Published December 9, 2022. Updated August 22, 2023.
As a real estate owner or manager, you probably have your hands full with every effort required to market and maintain properties. Luckily, remote work is increasingly embraced, and real estate professionals don't have to rely only on people to join their onsite team to help with the workload.
Real estate professionals can work with remote team members to take on repetitive or low-level tasks within their companies. While virtual assistants work remotely, they can be valuable assets to your company.
So, how can you manage a team of virtual assistants for social media management or other roles that don't require a physical presence in your office?
Today we highlight a few key issues managers experience when building remote teams and the ideal solutions to manage them well.
What Is a Real Estate Virtual Assistant?
First: what is a real estate virtual assistant?
VAs are contract workers that live and work remotely. They can handle various administrative, sales, customer support, and marketing duties (among other tasks) to help your real estate company grow.
Unlike your in-house or W-2 employees, they don't require you to provide benefits, equipment, or a workspace to get their jobs done.
What Does a Real Estate Virtual Assistant Do?
Specific to real estate, what can a virtual contractor do? Here are some tasks real estate VAs can perform successfully for your company.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is integral to the success of real estate companies. Social platforms can help you funnel more prospects to your website and business.
Skilled virtual assistants can help optimize your social media platforms. They can keep up with trends to market through social platforms while ensuring that the content is up to date. Remote workers can also respond to potential customers leaving comments or reaching out through your social accounts.
Website and Content Management
Your website and content need consistent updates to help your business stay visible online. The content should also be search engine optimized to help people find you.
Many virtual assistants have SEO skills and can help manage your website.
Schedule Appointments
Scheduling appointments can get off track quickly, especially if you have a busy schedule of meetings with clients, sellers, buyers, partners, lenders, and others throughout your days. Missing appointments will also come at the cost of lost business.
However, real estate company owners can find virtual assistants to handle their calendars and ensure appointments are scheduled and attended to on time.
What Are Some Common Challenges When You Manage Remote Team Members?
While there are plenty of benefits to adding virtual contractors to your workforce, there are challenges, too. Here are a few things to consider when choosing a platform with the right tools to help real estate agents or brokers find VAs and manage them.
Productivity Challenges
Not all remote workers are productive when working outside of an office environment. Working from home can pose many distractions, affecting productivity for VAs.
A lack of productivity from virtual assistants would result in drawbacks for your company. However, using a system that helps you manage tasks and productivity and find quality VAs to deliver good work is crucial for improving productivity.
Lack of Effective Communication
Communication may be challenging when working with virtual assistance services unless you have the right tools to keep in touch. Unclear communication may result in failure to finish work, missing necessary appointments, and generally poor workmanship.
Choose the right tools and platform to keep in frequent contact with virtual contractors.
Cultural and Location Differences
Because virtual assistants can work from anywhere, working in different time zones can become challenging. A virtual assistant may be required to adjust their online and working times accordingly to meet your local office hours and needs.
In addition, cultural differences can lead to differences in holiday schedules or communication. Be sure to outline your expectations for work hours and time off when onboarding a new virtual team member.
Inability to Build Positive Work Relationships
Building meaningful work relationships with a physical team is often easier than with remote team members. A lack of positive relationships with your VAs can lead to challenges, eventually affecting productivity.
Having no in-person contact with virtual assistants means there can be a need for more intentional efforts to connect and get to know VAs outside of work-related tasks.
Schedule video meetings with your in-house team members to provide opportunities for everyone to interact. You can also plan non-work online events to help everyone mingle and get to know each other better.
What Are Some Managing Remote Teams Best Practices?
How can property managers overcome challenges to manage remote teams well? VAs can become some of your most valuable team members, so finding ways to manage challenges and overcome issues with remote working environments to benefit from these skilled workers is ideal.
We've touched on a few solutions, but it's important to highlight again that routine communication is paramount to successful VA-company relationships. Schedule frequent one-on-one and team meetings to track productivity and simply connect with VAs as part of your team.
In addition, providing ongoing training during onboarding (and ongoing) helps virtual assistants perform their best in their roles.
Finally, choosing a platform like VPM Solutions is the best way to find quality virtual contractors, benefit from the free training offered through our VPM Academy, and utilize the Company Accounts feature that makes it easy for real estate professionals and others in your company to manage remote workers successfully!
Manage Remote Team Members Effectively Through VPM Solutions
Your real estate company will benefit from skilled and trained real estate virtual assistants to boost the productivity of your company! When property managers encourage team members, provide the right tools for productivity and communication, and build positive relationships with VAs, their businesses thrive.
VPM Solutions offers in-platform, industry-specific training for virtual assistants, so they are uniquely equipped to work well for your business. Additionally, managing remote team members is simple with Company Accounts!
Ready to start building your VA team? Schedule a demo with VPM Solutions.
