30 years ago, we would have thought nothing of receiving a hand-written note from a business contact, but in today’s age of email, Facebook, Tweets, texting, and instant messaging, we often forget that a pen and stamp is a great way to stand out from the crowd.
You can start today spending up to 30 minutes writing out a birthday or anniversary card to some of your contacts. If you have their information, you can set them up on your calendar to remind you each day.
Purchase a large box of general birthday and anniversary cards, and each morning, check on who has an event coming up within the week. Then just pull out that many cards, sign your name, write a short note if you wish, and address it. Simple as that!
Don’t have that type of information? You may be able to find it on their social media sites if you are connected as well. If not, then use some creative ways of gaining that information. Or simply start asking!
If you have too many contacts to even consider taking the time to do this, there are some other options. You can use a service such as SendOutCards. While not a truly personal touch, many people won’t know the difference. You can even provide the service with your handwriting so it looks just like you wrote it.
Your in-office or virtual assistant can help as well. Best Agent Business even offers handwritten notes and hand-addressed envelopes as a service. The possibilities are many, but the results are the same: Your contacts will smile when they receive a personal note from you. And they will remember it too!
Did you know that Best Agent Business has several freebies for real estate agents? We have reports, email series, spreadsheets, and even a book, that can be yours for the taking by simply asking.
Through our business of helping real estate agents become Best Agents and Billion Dollar Agents, we have learned a lot. And we want to share our knowledge with you! Our goal, whether you hire us to do your virtual assistant work or not, is to help you improve your business. These freebies exist for that very reason.
We offer a free goal coaching series. Steve Kantor will send you several emails coaching you on setting and accomplishing your goals.
Free real estate business budgeting tool! We all know how hard it is to get on a budget, both in our personal lives and in business. This free spreadsheet will give you a boost towards getting your business on a productive budget.
A free marketing plan and ideas customized for real estate! These useful tools will help you focus your business marketing to gain new clients and help you to improve the marketing that you do for your clients as well.
Team profit model ideas to help you learn to maximize your profits. These ideas will help you not only run a successful business, but also be a successful manager of your company’s real estate agents.
Learn how to become a Billion Dollar Agent! You can request one free copy of our book, Billion Dollar Agent: Lessons Learned. A compilation of interviews with dozens of top agents from around the country, this book will give you a sneak peek into their methods of success.
You’ve seen them. Those really cool pages that you sometimes land on when you visit a Facebook page you have not yet “liked.” Some pages have them, and some don’t. Some of them are incredibly powerful and others are just an image, or a few paragraphs. Often someone tries to pull in their website’s home page. While all of these are good to have and serve their purpose, what is the real point of having a Facebook landing tab and what can you do to make yours effective?
A good custom Facebook tab exists primarily to encourage the viewer to “like” the page. It’s like a book cover. We know we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but we often do. And a Facebook landing tab is the same way. While we all know that the real value of a page can be found on its wall, the landing tab shows us the potential value without even glancing at the wall. If someone lands on one that has absolutely nothing on its wall, but has an awesome landing tab, chances are they will like it because of the potential for greatness.
People are easily led by suggestion. A landing tab should prominently suggest that the person “like” the page with an arrow pointing to the like button. Sounds silly, but it works.
Your landing page should also allow you to grab the viewer’s contact info into your database. No, this isn’t some viral phishing scam I’m suggesting. You should simply have an opt-in of some sort on your landing tab that encourages the viewer to sign up on your database. There should be something that makes it worth their time. TopMarketer provides one that works pretty well for sellers, but you can take it above and beyond that level. Perhaps you could give them a free ebook on finding their dream home or staging to sell quickly, or free access to all your listings, etc. We know they get free access to all of this anyway, but it sounds special doesn’t it? And it will encourage them to sign up, thus generating leads for you to follow up with.
