Did I ever tell you about my very dear friend who owns a cute little yoga wear boutique in Las Vegas?
She also has a killer e-commerce website to go with the brick and mortar store. It’s gorgeous but it flounders. I absolutely know that she could be tripling her revenue if she’d only hire someone to promote the website.
She says she’s too busy. The truth is, however, that she is not only a control-freak who feels like nobody can do anything as well as she does, but she’s also really, really tight with her money.
She feels this need, common to many small business owners, to wear all the hats.
Sound familiar, fellow small business owner?
Guess what? There are people smarter than you. There are people better at marketing than you. There are people who are SEO wizards, which you probably aren’t.
And, when you finally understand that, and admit that you need help (sounds almost like a 12-step program, doesn’t it?), and hire help, your income will increase.
Jared Jones, Las Vegas agent and one of the most productive in the country, says that far too many agents have a “Lone Ranger” stance when running their businesses.
He credits hiring help for his success (more than 900 transactions back in 2010).
“If I had to touch every single piece in the system itself, I would never be able to produce multiple amounts of volume,” Jones said. “You have to be efficient, and you have to leverage the system (by hiring).”
Continue trying to be the Lone Ranger of the real estate industry, or explode your income by outsourcing real estate tasks you’re either not good at or that suck your time.
Any segment of your business that you’re not an expert in should be outsourced. But, let’s take a look at three that are most commonly handed off by successful agents.
1. Data entry
A clean, well-managed CRM can be your most valuable real estate tool. Too often, however, the database is so neglected and disorganized that it’s not living up to its full potential.
Management of the system is an ongoing task, requiring a significant amount of an agent’s time. In fact, the folks at Hubspot found that nearly 30 percent of salespeople spent in excess of an hour a day on data entry.
That’s an hour much better spent taking a former client to lunch or prospecting for new clients.
When it comes to outsourcing real estate tasks, how does one go about finding help with data entry? Hiring a virtual assistant with CRM experience is probably the easiest way to get started. Here are just a few tasks to hand off:
- Clean up the current state of your CRM (remove duplicates, update contact information, etc.)
- Determine a segmentation system and implement it
- Add new leads
Easy Agent PRO’s CRM can make the process easy. Learn more about it here.
2. Social media marketing
Social media marketing is a smart addition to your business marketing plan but it’s also time consuming.
Outsourcing real estate tasks for social media marketing can take several forms. Hire a professional social media manager if you can afford it. He or she can take care of cross-posting your blog posts to the platforms as well as ad creation and placement.
We hear you: How much is this going to cost? “It’s an area that can cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars per month to thousands,” according to USA Today.
If that’s too pricey for your budget, consider hiring a freelancer at Upwork.com. We found several who claim to specialize in social media marketing with fees starting at $45 an hour.
Or, do as suggested earlier and hire a virtual assistant. Many have experience in managing social media tasks for their clients. The beauty of this suggestion is that the virtual assistant is typically skilled in several areas so he or she can take other tasks off your hands as well.
3. Blogging
If an increase in organic search results is your holy grail, start blogging. Or, start blogging more. It’s the best way to compete for first page results for your keywords.
The pros say to publish a post once a week, but twice or even three times increases your odds of making it to page one.
Your posts need to be long, as well; aim for at least 1,000 words.
Yes, we know you don’t have the time to pound out 1,000 to 2,000 or more words per week. So, hire a writer. We suggest hiring writers with strong English skills and a background in writing, otherwise you’ll be spending so much time editing the work you may as well just write them yourself. Be sure to ask for samples of their work!
Find freelance writers on Upwork.com and Fiverr.com.
Remember what you pay a virtual assistant, social media manager or writer is tax deductible.
Free yourself from the business tasks that you’re not particularly good at or that you find tedious by outsourcing real estate tasks. Then, spend the time you’ll save on building up other parts of your real estate business.
Generate more leads with these 53 ideas you can use all year long
No matter how you go about outsourcing real estate tasks, you’ll want to make sure you’re doing it right. Here are some tips for hiring an assistant: