Starting a Real Estate Virtual Office can be daunting, especially if you’re new to a remote lifestyle. Virtual Offices aren’t actually 100% virtual, as one might think. There are many components of physical office that Virtual Offices also have to make it run smoothly.
Formulize a Strategy:
Before you take the plunge and move fully digital, it’s best to have a strategy in place. Get in touch with successful organizations that went virtual and see how they manage it. Think of how you would operate virtually and what tools you would need to start this journey.
Creating a Successful Virtual Agency:
So, what key elements a successful virtual agency has? Let’s see!
- Virtual Communication: Communication is essential in every business, especially in the real estate business. Clients expect you to answer their queries quickly and accurately. Apart from the communication with buyers and sellers, the communication between the team members also needs to be strong.
Don’t just rely on video conferencing tools like Skype and communication tools like Microsoft Teams and expect to become the best team. For this purpose, you need to equip yourself with the right tools. This would help face-to-face communication, time management, better collaboration, and clear work-life boundaries.
- Virtual Consistency: Apart from the communication being good, it should also be consistent. Replicate the office meetings and discussions in the virtual offices. Schedule meetings regularly and involve people in the dialogue.
You can also schedule weekly offline meetings at your virtual business address. This would enable your team to meet once in a while and share their experiences.
- Virtual Connection: For your virtual brokerage to be successful, you need tools to power a digital transaction from start to close, 100%. Gone are the days when you had to spend the whole day outside with one client that might not even make a purchase. Using the 3D virtual tours, you can show clients the rental spaces. Even the closing stages can be virtually hand with apps like DocuSign.
Interoffice communication platforms like Slack, Workplace by Facebook, and a CRM integrated with your transaction management system are a must-have.
- Virtual Caring: Whether or not you used to celebrate achievements and milestones in physical offices, it is a good practice to start doing so now. Building solid relationships, recognizing small achievements would boost the team’s morale and motivate them to perform even better.
Create virtual meetings for birthday celebrations or a Zoom check-in over coffee or a weekly vent session.
Achieve more by getting a Virtual Assistant:
If you’re looking for ways to get leads, engage the audience, and get more clients, hiring a Virtual Assistant is a great option. They are remote workers that can manage and grow your business. They can manage your social media, advertising campaigns, and office administration tasks. Here is how a Virtual Assistant can help your business.
- Upload your property listings: Uoloaing listings to Multiple Listings Service isn’t difficult but can take a lot of time, especially when you have clients o deal with.
You can ask your virtual assistant to create an MLS list base on property type, listing information, images, links to virtual tours, and list price.
- Schedule client appointments: As your business grows, you’ll get more leads about viewing your listings and for managing incoming calls, emails, texts; you can take help from your virtual assistant.
Shared calendars like Google calendar can help help your virtual assistant schedule tasks and appointments and send confirmation to a corresponding agent.
- Monitor CRM Database: A lot of aspects of real estate are now being automated. Your leads are automatically uploaded when they sign in.
Your virtual assistant can help you manage your CRM by removing duplicate leads. They can also update contact information in the CRM database.
- Social Media Accounts Management: With billions of users on social media platforms, social media management is a full-time job of its own. Your virtual assistant can new posts, respond to queries, an event invites feature photos to your account.
Hiring a Virtual Assistant specializing in social media can also formulate your social media strategy to improve engagements and conversions.
- Organize Email Marketing:
A study concludes that people check their emails on average 15 times a day.
Hiring a virtual assistant can formulate your email marketing strategy and help decide which messages to send, which images and videos in the email.
Your Virtual Assistant can also use software like MailChimp to set up drip campaigns and schedule an email delivery.
- Manage Paperwork:
Managing Paperwork is the most tedious task of being a real estate agent. A virtual assistant can help you organize and create an internal database of all the forms you need. Functions like submitting a contract to lawyers to another agent can also be managed by your assistance.
Since it is a detailed-oriented task, hiring a virtual assistant with a background in real estate might come in handy.
Virtual Assistants and software tools can make your Real Estate Virtual Office a lot more successful, and you’ll have more tasks for things you excel in.