The third thing your landing tab should do is provide your viewer with information they need. Sometimes this is accomplished with a tab that is only viewable to people who have liked your page. This, of course, encourages those likes as well. The information could be valuable reports, the latest real estate data for your area, easily viewed listings, a search box to find their dream home, etc. Videos are popular as well, on just about any subject.
You can create multiple tabs, but only one can be your landing tab at any given time. We like to create some with listings information, and even a few of our clients have requested a tab specifically for each of their listings. These are particularly valuable if you are going to use Facebook ads to market your listings as well as your Facebook page.
Make sure your landing tabs link to your website, your listings, your blog, your other social media sites, and any other spot you want Facebook fans to find you at.
Finally no matter what you choose to do, make sure your page is visually appealing. Just Google “Facebook tab design trends” for some inspiration. You’ll see pages designed by highly paid designers, but with a bit of creativity you can accomplish something very similar.
WARNING: THIS CAN BE ADDICTIVE!! Have you heard of the latest hot craze among social media users? It’sPinterest. And oh my goodness, it’s FUN! (Yes, I am addicted, can you tell?) You know how dreamers like to make scrapbooks of what we would like to do to our homes or gardens? Well, Pinterest is like a virtual stack of cut-out magazine pictures, only it’s organized, easy to sort through, and sharable with the world.
Now I have not yet seen many Realtors using Pinterest specifically for real estate listings, but you know what? Why not? It’s perfect! Your beautiful listing images can be spread across many users’ “boards” very quickly. Other businesses are finding a way to use it, and you should too.
Here are my step-by-step directions on how to get involved with Pinterest and how to use it for your real estate business. Be careful though, it’s easy to while away the hours dreaming about everything you hadn’t thought of doing before you saw it on Pinterest.
Get an invitation. If you ask around on Facebook or other social media, you will likely find someone who can invite you.
Set up your profile with your usual information, website, etc.
Create “boards” for your interests.
Real Estate Listings. Call it something catchy like “Awesome MyTown Homes for Sale”.
Staging Pictures. Again, think of something catchy to title your board. These will be pictures that you take of your own staging and also pictures that you find and pin from other sites.
Interior décor. This is one of the most popular categories on Pinterest, as it always is used by homeowners and those who long to get out of a rental.
Architecture. Breathtakingly modern or traditional, if it’s a beautiful picture of architecture, put it here.
Landscaping. Another very popular category, feel free to include whatever you love here!
Anything else that interests you. Recipes, crafts, cars, hairstyles, etc. If there are pictures online for it and it’s something you love or would like to collect pictures of, this is the place.
Start pinning!Spend a few hours adding a couple of images to each of your boards.
Drag a “Pin It” button to your browser’s toolbar and you then just start googling whatever interests you. When you find it, click the “Pin It” button, select the correct picture, add your description, and post it.
Pin your own listings and staging photos, after posting the images on your blog. This is important–be sure to add your URL onto the images as a watermark so that even if it gets “lost” people will know where it came from. This just helps to drive traffic back to your website, which is the point of using Pinterest for your business.
Find people to follow.
You should start on Facebook, as many of your friends are likely already connected to Pinterest. If you have connected your Facebook account, you will just click “find friends” under your profile picture in the toolbar. A list of your Facebook friends opens, click the ones you want to follow or invite, or use the option of inviting people by email address.
Search for topics you like on Pinterest, and then follow the pinners that have boards you really like. These people may follow you back.
Now the fun begins. Pinterest has become nearly an obsession among many. I find when I pin some neat pictures, especially of garden or craft items, that within minutes my pins have been “repinned” dozens of times. And I only have 23 followers! These things go viral very quickly. Just think of the coverage your blog would get at that rate!
Increase your click-through rates by posting some tutorials on things that homeowners would find useful. If you indicate on your original pin that it is a how-to, people will not only repin the awesome picture, but they will click through to your site to read the details.
Going forward, always remember to post your new images to Pinterest. Ask your listing manager to do this for you or do it yourself. And remember your other blog posts as well. Especially if you take your own pictures, these should all be pinned!
One of the downfalls of Pinterest I have noticed is that it’s difficult to find locals by searching. This is why I suggest you start with your current friends, family, and contacts. Chances are most of their friends that are following them on Pinterest are local as well.
Did you know that Best Agent Business has virtual assistants who can help you get started with Pinterest? Give us a list of your favorite topics, and we will get you set up and find boards for you to follow. We can also go back through your blog, brand your images, and pin them for you. If you have a vast collection of images on your blog, it could take you hours to wade through them all. Don’t worry though, we will leave the fun of Pinterest to you! Schedule a call with Steve Kantor to discover other ways our Best Agent Business virtual real estate assistants can help you in all aspects of your real estate business.
Post submitted by Kim, Virtual Real Estate Assistant and Pinterest Addict, Best Agent Business
It’s Monday morning. You sit down at your desk with a fresh cup of coffee, soft music playing in the background, refreshed from a relaxing weekend at the lake, satisfied that your real estate business is going well, your agents are rushing from showing to showing, it’s starting out to be the perfect day. You turn on your computer and access your database, spending a few minutes looking over the latest entries, you print off a list of your hot leads, shoot a quick email to your lukewarm leads, assign some to your office’s agents, then you pick up the phone to begin touching base with the three new seller leads you spoke to last week…
Well, ok that might sound perfect, but it may not be very close to your real Monday-morning routine. Perhaps your Monday mornings feel more like the Bangle’s old song, Manic Monday.
Maybe your database is a wreck, you wake up on Monday morning feeling like you are just one more week behind, your agents may be running from showing to showing, but you aren’t sure what they are showing or to whom, and you even heard that one of your hottest leads ended up at the real estate office across town. When you turn on your computer and access your database, you aren’t sure where to start. You can’t even remember which Mr. Smith it was that wanted to sell his $500,000 house! Just where are those notes you jotted down…?
Your business has been successful so far, but it’s been growing with more listings, more buyers and a couple of new agents. The problem is you haven’t had the time to stay on top of it all and now it will take much more time than you have to spare to get your database and new leads straightened out. So you don’t even bother.
That’s where an experienced virtual real estate assistant, like the ones that work with Best Agent Business, come in. Did you know that we specialize in cleaning up your database and getting it together so that you CAN spend a weekend or two at the lake without worrying about the mess that will greet you on Monday…because it won’t be a mess?
An assistant at Best Agent Business will get your database organized, code your old leads so that you know who to focus on, keep on top of your new leads as they come in, and send you a list ready for you to contact each week. If you receive a hot new lead, we will let you know immediately. If you want leads assigned to your agents based upon certain criteria, we will streamline the process so it happens smoothly.
In an ideal world, new leads are contacted within a day. This can happen with Best Agent Business. We even have callers who can make the initial screening call for you. We have marketers who will help bring in new leads from a variety of sources, even social media. We have marketers who can manage your email and print mail campaigns. We even have assistants with beautiful handwriting who can pen out a handwritten note to those who visited your open house last week.
Many real estate agents are currently working with a virtual real estate assistant and loving it. Is it different than working with someone right in your office? Sure. Can it be just as effective? Absolutely! The trick is in finding the right person with the right skills. Let’s talk about what a good virtual assistant match would look like for you as a real estate agent.
Knowledge
You may think that your best virtual assistant would be a former Realtor, but this is not always the deciding factor. While a former Realtor will come with this specific built-in knowledge, he or she may not have the administrative or social media skills you’ll also need to keep your office in great shape. A good virtual assistant has a wide variety of knowledge and enough overall experience to quickly come up to speed in a particular area like real estate. The motto of a great VA is, “If I don’t know, I’ll find out.”
You also may be looking for someone to help you with web design or social media. Here too, knowledge is essential. You wouldn’t hire someone to manage your Facebook account if she didn’t even know the difference between friends and fans or what it means to “like” something. And while you may not need to hire a full-fledged web designer to manage your regular website updates, a bit of HTML and design knowledge is always helpful, not to mention a firm grasp on SEO.
