In Gary Keller’s classic book The ONE Thing, we learn the importance of concentrating on one major task or priority. When we let other stuff get in the way, we become distracted and do a crummy job at everything. Multi-tasking ain’t good! Let other folks do the mundane work so you can focus on your ONE thing: closing deals and signing new clients (okay, that’s two things).
Another great benefit of working with a well-trained VA is that you can learn valuable new skills. Not sure how to market on Facebook? Your VA knows how and can show you. Don't know how to set up a CRM? Your VA knows how and can teach you. VAs offer a great way to learn new skills and get stuff done.
Could you just hire an in-person assistant to take care of this work? Sure, but get ready to pay for it. It costs a lot more to hire staff than a VA.[51] If you have your own staff, you have to worry about all the rules and regulations that come with having employees, like unemployment insurance, workman’s comp, etc. With a VA, you don’t have to deal with all those headaches. Another advantage: VAs tend to be more flexible than someone you’d hire for your staff. You can use them as needs arise and not worry about them when things are quiet.
Virtual assistants can help provide your business some protection from the unexpected. According to Daniel Ramsey, CEO of top virtual assistant firm MyOutDesk, “losing one person on your team can create mass chaos. Stability becomes the winner of the day. A lot of our folks will be a backup to the transaction coordinator. Or, the listing coordinator will be a virtual assistant, and the operations manager will be somebody who's physically in the office, so you have some redundancy. That way, if somebody's out sick, their business continues. If somebody needs a vacation, he or she can actually go on a vacation. So, at some stage, the stability of having two people capable of doing one job becomes critical.” The full interview with Ramsey appears here.
Finding a VA isn’t too difficult. In fact, there are several companies that will help you find and hire just the right VA for your needs.
Kim Hughes has some advice if you’re considering hiring a VA: “Here are some tips before you start looking for a virtual assistant. First, I highly recommend that you sit down and make a list of everything that you feel you do not have time to do, don't want to do, or don't know how to do. Then, look at that list, and pick the top three to five things that take you away from doing what you enjoy. Now you've got a good idea of what you need help with, and you can be very specific with that virtual assistant. Then, that virtual assistant will be able to say, "Yes, I can help you with that," or, "No, I can't help you with that." That way, you have an idea of where you need help and who can take over and run that business for you.”
Chatbots
Nearly three out of every four sales go to the first agent interviewed.[52] You want that agent to be you. Thankfully, you can make that happen with chatbots.
Chatbots are a great automated tool to decrease your work and impress your clients. They’re easy to set up and will win you new business. Chatbots are computer programs that utilize artificial intelligence and are designed to engage customers. Many are specifically made for real estate. They immediately respond to prospects, answer questions, screen prospects, and promote your brand.
Here’s how they work. Imagine that a potential client visits your website or Facebook page and has a few questions. The prospect asks questions and receives immediate replies. There’s no waiting, no delays. The chatbot will answer questions, book appointments, and collect the prospect’s information—all without you lifting a finger.
Who do you think prospects are more likely to hire? Someone who is able to answer their questions immediately, or someone they have to wait hours to hear back from? If you’re taking hours to reply, prospects are going to just hop over to your competitors who are faster than you are. But, if you can engage these people early, you will have tons of new business.[53]
Dave Phillips, the VP if industry relations with Realtor.com and interviewed elsewhere in this book, says chatbots are one of the top technologies that real estate agents should be using, but aren’t. Why not put these automated geniuses to work for you?
Thankfully, there are many innovative chatbot companies competing for your business. Kaydoh and HelloAlex are leading the pack.
Michael Lam, CEO of Kaydoh, discussed the value of chatbots, as part of a longer interview. “The first person to meet a lead generally wins. Prospects usually only interview one agent. So, using a chatbot to deliver quick information to the prospects is paramount. With a CMA, which is a traditional way of lead capturing on a website, prospects put in their address, and then they wait—up to 24 hours—to get a report back through email. And then there is generally no follow up. That person is a lead that the agent should be aware of and immediately speak with that individual. You can use a chatbot to generate the report and deliver it directly to the person via SMS.”
“A great thing about a chatbot,” according to Lam, “is it’s an extension of the agent. It's conversational rather than robotic. The conversation has emojis in it. It’s designed to be more natural. Just like you and I would message each other on a messaging app, the chatbot does something very similar, but it captures information while having a conversation. You could have thousands of people speaking to a chatbot, so you, as a salesperson, do not need to take that initial call. The chatbot can handle that initial interaction, including the prequalification, an automated alert, and scheduling.”
Natural Language and the future of client engagement
Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a form of artificial intelligence that deals with how computers and humans interact. The goal of NLP is for people to communicate with computers using regular speech, rather than computer code. Chatbots are a great example of NLP at work.
You are starting to see this technology all over the web as the friendly computer-generated bot. While you’re shopping for shoes, it offers to help you find the right sandals. Some customers seem to prefer chatting with a robot rather than searching themselves or digging through the FAQs to answer their questions. The interactions feel more natural to users, even if they are chatting with a computer!
