Gary Keller Talks About How a Virtual Assistant Can Fuel Growth

Gary Keller Talks About How a Virtual Assistant Can Fuel Growth

Wondering how a virtual assistant can transform your business? Ask Gary Keller! We interviewed the legendary co-founder of Keller Williams and discussed the need for real estate virtual assistants and how they help agents perform better. Watch the interview above to learn more!

Gary Keller: Hi Daniel, it’s Gary Keller. We’re here to talk about MyOutdesk. First off, give me a short 1-2- minute explanation of what a Virtual Assistant is from your point of view.

Daniel Ramsey: About 3 or 4 years ago, I was at a conference, and somebody said, “If you’re doing your own paperwork, you’re an assistant.” Suppose you’re basically saying your worth, you know, what an assistant gets paid. Are you worth $10 bucks an hour or $12 bucks an hour? And as a mega agent, most people understand the value of leverage. Then you, you’ve pointedly said you know, focus on leads, look at listings, and then look at leverage. And a lot really good, really, really good agents are great at generating business, but once they get in the door, they need help. In my opinion, there are 3 areas that a virtual assistant can really be, you know, impactful to a Real Estate agent in their office.

One is on the Admin side. You know, transaction coordination. That’s inputting MLS. That’s taking care of all the paperwork, kind of mundane stuff. But, you know what’s cool about that personal admin person is you can also use them on a personal side. So my wife’s birthday is coming up this weekend. On Wednesday, she wants to go to a comedy show at our favorite restaurant downtown, and so I sent over a link to my VA, my virtual assistant, and said, “Buy 6 tickets, make reservations at this restaurant, go”.

And so, from what a virtual assistant can do, that’s a really cool example on the personal and on the business side. It is organizing your life.

Gary Keller: On the Admin side. What’s the second one?

Daniel Ramsey: The second one which we all need is the marketing side. And that’s like social media, creating in 33 Touches, doing videos, flyers, all that kind of stuff that drives business in.

Social media and video it’s such a big push, and KW got a video division now. Everybody understands that the growth in Real Estate is online marketing, and having a great presence there had been able to capture those leads. And so there’s a lot of repetitive work that goes into creating that marketing machine, so that’s another area that a virtual assistant can help.

Gary Keller: Now you used the phrase repetitive work. Would that significant when you said that? Is that way that we view a virtual assistant’s highest and best uses repetitive work?

Daniel Ramsey: Whenever you have an hourly employee who’s not being paid on commission, repetitive work is continually reading that machine that you can depend on that’s always he and the virtual assistant. Their strength is taking a program that you’ve created then running with it.

You can have them in a specific role where they excel, and that’s kind of how we view our virtual assistants. The repetitiveness, the system, the process, the coaches, the agent, the players, the virtual assistants. They can be used in many different things, but they shine; just like you said, they shine when it’s a systematic, repetitive kind of machine-driven task.

Gary Keller: Got it. And the third thing was?

Daniel Ramsey: The third one is the whole sales support side. I mean, such an important part of what we do today. You know, making calls, talking to clients. And so, we’ve created a Leads Coordinator position or an ISA. On what’s interesting, just some basic statistics here 80% of sales are made between the 5th and the 12th contact, so most agents are really good at making 2 or 3 contacts to someone.

This is something that was put out by the National Association of Realtors probably 3 years ago.

What it basically says is that most salespeople need to make a consistent follow-up program. And this is R and D rebuff and redistribute from our company. I think I saw it on a blog post three years ago from another agent, and it’s just a perfect testament that it’s got to keep in contact with your client whose interesting today may or may not buy. But if you talk with them over 6 months, create rapport, develop a relationship, show them value, make them feel like they’re important and cared for, you’re most likely to get a sale out of that transaction. The difficult part for a salesperson is doing all of those follow-up calls. Keep providing that value over time, so we’ve created a position within our virtual assisting company called an I.S.A. An inside salesperson. And that’s when you’re using our model; an agent can get on the phone, start building that rapport, set an appointment, gather the details, and then all they had to do, they didn’t have to make 24,000 calls. They didn’t have to make 4,322 conversations. They had 350. And this is spread to about 40 different clients, so they only had to talk to that person who raised their hand and said “I’m ready to list today” or “I’m ready to buy today,” and that’s an important, powerful tool.