Efficiency
Someone who can take your tasks and accomplish them quickly, accurately, and on time with little direction after the initial request is worth their weight in gold. You will want a virtual assistant who fits this category.
Resources
As much as we wish we did, none of us knows everything there is to know. (Although I will admit I’ve met a few people who sure thought they did!) Good virtual assistants will have many resources at their disposal. They will possess the ability to research new information, the desire to always improve and learn through training on their own time, the necessary software and tools to handle their client’s work, and a network or team of other virtual assistants with their own unique talents who can collaborate efficiently to get your work done.
Flexibility and Organization
This is where you come in. While it’s important for your VA to be flexible to meet your needs, it’s also important for you to be flexible and organized. While your virtual assistant will make the best effort, things cannot always happen overnight. It’s quite possible that the VA has other clients, and new tasks usually have to be placed behind the ones currently being worked on. This means that if you forgot until 10 a.m. on Saturday morning that you need fliers created to hand out at your 1:00 p.m. open house, then you are quite likely not going to be able to get your VA to make them for you.
Trust
You have to be able to trust your virtual assistant. You will be handing over the majority of your system logins, account numbers, and perhaps even your credit card number. You will likely be paying upfront for work yet to be done. You will not be able to hover over her desk to make sure she is entering your new listing exactly as you wish. These are thing you will have to trust her with. It can be stressful to let go of the control of these things, but it’s vital that you do. If you find that you are the sort of person who can’t relinquish control of your systems, then you might not be a good fit for a professional virtual relationship.
Communication
This one goes both ways. Both you and your virtual assistant must be able to communicate well with each other and anyone else involved in the operations that your assistant is helping you with. This communication will likely be through email, but it could also include significant phone time, instant messages, faxes, texts, and even occasional snail mail. Everyone is different, and the method that works for someone else might not work for you. Keep a line of communication open with your assistant and you will soon find the method that fits both your personality and that of your assistant.
At Best Agent Business we have qualified virtual real estate assistants who work together as a team. Many of our assistants are or have been real estate agents. When you come on board you will have one or two assistants that work directly with you and many others who will work for you in the background. All of the items I have listed here today are vital to the efficient completion of our client’s tasks. Interested in seeing if you are a fit for our virtual assistant style? Click here to schedule a meeting with Steve Kantor, President and Founder of Best Agent Business.
--Post submitted by Kim, Virtual Real Estate Assistant, Best Agent Business
There has been a lot of hacking going on lately. Many real estate businesses have a WordPress blog or a full-fledged WordPress website, and the thought of it being hacked can almost cause your heart to stop beating. But it happens. The best thing to do is take every preventative step possible, and then just be ready and know the steps to take if it happens.
Here are some steps that WordPress.org suggest you follow if you are hacked.
Run a virus scan on your computer and any other computers used to access the blog. Sometimes a virus originates here, so update your anti-virus software and do a complete scan to eliminate that possibility.
Double check with your host that it wasn’t an across-the-board hack or some other problem affecting your website. You may not have been hacked at all, perhaps your host has crashed or their server was hacked. If that is the case, they will let you know what to expect and what steps you need to take, if any.
Change your passwords. All of them, your WordPress password, your admins and editor’s passwords, your FTP passwords, and your control-panel passwords. While you are at it, change your email password too. Make your password more difficult to hack by substituting symbols and numbers for letters. 0 works for O, 3 works for S and E, @ works for A, etc. Vary the capital letters and lower case letters. Use words that nobody would think of. The most common, and the worst, password is PASSWORD. Talk about a hacker’s dream come true!
Backup your entire account if you haven’t already. This is fairly simple to do via FTP, although it can take several minutes to complete. From FTP, just drag all of your files into a new folder on your computer and then zip it for storage. Once you get that file downloaded, scan it for viruses. You should also install a plugin to regularly schedule your backups. You can delete older backups as long as you keep the three most recent ones.
