Create, utilize, and segment a Virtual Assistant role around your Tech Stack to power your growth and GCI
The utilization of virtual assistants has exploded over the past 5 years, and all growth in sales and GCI has a direct link. As industries, roles, and business models continue to shift, these roles have become even more crucial as foundational pillars of every real business. The greatest opportunity that these roles offer is the ability to create.
Technology will scale and evolve, and complexity will widen, creating gaps between systems, tasks, and communication. Consider adoption rates and fragmented systems industry-wide:
The average broker strives for a 20% adoption rate for their technology platforms.
A 20% adoption rate results in 80% of users only leveraging 20% of the features.
The average agent uses 20 systems to manage their business.
Managing, growing, and integrating your technology platform is a chessboard requiring a clear vision of the entire landscape but precision and granularity in the present moment. The perfection of this role is a significant advantage with the synergistic, systematic, and segmented efficiencies that are difficult to locate locally and significantly more expensive. Some businesses can save up to 78% on operating costs by hiring virtual assistants instead of in-house workers, and over two-thirds of business owners have hired a virtual assistant since 2021. The shift towards a virtual workforce is evident, with projections indicating that 50% of the U.S. workforce could be virtual by 2028.
Definition, segmentation, and clarity create success for this position. Let’s examine the different roles, layers, and strategies for your sales funnel:
1. Administrative Tasks:
Communication Management: VAs handle emails and phone calls, manage correspondence, and ensure that all communications are routed to the appropriate parties.
Scheduling and Calendar Management: They organize appointments, schedule property viewings, and coordinate meetings between agents, buyers, and sellers.
Document Preparation and Management: VAs prepare and manage documentation such as contracts, lease agreements, and purchase offers, ensuring accuracy and compliance.
Data Entry and Database Management: They maintain and update listings on multiple listing service (MLS) systems, client databases, and CRM tools.
Key Strategy Built and Executed: Data Mining and Consolidation: Created a plan for importing contacts, leads, and relationships. Consistency and consolidation of key data points for every contact are vital. Using a multitude of data sources (open house attendees, phone contacts, and fragmented lead sources) for input and management in your CRM is vital.
2. Marketing Roles:
Digital Marketing: VAs are responsible for managing and updating the company's website, social media profiles, and online listings, as well as creating and distributing digital newsletters.
Content Creation: They create marketing materials such as flyers, brochures, and email campaigns.
Market Research: VAs perform research on market trends, compile reports on local real estate market conditions, and gather data to assist with pricing strategies.
SEO and Online Presence Management: They may also handle SEO tasks to improve the visibility of the company's online presence.
Listing Management: VAs post and update property listings across various real estate platforms to ensure maximum visibility among potential buyers.
Key Strategy Built and Executed: Content Creation and Management of Social Media Channels. Your social media strategy is vital, and posting each day is crucial. We created and advanced an SM plan for all content, channels, and sources with an overlay with our AI resources, which encompassed 50 posts weekly.
3. Sales Support:
Lead Generation and Qualification: VAs reach out to potential clients through various channels, qualify leads, and maintain a pipeline of prospects.
Client Relationship Management: They follow up with clients, provide updates on property searches or sales progress, and keep the client engaged throughout the sales process.
Sales Transaction Coordination: VAs coordinate the various stages of a real estate transaction, from initial agreement to closing, ensuring all parties are informed and necessary steps are completed on time.
Lead generation tasks:
Prospecting: VAs identify and compile lists of potential property buyers or sellers using online resources, social media, real estate platforms, and databases.
Cold calling and warm calling: They make calls to potential leads to gauge interest in buying or selling properties, often using scripts provided by the real estate agency to qualify leads.
Online Lead Generation: VAs manage online lead generation tools, including pay-per-click campaigns, social media ads, and landing pages designed to capture lead information.
Email Marketing: They create and send out regular newsletters and targeted email campaigns to nurture leads, providing valuable real estate insights and listings to keep prospects engaged.
Lead Nurturing and Follow-Up Tasks:
CRM Management: Virtual assistants ensure that all lead information is accurately entered into the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system and that the lead status is regularly updated.
Lead Qualification: VAs evaluate the potential of leads based on predefined criteria, such as budget, location preference, and buying timeline, to prioritize follow-up efforts.
Client Communication: They maintain regular contact with potential clients through emails, phone calls, or messaging, answering questions, and providing additional information to move them through the sales funnel.
Appointment Setting: Virtual assistants schedule appointments for the real estate agent to meet with qualified leads, ensuring a smooth transition from lead nurturing to sales opportunities.
