Hiring a commercial real estate virtual assistant continues to be an excellent cost-effective way of saving money for your business.

If there was one positive from the worldwide pandemic, businesses realised that remote working could be effective if implemented correctly.

Hiring a real estate virtual assistant can save money on office space, equipment, and in-house staff.

A virtual assistant can help with various tasks, but you need to know which tasks are specific to the real estate industry.

This article explains which tasks real estate virtual assistants should perform and how best to go about hiring.

What Is A Commercial Real Estate Virtual Assistant? 

A commercial real estate virtual assistant is someone you hire who works remotely for your business.

The person you hire will be responsible for various tasks such as updating property listings, email management and phone calls, social media management, data mining, appointment setting, calendar management, blogging and bookkeeping.

Daily tasks which are time-consuming such as data entry, will be the responsibility of your virtual assistant. Still, if you hire the right person, they will be specifically trained in areas like graphic design, which benefit your business.

The person you hire could be a freelancer or work for a virtual assistant service company. 

Key Tasks For A Commercial Real Estate VA 

Here are five critical tasks a VA needs to perform.

Market Research

Market research is critical to all businesses, particularly when running a real estate business. 

Real estate agents will always need help doing in-depth market research, where a virtual assistant can play a crucial role.

Why Outsourcing Services to Virtual Assistants is a Good Business StrategyComplementing quality real estate marketing strategies should always be considered one of your dollar productive tasks. 

Compiling statistics about the area a property is situated will prove invaluable. For example, researching stats such as the best schools in the area, must have facilities, employment stats, and area crime rates may seem mundane, but they are necessary. 

Knowing who your competition is and what strategies they employ is also a vital part of property management.

Manage Property Listings

A real estate virtual assistant should excel at managing property listings.

And accuracy is critical when dealing with property listings. If your properties’ information is incorrect, your clients will lose confidence and switch to a different estate agent.

Your property listings must be correct, up-to-date, highly visible, and well-advertised. 

If potential customers can’t find your properties for sale or lease, it will not matter how fantastic they are or how well-photographed the property is.

Your VA must follow all the standard procedures when creating a lease agreement which all commercial properties require.

Digital Marketing

Like all businesses, digital marketing plays a critical role in property management.

Making sure your properties are prominent and promoted across all social media platforms will help generate revenue for your business.

Hiring a virtual assistant person with excellent skills and knowledge in video editing and creating engaging digital marketing campaigns across multiple social media platforms is your responsibility as a business owner.

When you hire a VA who wants to learn new skills like search engine optimisation (SEO), which ranks your business higher up the search page, it helps to improve services provided by your business to your clients. 

Cold Calling

Your VA will have to focus on many recurring tasks, and one of the most vital is cold calling. Cold calling can be viewed as an outdated and intrusive practice, but it still gets results.

Benefits Of Hiring A Virtual AssistantAs long as you adhere to the laws surrounding cold calling, this method will help generate more leads, leading to new clients and increased revenue.

Cold calling is seen as one of the mundane tasks your VA undertakes, but with a suitable well-crafted script, this strategy can prove fruitful.

Having someone who can speak English to an excellent level with experience in customer services will significantly enhance your chances of presenting your company well and gaining additional clients.

Always ensure your VA follows up on any potential leads from cold calling. 

Email Outreach

Virtual assistance tasks will always involve email outreach. Running well-thought-out email campaigns is hard work, but when done correctly can prove lucrative for any real estate business.

Knowing your target audience is vital. For example, you don’t want to be emailing people who have no interest in buying a commercial property.

Therefore, your VA must ensure that the email contact database list is constantly updated.

When you have an excellent VA who can handle all your outsourcing services tasks, it allows you to concentrate on providing exceptional service regarding networking and closing sales deals with important clients.

How To Find The Ideal VA

Here are some tips on hiring the perfect VA for your company.

Create A Detailed Job Advertisement

When hiring a VA, you must ensure that the job advert attracts people with the right skills.

Therefore, you must be transparent about your business needs with the person you hire.

Of course, they will need to be excellent at dealing with customer inquiries, managing your calendar, and email management – but it goes much further than that. 

For example, if you are looking to hire a VA within the real estate agency industry, you will require them to have at least some experience and knowledge of the sector.

Countless VAs are looking for a job, so narrow the pool by including keyword task requirements in your job description advert.

Filter Out Candidates

As a business owner, you want to attract people to the position you are advertising who stand a chance of making it to the interview stage.

Therefore, when hiring a VA, you may ask for a video test response to your job advert. This way, you can gauge how well they come across.

You could also ask the applicant to write a 100-150 word written assessment to see how much they know about your industry. Again, this will test their knowledge and writing ability.

Always check the references of the applicants you want to go further in the hiring process. They may be highly qualified, but it is best to stay clear if they have bad references.

Interview Best Candidates

Once you have narrowed the candidates down to the five most suitable, you can conduct interviews.

Up Your Real Estate Expertise by Watching These 5 Real Estate Video ChannelsThe right mix of situational and personal questions is vital during the interview. Also, make clear the standards and cultural values your business expects from its staff.

Knowing how much they know about your business will give you a good idea of how enthusiastic they are about working for your company.

Experience is an advantage but not a deal breaker when hiring. 

For example, if you can evaluate that one of the candidates doesn’t have the experience but displays the right attitude and willingness to learn new skills, they will prove to be an excellent long-term investment.

Run A Trial Period

When businesses hire new staff members, it is common to offer a trial period before offering them contracted hours.

A trial period could be unpaid or paid. It depends on what suits both parties. However, non-paid trial periods should only last a few days.

A longer paid trial period is called probation and lasts 90 days. 

These trial periods are an excellent chance to evaluate how suitable the person is for the role you need them to do before you make a long-term commitment. 

Let Us Help You Hire Real Estate, Virtual Assistants 

Hiring virtual assistants can be stressful and drawn out, which is why many real estate agents rush and hire the wrong person.

However, don’t be put off hiring a VA for commercial real estate because, when managed correctly, a remote worker can prove an asset to your company.

If you want to succeed the first time when hiring a VA, we can source, hire, train, and manage your remote worker for you. 

Reach out to us by phone or email to see how cost-effective and hassle-free we can make the hiring process.

 

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