Now take note of the symptoms of your hack. What is it doing? Is it redirecting, is it “gone”, does it have spam all over the place? Open up your files, especially the .htaccess file, and see if there is any strange code. Hackers often like to brag about what they have done. A recent one I ran into had put some strange code followed by the note “Silence is Golden”. Very funny–not! If you find strange code such as this, do a Google search for the specifics on that particular hack so you can eliminate it properly.
Consider deleting it all and starting over. If you have good backups from at least several days prior to the hack, you may want to just delete your entire WordPress file and installation…everything…reinstall WordPress with the latest version, reinstall your theme and then restore your last good backup. This is a radical step, but it will work if you can take it. If your theme was custom designed, you may want to contact your web designer and have them handle this part. You could restore your content with just the basic WordPress theme in this way if nothing else.
Upgrade to the latest WordPress version and upgrade all of your plugins as well.
Change all those passwords again. I know, I know, but it’s important to ensure that some code didn’t capture your new password. You really don’t want to have to do all of this again. Use the password safety ideas discussed earlier.
Best Agent Business has experienced virtual real estate assistants. We can help you manage your WordPress and other sites. We can even ensure you have regular backups of your sites. Schedule a call with Steve Kantor today to see what Best Agent Business can do for you.
–Post submitted by Kim, Virtual Real Estate Assistant, Best Agent Business
So what makes Best Agent Business so unique? Why are we the BEST? Simply put, we do more than just help you with your administrative needs, we help you improve your business and your success in unique ways. We help you focus on the things that will increase your business and improve your life overall. We help you to see what areas of your business you need to build up, while we are helping ease some of the daily stress of managing the small things. We help you find your unique talents so you can be fulfilled working on those while passing along the tasks you can’t stand to us.
Many Realtors who hire Best Agent Business are at first a bit dismayed at “all the work” they have to do. It’s hard to see the big picture sometimes, but I can assure you that “all that work” has a purpose and if accomplished, the single greatest result will be an improved business. Our processes have helped many so-so agents become “best agents”.
One of the things we ask new clients to do is to go through their database with a fine-tooth comb. We will take care of the logistics end for you, but you are the only one who knows which of the people in your database are valid leads and referral resources. Most agents come to us with a jumbled mess of a database, and this tedious process gets it all sorted out, coded properly, and functioning as it should. Your database is quite an investment, and you put in a lot of effort to get it to the size it currently is, and we help you put in the extra effort to make it worthwhile.
Times are tough and many in the real estate industry are struggling. It’s times like these that you ask yourself if you are better off cutting as many corners as possible or expanding on the investment in yourself, and your business, to see greater success in the long run.
Since it’s around the Holidays, we’d like to encourage you to give yourself a gift of investing in your business. It’s hard to make yourself a success without investing some time and effort in what you do.
Winter is a perfect time to step back and take a look at your business. Best Agent Business is not only a virtual real estate assistance agency, but we also specialize in helping you look at your business from different angles, develop your goals, fine tune your database and step up your systems.
You may be saying that you are going to wait until spring when business picks up to hire an assistant, but our experience has shown us that the slow season is ideal for getting your business back on track. You will have the time to commit with Steve Kantor, our company’s’ president, to get your business in position for the prime real estate season.
So why not give yourself the gift of investing in yourself and your real estate business. It just takes a few minutes to visit our website and schedule a call with Steve. You can schedule your call now for after the holidays, if you prefer. You aren’t committing to a thing by scheduling this call other than spending an hour or so with Steve on the phone looking at your business model and your sales patterns and deciding if we would be a good match in helping your business succeed.
Best Agent Business is here to help YOU become a “Best Agent.“ Here’s to your success in 2012. Enjoy your Holidays and enjoy your New Year!
--Post submitted by Kim, Virtual Real Estate Assistant, Best Agent Business
As hard as it is to believe, it’s just about time to start thinking about your yearly goals. I hope you planned out some goals for 2011 and have met most or all of them. Now start thinking about your goals for 2012. What do you want to accomplish, both professionally and personally? Let’s look deeper into that process.
