The game has changed, and Real Estate Outsourcing is the ‘normal’; however, it is not normal the way I have utilised it in my business. Gone are the days of just getting rid of the low-value tasks that waste all your time. I have learnt to get better, and now funnily enough, what I can get a Real Estate VA to do is far superior to anything I have ever seen.
What tasks should you outsource in your Real Estate Business?
When it comes to outsourcing in a Real Estate Business, there are so many questions, and the main one I get asked is, what do I get my staff to do? I am sorry to put this bluntly, but if you do not know what you want your staff to do, get out of business today cause hiring a team in any country will be a train wreck.
Work out what you want to outsource in your Real Estate Business
So, we have got that out the way; if you are still reading, you know what you want to do, or you were not offended by my bluntness in the paragraph above. How do you work out what you want to outsource? It will not be the same for everyone as everyone has different comfort zones but more importantly, capability zones.
Off the topic, for one second to serve a simple purpose. “If you do not know how to change the tyre on your car, can you show someone how to do it?” The answer to this is no! The same applies to outsourcing. If you or anyone in your organisation cannot do something, it will be very difficult to train someone sitting on the other side of the world at one-third of your local staff’s cost to do so.
The logical Real Estate Outsourcing process to follow
- Identify the tasks that slow you or your team down
- Grade them from easy to difficult; highly repetitive to not so repetitive
- Pick the first task that is the easiest and most repetitive
- If this task does not have a process and procedure, create one
- Test the process once complete on a 3rd party, maybe a family member, to see if it can be followed
- Conduct a Zoom call with your VA and run through the task and the process
- Get them to do the task with you, watching and correcting any discrepancies or unclarities in the process
- Make sure they complete the task 5 more times without your involvement
- Create and mark them off on some sort of competency doc as competent
- Set KPI’s and expectations on this task for the future
- Say goodbye to that task forever
This above sounds like a bit of work, but I can tell you it is well worth it as any time I have tried to bypass this system, I have come unstuck. There are no shortcuts when it comes to building a scalable team in any country. If you or someone in your team is not prepared to do this, then I must firmly reiterate that maybe being in business is not the best idea or just stay small.
The first step of Real Estate Outsourcing is to buy time back
Once you get rid of that first task, and the process is all working effectively, you will feel a great sense of achievement. Not only that, you have successfully bought some time back. What you can do now is follow those steps and go through the list of all the things you have identified, and work your way through them. Once you have knocked off all of them, you should have all the time you need.
Take a helicopter view of your Real Estate Business
I will not go through all the tasks as every reader here will have different things that they would have opted to get off their plate. However, I am sure if I had to, I could guess them all as I had walked in the shoes that you are walking in, as you will learn in “The Offshore Tipping Point“— an eBook I wrote about my journey when I first started outsourcing in my Real Estate Business.
By taking a helicopter view, I mean now that you have time, you should be able to get above your business and work out what it really needs to drive it forward. Look at every single area and make a list of all the additional things you could get done to increase scale and look at all the things you may not need to make it leaner.
Where can you make improvements by having more time and outsourcing?
In your business, there are many areas you can improve if you really want to. As we go through these things, you will probably think about the way it is currently being done, how you would like it done, and how you would like it to run. These three fundamentals will open your eyes and allow you to explore. Coming back to the point, though, at the start of this is that you must know it to train it, so what on earth do you do if you want something done but do not know how to do it yourself?
The answer is you must learn it yourself if you have that personality or find someone who can turn your vision into reality, and by that, it means someone else learning it or knowing it. If you are the director and have the clear vision and direction, you can get this outcome achieved. We will use an example that I had back in the day. I will go through the process of how I learnt, processed, trained, and automated one specific thing I identified in the lead gen space I wanted to be completed on autopilot by my real estate VA’s.
Real Estate Outsourcing for Lead Generation
Here is how it went. When I took a helicopter view, I realised we had been doing the “just listed and sold marketing” the same way, and almost the same as everyone else for a very long time. This was back in 2014 where no one was really doing Real Estate Facebook Ads at all. Or if they did, they were done poorly, few, and far between.
Instead of doing Direct Mail, I wanted to take this process online. I thought, “how can I target people in our area that want to buy and then flush out the ones looking to sell so we can double our listings?” The answer was, I did not know, so I set out to learn this with all the additional time I had. I found a website that I use today called UDEMY. I looked for a Facebook ads course as I only knew how to boost a post and run basic campaigns.
Here is a link to the Facebook Ads course so you too can take this journey if you like: “Take the Facebook Ads Course.” This course taught me all I needed to know and more, that I could now become an expert and created an automated strategy. Here are the bones of the strategy if you would like to implement this in your Real Estate Business.
- 1. Ad for ‘Just Listed’ to an audience (25 – 65 with interest in realestate.com.au) that landed on the link on our website which had the Facebook pixel installed for tracking
- Ad for ‘Just Sold’ to all clickers and engagers of the Just Listed Ads
- Testimonial Ad to all website visitors that have also engaged in our ads.
This funnel was simple, and it really worked. We just kept doing this until people said we see you guys everywhere and can see you also get fantastic results for your clients.
The good thing about this one is that I did it for a few listings successfully. All I had to do was get someone else to do it, so that’s what I did. This was the start of our BLUE VA, as I called it, which was a dollar producing Real Estate Virtual Assistant that no one has, and still, nobody has except us at ShoreAgents. Anyway, that is not what the article is about, so that’s it for my short plug.
How to process a new task in your real estate business?
- Identify your vision
- Learn what you need to know
- Test if it is working
- Create a doc with screenshots on how to do it
- Train it to your Real Estate VA
- Create a way that the task can be triggered automatically
- Have a set checklist for the way the task is to be done every time
It is not difficult. The hard part was how do we trigger it and how I see it is getting done. I just tacked the triggering on to the admin part of our ‘Just Listed’ and ‘Sold Process’ as that already existed. When an agent listed a property, they would fill out a ‘Just Listed’ JotForm that would trigger to Slack that a property was listed. We then also got the form to create a card on Trello using Zapier with the checklist attached, and ta-dah, it just started to happen.
That last paragraph may be sound in its concept; however, I am sure most readers are saying, “What is all that stuff—Zapier, Slack, and Trello?” Well, this is what I am getting at in an extremely long-winded way in this article—the game has changed if you can. There are so many tools out there that can help you manage your virtual assistants and all your team, as a matter of fact.
If you are in business today and want to succeed, you must start to learn all these things to stay ahead of your competition, so here it is all again for you to make it easy and my suggestions as of Feb 17, 2021.
- Outsource everything you can in your real estate business
- Become a sponge when you have bought some time back
- Look for improvement in every area
- Become obsessed with process and standardisation
- Become a modern businessman that uses modern tools
I will attach a link where you can submit your details, giving you a copy of my very latest eBook on exactly how to implement outsourcing in your Real Estate Business, the way you need to in 2021.
Meet Stephen Atcheler, the Real Estate Coach for Outsourcing and Real Estate Business. If you enjoyed this article and think that I have some value to offer you to get your business skyrocketing, just book a 1-hour coaching session with me.
Thanks for your time and comments below in advance with any questions pertaining to this article.