Key Strategy Built and Executed: This area has the opportunity for the most significant impact on productivity and GCI. Your success is built on your ability to clearly define the roles of sales activities and sales support activities. We utilized two key areas to allow more sales focus for the sales team:
1) built-in daily reporting tasks and prioritization for review in all key areas to ensure no lead activity was properly managed.
2) built-out action steps and response sequences for every lead trigger to be executed throughout the day.
4. Support Functions:
Technical Support: Some VAs provide technical support for real estate software, manage online tools, and troubleshoot issues that the team may encounter.
Training and Onboarding: They may assist with onboarding new staff by providing training on systems and processes.
Personal Assistance: For individual realtors, VAs might also perform personal assistant tasks such as managing personal appointments or travel arrangements.
Key Strategy Built and Executed: Once your VA is established on your team, you can expand their knowledge base, training, and growth. As technology grows, so does the need for advanced training. Training and resources are also bountiful in most VA’s native language and less expensive. We utilized our VA team with advanced training in areas such as Facebook marketing, Google Ads, CRM training, video editing, data mining, social media channel management, and many other areas. Increasing your VA’s knowledge base helps reduce your already “full plate” of the required knowledge base.
5. Specialty Roles:
Real Estate Virtual Staging: VAs with design skills might offer virtual staging services, creating digital furnishings in property photos to enhance online listings.
Transaction Management: They handle the end-to-end management of real estate transactions, coordinating with all stakeholders, managing timelines, and ensuring compliance with legal requirements.
Key Strategy Built and Executed: The ball can often get dropped once the transaction closes, and this can be one of the biggest gaps in keeping your brand and awareness active. We use numerous sequences and action plans to add key data points, add our visibility action plan, create check-in tasks for your agents, and set up home valuation communication. Again, this is a similar theme to most sales support functions: separate tasks and management to allow your sales team to just focus on the important client contacts, including check-ins, calls, and personalized messages.
6. Financial Tasks:
Bookkeeping: Some VAs assist with financial record-keeping, invoice processing, and tracking commissions and expenses.
Financial Reporting: They may also prepare financial reports and assist with budgeting and financial analysis.
Performance Tracking: They monitor the effectiveness of lead generation campaigns using analytics tools, providing reports on metrics like conversion rates, click-through rates, and ROI
Feedback Collection: Virtual assistants may also reach out to leads to collect feedback on their property search experience or the information provided, which can help refine lead generation strategies.
Key strategy built and executed: Do not overlook the obvious. Most CRMs have built-in fields and functions for transaction management and net income calculations. We used our VA to add all transaction income, splits, and fees to avoid double entries and allow quick reporting at any time. Another utilization is managing separate P&Ls for various projects, lead sources, and business models within business models. This allows you to manage multiple, stand-alone P&Ls to better track results and ROI across multiple segments.
This case study demonstrates the substantial value a well-defined and segmented virtual assistant (VA) role can bring to a real estate business. By strategically utilizing VAs across various tasks and functions, you can achieve significant productivity gains, improve GCI, and free up your team to focus on core business activities.
The calculation for ROI can be evaluated in two ways: intrinsic and non-intrinsic. Intrinsic evaluation can be determined by considering VA cost per hour vs. cost per hour for your in-house admin and sales team roles. Admin tasks can range from $30 to $60 per hour, and sales tasks can range from $50 to $200. VA’s range from $5 to $25 hourly. The non-intrinsic evaluation could have a far greater upside. Utilizing a task-oriented and more focused VA can create VAs of much better quality. US-based teams in all industries have far greater levels of distractions and disruptions. Also, personality profiles for sales professionals may not align with repetitive and task-oriented actions so using a VA will translate to consistency and execution.
Key Takeaways:
· Segmentation is crucial: Divide the VA role into specific functions like administrative, marketing, sales support, technical support, specialty roles, and financial tasks.
· Define clear strategies for each function: Outline specific tasks, goals, and key performance indicators (KPIs) for each segment.
· Leverage technology: utilize data mining, automation tools, and CRM systems to optimize workflows and data management.
· Invest in training: Continuously expand your VA's knowledge base to adapt to evolving technology and market demands.
· Prioritize client focus: Streamline sales support functions to allow your team to prioritize personalized client interactions.
· Measure and analyze: Track performance metrics and adjust strategies based on data insights.
Overall, implementing a well-structured VA program can significantly enhance your real estate business's efficiency, productivity, overall success, and GCI growth.