be looking at:
- on the low end $800 per month, and
- on the high end, $3,000+ per month…
The cost alone will be prohibitive for newer Real Estate Business Owners who have a small database and/or aren’t spending much to generate new Inbound Leads.
Keep in mind:
A Virtual ISA is not focused on GENERATING new Leads, but rather on Lead Nurturing & Follow Up with your EXISTING Database.
Therefore, if it’s a question of budget, 99% of the time you should spend on Lead Generation FIRST, before you invest into a Virtual ISA.
The other big downside when getting started with a Virtual ISA is setting up an efficient, measurable Workflow for them to follow.
It’s far too easy for your Virtual ISA to spend their Work Hours simply chatting & in non-viable conversations.
You’ll need to be sure you have a system in place to empower them on actually driving Sales.
That’s why you’ll need to carefully think through the Virtual ISA role, and keep track of their Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in a way that allows you to systematically determine Return On Investment (ROI).
You need to coordinate between the Virtual ISA (and your in-house Salespeople) to be sure that the communication is smooth & your “Hand-Off” procedures are efficient…
… while also ensuring you have clear criteria & tracking systems set up for the event of a “Hand-Back,” where a Lead is downgraded & sent back to the ISA for further Nurturing.
If any of these Workflows are inefficient, un-tracked, or otherwise malfunctioning, you can easily sink a ton of money on your Virtual ISA without actually boosting sales!
Work Estimate:
When it comes to setting up a new Virtual ISA, there is good news & bad news when it comes to the Work Estimate.
The good news is:
You can easily find proven Scripts and Templates, and likely even hire a Virtual ISA who has prior Real Estate experience in a role very similar to your requirements.
Therefore, the initial setup process is not going to be too costly, in terms of time, money, or energy.
Plus, since the ISA role is so comparatively straightforward, and mostly just making calls & sending messages, you aren’t going to need many (if any) Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for them to follow.
The bad news is:
A Virtual ISA role will see a wide variety of variables, and will be having high-level sales communications with valuable Clients & Prospects in your Sphere.
That means you need a high-quality, higher-paid person for the role…
… most likely US-based (or very capable Overseas, e.g. from Central or South America, with perfect English, and a good understanding of your local market & culture).
This is much too important of a high-touch, customer-facing role, so you need to hire someone who is not going to make major mistakes that would negatively reflect on your business & brand.
That means the hard cost is not going to be cheap.
We typically recommend a minimum of 40 Work Hours Per Month for a Virtual ISA (which comes out to about 2 Work Hours Per Day, M – F).
Assuming your Virtual ISA is costing somewhere in the realistic range of $18 – $25 per hour, that is going to run a hard cost of at least $720 – $1,000+ per month.
Some simple back-of-the-napkin math to use when thinking about how many Work Hours Per Month (or even Per Day) you could benefit from allocating to a Virtual ISA:
For every 1 Work Hour Per MONTH…
… your ISA can keep up with about 1 Open Opportunity.
Another way to say that is:
For every 1 Work Hour Per DAY (about 20 Work Hours Per MONTH)…
… Your ISA can handle about 20 Open Opportunities.
Therefore, a full-time Virtual ISA (8 Work Hours Per DAY, or about 160 Work Hours Per Month)…
… Will be maxing out at about 160 Open Opportunities.
They might be able to get through low-effort Nurtures of a much larger database (simply keeping in touch, and checking in with Leads who are far from Closing).
However, if they will be expected to keep up with, and stay in regular communication with, a truly “open” Opportunity (a Client that is likely to close within the next ~90 – 120 days)…
… the 1 Work Hour Per Month = 1 Open Opportunity math should help you avoid overloading the ISA in a way that will significantly reduce their effectiveness.