As NLP technology improves, chatbots will sound more and more like a real person. They’ll increasingly understand idioms, slang, incorrect grammar, and irrelevant comments. The conversation between client and chatbot will feel more and more like texting a friend.
Enhanced chatbot technology will benefit savvy real estate agents and real estate brokerages. Many of these improvements will appear in the background and will make the user experience more seamless without the real estate agent needing to upgrade software. In other words, your chatbots will get better and better, so start using them now!
NLP isn’t limited to texting and online messages. New products like Google Duplex are making waves with the spoken word. When we talk to Alexa, Siri, or the Google Assistant, we are speaking to a computer using NLP. We will increasingly turn to these tools to carry out our daily tasks, including complex projects like making appointments and following up with contractors.
In a sense, NLP can become a truly “virtual” assistant. As the technology improves, NLP programs will do more and more of what a human VA does today. They will ultimately be faster and less expensive than VAs. Having said that, I still recommend using human VAs for now. They save you time, teach you new skills, and act as your second (virtual) pair of hands for complex tasks.
We cover NLP and AI in more detail in the Emerging Technology chapter of this book.
Cut the cord
Can you put a price on freedom? If you’re smart about using VAs and chatbots, freedom is just around the corner.
Let’s face it, you want to cut the cord. You want to leave the office and work entirely from home on your schedule. But, you’re afraid to leave those confining four walls because you need to interact with your assistants and coordinators. Perhaps you need to go to work to get up to speed about the latest CRM or marketing tool.
Now, you
can do all that from home in ways you never could before. You can kiss the office and all its associated costs goodbye.
Think about it. You hire a team of VAs that takes care of all of your back-office work. They manage your paperwork, expenses, and marketing. On top of that, they know about all the newest techniques better than your office staff—and they can teach you!
Your army of chatbots is handling all your inbound traffic, eliminating the need for a receptionist of any kind. They boost your lead conversion and manage your daily schedule.
There you have it. Everything you need to work autonomously—except for the broker—is sitting right there in your smartphone. You are truly your own one-person shop, but with all the amenities and support you expect from a large company. You pay less and have total control.
If you so choose, you could take all this virtual support and eliminate the overhead. Armed with a team of chatbots and VAs, it might make more sense for you to leave a larger traditional brokerage and switch to a more bare-bones operation with lower fees.
If you own or run a traditional brokerage with high fees, you need to consider how chatbots and VAs will impact your business model. You will find it increasingly difficult to compete with minimalist brokerages since most salespeople won’t need you for their routine administrative support. We cover more tips about how your company can remain competitive in the Brokers and Executives chapter.
Interview with Daniel Ramsey, CEO and co-founder of MyOutDesk
Gregory Charlop: Daniel, what sorts of services might a real estate agent ask of a virtual assistant?
Daniel Ramsey: My favorite is operations. The highest and best use for a virtual assistant is doing all of the administrative stuff that, 1) you don't like doing, 2) you're probably not that good at, 3) it doesn't pay the most. So, you're not good, you don't have time to do it, it doesn't pay the most, and that means you should outsource it. Hands down, that is the barometer. If you don't like it, if you're not good at it, and if it's under $10, why would you ever do it?
We have this thing called the Seven Figure Agent Map, which is our brainchild to take a real estate agent from where they are today to where they want to be. Everybody wants growth. Everybody wants to make more money, make a bigger impact on the world. What we do here is we'll snapshot where you are today and try to find out what you're spending the most time on. So, that could be operations, or bookkeeping, or transaction coordinating. It could be marketing all of your listings or your potential buyers or sellers. It could be generating online leads. There's a whole list of everything that's not meeting a client, negotiating a deal, and closing a transaction. You’re the only one who can make the relationships, close the deals, and negotiate contracts. That's what you're basically paid to do. Everything else should be done virtually.
Gregory Charlop: Can you give some examples of specific tasks that the assistant might do? Maybe specific marketing tasks, or bookkeeping, or setting up CRMs, or following up with clients or contractors?
Daniel Ramsey: All of that! So, here's what's awesome: 70 percent of all real estate is done by referral. That's the number. It's been tracked over the last 30, 40 years. It's by referral. And, how you generate those referrals is key to what makes a successful real estate broker versus a non-successful one. There's a lot of work in that. Creating a CRM, creating a follow-up campaign, calling them just once a quarter to thank them for their referrals or their business, creating micro events where you invite everybody to coffee and give them high fives and hugs. Tracking their anniversaries. I mean, all that is just work.
Let's say you're closing 50-75 deals every year. Year three you can't keep up and, also, continue to try to grow your business. The smartest folks in the business go, "What's my highest and best use of time? And, what's my hourly rate?" because your hourly rate is the barometer. So, when we do that Seven Figure Agent Map, we'll outline everything that you do, and then what's dollar productive and what's non-dollar productive. So, non-dollar productive: creating a flyer for a listing, inputting it to MLS. Or, sending an email out to your entire database to say, "This listing is coming soon," putting an ad on Facebook, creating the file and transaction coordinating software, creating the file within all of your QuickBooks and all of the files that you have to do to get paid at the end of the transaction.