Gary Keller: So what are your biggest AHA!’S that you had from agents using virtual assistants?

Daniel Ramsey: When somebody calls us, you jump on to our website, www.www.myoutdesk.com, you call our 1-800 number or fill out a lead form on our website. You get put in on a queue, and then we actually have coached. It’s a free coaching session. And it’s actually really a good thing because most people call us and they ask simple questions like, you know, “What time does the virtual assistant work if they are 16 hours ahead? Do they work my schedule or their schedule?”.And so we answer all the basic, you know, housekeeping questions, but at the same time, we dive into their office, and we find out who they have currently. We identify talent versus non-talent on their current team, and then we look for the holes within their company, like where are they dropping the ball. My biggest AHA! is that without that piece, the virtual assistant side doesn’t typically work. In the beginning, we didn’t know that it was necessary and certainly one of the biggest AHA!’s for us.

Gary Keller: What do you think is the biggest mistake that an agent makes when they hire a virtual assistant?

Daniel Ramsey: We look at this as an overall leverage piece, and when we’re doing our consultations or when we’ve had a team meeting for, for any office, we’re really talking about, you know, when your triangle the leads, listings, and leverage. We’re really talking about leverage, so the biggest mistake I think agents make assuming that that’s not as important as the other sides of the triangle.

Gary Keller: Leverage is a business concept, a whole, new discipline not related to leads and listings. So you can go and study Real Estate all you want, and it’s gonna deal with those first two.

Every Real Estate agent has; All of their success as a Real Estate agent doesn’t qualify them one iota to be successful in hiring someone. It’s like studying one field and then trying to be something else.

Daniel Ramsey: I think the difficulty is if, if an agent focused on generating as many leads on the leverage side as they did on the Real Estate side, then that problem of finding talent wouldn’t be an issue.

Gary Keller: What you just said is the keys to the kingdom. That’s a step that every Real Estate agent has to ask themselves,s “Am I ready to make?”. Because the problem is that when you decided to generate leads for leverage, and you decided to master that, you’ve now agreed to do 2 things.

You’ve agreed to be a Real Estate agent and a business person. And that’s like 2 masters taking on 2 roles,s and something’s gonna have to give. And usually, people don’t even realize that that’s the issue staring at them. So 2 quick questions for me to go. Number 1, what will I expect to pay?

Daniel Ramsey: $9.60 is our high-end executive person, and we have a range between and the reason for that is because you know, we want to be able to offer high-quality people over in the Philippines and give them an option to it that they don’t have in their country. And so we pay our virtual assistants 2 times the standard income over there. We give them health care. We give them vacation time. We do two conferences a year, so we give them more incentive to stay with their clients for a long time period because turnover is the enemy of the leverage piece in the business.

And what’s cool about that is it’s like paying a cellphone bill. They work 20 hours, which is on minimum, by the way, or 40 hours. They sign in to our website. They log in to our stuff,f and they log their time,e, and then we send you a bill, you know, it kind of like $300 bucks a week or some crazy small number like this,s, and you know, you pay it. And there’s no health care, and there’s no tax or fight care, you know, another kind of jazz that’s crazy in our country. So it’s a great option to supplement your current leverage piece within your office. And that’s, that’s our motto right now.

Gary Keller: So last thing, if I was listening to this today and I wanted to contact MyOutdesk, how would I do that?

Daniel Ramsey: MyOutdesk.com is the website you can fill out; you can watch videos there. So it’s a really great resource. If you have some questions,s you can call us at 1-800- 583-9950 during business hours,s and we’re gonna; we’re gonna set that consultation up with a licensed realtor whose have hundreds of these same consultations.

Gary Keller: You know Ramsey, it’s been fun. MyOutdesk, thanks a lot.

Joe: Hi, Joe here with MyOutdesk. I hope you enjoyed this video clip. And before you go, I want to give you this free tool that our clients, other agents just like yourself, and our virtual assistants use every day. It’s designed to improve productivity. You can use it to keep yourself on track or hand it off to your virtual assistant. Allowing you to focus on what you do best. That’s right, selling Real Estate. Spend your time on commission-generating activities only. Allow your virtual assistant to do the rest. So grab your free consultation below right now.

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