We are big on Goals at Best Agent Business and our parent company Lifebushido. One of our projects includes training people, especially real estate agents, how to plan and meet their goals. Our company would not have reached the point it is at without active, viable goals, and yours probably won’t succeed without some either.
To start on your goals for 2012, first take a look at your goals for 2011. If you didn’t write down goals this year, then just look back, and take a few moments to write down your achievements, your failures, and the areas you wish you could have done better in. Also think about the things in your business and personal life that make you feel dissatisfied or out-right unhappy.
Now consider that list, and ask yourself how you would like to improve on those in 2012. Perhaps you want to move into a larger office, or go green by moving your office into the space above your garage. Perhaps you want to get on a budget and start the process of getting out of debt. Perhaps you want to lose 40 pounds. Maybe a 2-week cruise through the Bahamas is calling your name. All of these can be accomplished, or at least started, by setting and working towards goals.
Take the following categories and write down 3-5 goals under each one: Health, Relationships, Finances, Business, and Personal. These should each be something you can accomplish, they could build on another goal, and they should be written in positive statements. i.e. “I will read 10 books on improving my business or personal life” rather than “I won’t waste every evening watching TV.”
Set a deadline for each of your goals. Some of them will take you the entire year, others may be realistically something you will accomplish by spring.
Now format your goal sheet so it looks nice, print it out, and put it in a prominent location where you can see it and read it each day. You could even get it laminated so it will stay in great shape all year. Don’t be afraid to write on it, to make notes, to draw smiley faces when you achieve something, whatever it takes to keep you motivated towards reaching your goals.
Everyone is different and so are their goals. Even the ways we keep ourselves motivated or the ways we accomplish our goals are different. But the one thing that successful people have in common is taking the time to set goals and working each and every day towards those goals. And don’t forget to celebrate when you accomplish any of your goals!
Real estate virtual assistant, virtual assistant, virtual assistance, part time virtual assistant, real estate, unique talents, part time workforce, stay at home mom, work at home job, listing services, closing services, blogging services, social networking, database clean up, graphic design services, marketing services, website design, website analysis, lead generation, calling services, lead management, book publishing
Disclaimer: ActiveRain Corp. does not necessarily endorse the real estate agents, loan officers and brokers listed on this site. These real estate profiles, blogs and blog entries are provided here as a courtesy to our visitors to help them make an informed decision when buying or selling a house. ActiveRain Corp. takes no responsibility for the content in these profiles, that are written by the members of this community.
30 years ago, we would have thought nothing of receiving a hand-written note from a business contact, but in today’s age of email, 
Did you know that Best Agent Business has several freebies for real estate agents? We have reports, email series, spreadsheets, and even a book, that can be yours for the taking by simply asking. 
You’ve seen them. Those really cool pages that you sometimes land on when you visit a 
WARNING: THIS CAN BE ADDICTIVE!! Have you heard of the latest hot craze among social media users? It’s 
Posted by 
Many real estate agents are currently working with a virtual real estate assistant and loving it. Is it different than working with someone right in your office? Sure. Can it be just as effective? Absolutely! The trick is in finding the right person with the right skills. Let’s talk about what a good virtual assistant match would look like for you as a real estate agent.
There has been a lot of hacking going on lately. Many real estate businesses have a WordPress blog or a full-fledged WordPress website, and the thought of it being hacked can almost cause your heart to stop beating. But it happens. The best thing to do is take every preventative step possible, and then just be ready and know the steps to take if it happens.
Almost everyone in the real estate business knows what a 
Times are tough and many in the real estate industry are struggling. It’s times like these that you ask yourself if you are better off cutting as many corners as possible or expanding on the investment in yourself, and your business, to see greater success in the long run.
As hard as it is to believe, it’s just about time to start thinking about your yearly goals. I hope you 
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