What is a Virtual Assistant?
A virtual assistant is a professional who provides administrative, technical, or creative assistance to clients remotely from a home office. VAs are usually self-employed and work on a contract basis for multiple clients.
The housing industry, in particular, can benefit from the services of a virtual team member. Real estate agents, property managers, and brokers often have a high volume of tasks that need to be completed on a daily basis, such as
scheduling appointments, answering emails, and updating listings. By outsourcing these tasks to a remote assistant, you can focus on the most important aspects of your business and increase your productivity.
Finding the Right Virtual Assistant
The first step in managing a real estate virtual assistant is to find the right one for your needs. There are many VA job boards and websites where you can post a job listing and receive applications from qualified candidates. Make sure to provide a detailed job description outlining your expectations and requirements.
Once you have received a number of applications, take the time to review each one carefully.
Look for candidates who have relevant experience, strong communication skills, can be trusted to protect passwords and data, and have the ability to work independently. Consider meeting your top candidates using communication tools like Skype or phone meetings to get a better sense of their personality and work style, and run a background screening to choose remote team members that can help you maintain business security.
Setting Expectations and Goals
Once you have chosen the ideal virtual contractor, it's important to set clear expectations and goals for their work. This will help ensure they can complete their tasks efficiently and effectively while supporting your business.
Start by outlining the specific tasks that you want your virtual assistant to complete. Be as specific as possible and provide any necessary instructions or resources.
It's also a good idea to set deadlines for each task to ensure they are completed in a timely manner.
In addition to specific tasks, you should also set broader goals for your remote assistant to work towards. For example, you might want them to increase the number of leads generated through your website or improve the response time to customer inquiries. These goals should be measurable and achievable, and you should regularly review your VA's progress toward meeting them.
Tracking Progress and Performance
To ensure that your real estate virtual assistants meet your expectations, you need to have a system to track their progress and performance.
Here are several tools and strategies you can use to do this.
Apply Time Tracking Tools
One of the most important things to track is daily progress, including the amount of time your VA spends on each task. This will help you understand how much time they dedicate to your project and whether they are meeting their deadlines and working productively.
There are several time tracking tools available that you can use to monitor your virtual assistant’s work hours, such as Toggl and Time Doctor.
Conduct Regular Check-Ins
In addition to tracking their work hours, it's also a good idea to have regular check-ins with your virtual team members. This could be in the form of a weekly phone call or a monthly Skype meeting.
During these check-ins, you can discuss their progress, address any issues, and review tasks and deliverables.
Use Task Management Tools
Another way to track your remote team member’s progress and productivity is using task management tools such as Asana or Trello. These tools allow you to create a to-do list for your virtual contractor and assign tasks to them.
You can also set deadlines and track the progress of each task. This can be especially helpful if you are working with multiple VAs and need to keep track of who is responsible for what.
Set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
In addition to tracking specific tasks and goals, it's also important to track your VA's overall performance using key performance indicators (KPIs). These are measurable values that can help you understand how well your virtual assistant is meeting your expectations.
Some examples of KPIs for a remote assistant might include the number of tasks completed, the number of customer inquiries responded to, or the number of leads generated. By regularly reviewing these KPIs, you can identify areas where your VA excels and areas where they may need improvement.
Managing Virtual Assistants through a Software Platform
When virtual contractors perform well, they can significantly boost your business.
However, one of the challenges of working with a team of virtual assistants is managing them remotely. Tracking their progress, performance, and payments can be challenging without the right resource.
That's where a software platform like VPM Solutions comes in.
Our platform allows you to manage all of your real estate virtual assistants from a single dashboard. You can assign tasks, set deadlines, and track the progress of each VA. You can also run reports on their performance and make payments through the platform.
Our "Company Accounts" feature allows you and your staff to manage every virtual assistant on your team without the need for additional logins or switching between accounts. You can assign roles, set permission levels, and view your remote team’s activity in a single place. Everything from logged hours to payment management can be handled within a single dashboard.
Find and Manage the Best Real Estate Virtual Assistants Through VPM Solutions
By outsourcing administrative and real-estate-related tasks to a virtual assistant, you can free up your time and focus on the most important and revenue-generating aspects of your real estate business. However, managing multiple virtual assistants can be challenging if you don’t have the right platform to monitor activity, tasks, hours, and payments in one place.
We built VPM Solutions to serve the property management and real estate industries. Real estate agents, brokers, investors, property managers, and others in the industry can find virtual assistants for multiple roles within their companies. Then, with our Company Accounts feature, you can manage them efficiently within the platform.
Get started with a Free Company Profile, then build and manage your team of real estate virtual assistants!