All of those things are just not dollar productive. If it's not dollar productive, you shouldn't be doing it.
Gregory Charlop: I completely agree with you. I try to outsource everything I don't need to do as well, because, as you said, the only thing you don't have is time. So, you don't want to waste time doing things you don't do well. People are better than you are at certain things, just let them do it. So, I'm on board. Actually, the book "The 4-Hour Work Week" first inspired me on this concept.
Daniel Ramsey: "The World is Flat" is another excellent book about how borders are melting, and the opportunity to get skilled people anywhere in the world.
Gregory Charlop: What's the difference between a licensed and unlicensed assistant? What can each do to help out a real estate agent?
Daniel Ramsey: If you're prospecting, certain states have passed laws prohibiting non-licensed people. Texas is a great example. You cannot have a conversation about a home unless you have a license. So, in those states, our virtual assistants are doing a lot of warm calls. Meaning, the calls are to people who are already currently clients, or clients who requested information from that company. Or if somebody calls into the office, they're just transferring to a licensed person or scheduling appointments. So, you have to be careful about what the laws are in your particular state.
That being said, typically if somebody requests information about a home, it's okay for an unlicensed person to call, set up an appointment, answer their questions, and see if they need to meet with a licensed real estate agent or broker.
Gregory Charlop: Say I'm a real estate agent and I'm considering using a virtual assistant, but I don't know the rules in my state, because I've never used one before. How would the assistant know the rules? Is that something that your company and virtual assistant companies would tell them? Or, should the agent research that on their own?
Daniel Ramsey: In my area, there's a local association. You call their legal hotline and just ask, "What can I do with a licensed person versus a non-licensed person?" The reality is if you're in a state that prohibits, like Texas, we have a ton of people who are using virtual assistants for transaction coordination, listing coordination, social media and Facebook stuff. It's pretty incredible the number of tasks that we have to do. I think the standard now is there are over 160 individual tasks every time you list a property. 160. I mean, imagine that? There are systems that automate a lot of those things. But, some just cannot be automated, right?
Gregory Charlop: How can real estate agents keep data and trade secrets safe when using a virtual assistant? What happens if the assistant makes a mistake, or if the agent gets sued on a task involving a virtual assistant?
Daniel Ramsey: I’ll start with how we protect our clients. 1) We do an FBI grade background check. It is massively important that it be done in the country where you're hiring a virtual assistant.
So, within MyOutDesk, we're doing all those checks, as well as doing an introduction, "This is what real estate is. This is how you're successful. This is what the expectation is from the client." So, we're doing all this upfront stuff, as well as just checking to make sure that the assistants have high-quality internet, a computer that works, headsets, and a video.
Now, on the client side, we also have expectations. Meaning, you need to train your virtual assistants. When most folks encountered a problem, it was because there wasn't training, there wasn't a process and procedure, and the virtual assistant didn't know what to do. In the beginning stage, what we call our launch or nesting period, it's 90 days. You should not let your virtual assistant do something that could get you in trouble. So, you should be reviewing all files before they go out. There should be
a licensee’s brain on that file before it gets executed and delivered to the other side.
The 90 days of training are the biggest determinant of success for a virtual assistant. Most agents are like, "Well, I'm too busy to do that." And we say, "Okay, great. Then, you shouldn't be a client of ours." Because, without that, there's just not going to be success. You must set expectations, create a training process, and make sure the person gets all the tools necessary to be successful.
The responsibility of a leader is to create a system and process where there are checks and double checks, especially in mission-critical things like contracts, execution, and closing files. So, you have to create that process and system. If, for some reason, there is an issue, you're E&O will cover them. Unfortunately, we don't cover it in our insurance, because we don't have any control.
So, it's essential that you have E&O, that you make sure that you're controlling the outcomes on the mission-critical things, and that you're nesting ... That 90-day nesting period is super important. Most of our failures, like if a client hires us and says, "Hey, this is hard," or, "It's not working," come in that first 90 days. We coach people through that. You get past that 90 days, and you're golden.
Gregory Charlop: You would have to do more or less the same thing if you hired someone in your office. You'd have to train them as well.
Daniel Ramsey: We constantly get people who call us and say, "Look. I need to hire somebody, but I'm in LA. I can't find somebody for under $70,000 a year." We're around $20,000 a year. So, they say, "But, I don't want to train them." I'm like, "Well, you're getting somebody at 20 grand a year versus the $70,000 that you're going to pay for somebody who also has no experience, but they just happen to be local."
If you're reading this book and you're considering making this move, there are two places for you to kill it or get crushed. Those two places are choosing the right person, and then onboarding them correctly in the first 90 days. That's it. We've done this 4,000 times, and every single time I can typically tie it back to one of those two things.
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