Real Estate News | BiggerPockets.com (blog)
Virtual assistants can be incredibly useful to your real estate investing business. I truly believe that the ability to successfully delegate (including knowing when and what to delegate) is key to the success of any business venture. Leveraging others’ time allows you to focus your precious limited time and energy on the most profitable activities in your business.

Earlier this year I hired a virtual assistant for the very first time and while it wasn’t a complete disaster, frankly it was pretty bad. The good news is that there is always something to be learned even from rotten experiences, and I’m pleased to be able to share my lessons learned with others who may be considering hiring a virtual assistant to help with their real estate businesses.

Lesson #1: Talk to references!

Before hiring a virtual assistant, ask the assistant for references whom you can speak to. Even if you are looking to hire from one of the outsourcing websites (e.g. eLance.com, Guru.com) like I did and the person has a few positive comments, follow up with those past/current clients! Perhaps you can feel comfortable if they’ve been hired 20+ times with outstanding feedback, but it’s always a great idea to speak directly to others who have worked with the person.

Lesson #2: Yes, sometimes you really do get what you pay for

I intentionally chose to start off with small assignments (handling my internet ads to market deals and build a buyer’s list). My plans were to start small and — if things went well — expand her responsibilities to include..... Click here to read the full article.

I think these kind of public expressions of frustration at working with VAs can be a great lesson to all of us - both newbies and veterans.

I'd love to know what your own thoughts are on this client's experience and what you do differently in your own practice to ensure no one is out there writing posts about their own terrible virtual assistant experience.

I will say good for the client for realizing that 'you get what you pay for' really does ring true.

Looking forward to everyone's comments on this!

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This is pretty interesting to me. I am still trying to figure out this whole industry. Both from the VA and the client side. Interesting view from the client side. I have tried to do my research, i am on this forum, I have listened to podcasts and webinars, I bought the Brennar Industry Report of the Virtual Assistant Industry and see that statistically there is a real, viable industry here. On paper, and in my rational mind, this seems like a brilliant way to make a living. I can see that there are many on here that do just that. I also understand where clients would automatically go to the elance and odesk sites, they came up in their search, they're cheap, whatever. I personally cannot ever imagine myself working for those kind of rates for any reason. But then they have an experience like what is detailed out above. Great. That just makes it more difficult for me to sell my services at a much higher rate. And I'm sorry, I know I may be rambling here, but I have 20 some years of experience, and I basically rock, but I can't seem to sell the fact that if you give me a chance I can absolutely make your life easier! All of the sudden, even seeing a job for stuffing envelopes or scheduling some appointments on a web based software program, seems like OMG, will you please hire me! And all of the sudden I am sweating over a task that a year ago would have been something easily done or delegated. Wow..what a difference a year makes!

So I get discouraged and no work, and somebody on elance gets someone like this guy who actually was willing to give you the time to learn him and his business, and they basically left him with a bad taste in his mouth. Guarantee you he would not take a chance on me, a new VA, if I was the next one he came across. And that is both his loss and mine.

I am not discouraged that the client in question would be discouraged by higher prices, because he sees he made a mistake there. It also is great that he pointed out the mistake of hiring from a service, rather than a professional. I am new to the VA career as well (still doing my homework before putting my best foot forward), but I do see that charging a higher rate will actually bring more clients in when stories like this get around.
The only part to discourage me is that I don't have a whole list of references for someone to check out. I have 2 references. My area of expertise is real estate, 3 years as an agent, 1 year as office coordinator, and 1 year as a licensed assistant to a team of 4. Two of the four I can't get in touch with, and the one reference is from the broker I left the first job with. (Long story, 2 brokers, they disagreed, broker 1 kicks broker 2 out of the business, and me along with him because I had a very strong working relationship with broker 2). It was a mess, but it really worked out. My problem is how do I use those 2 references to market myself? I only have my 5 years experience and not the 20 that seems to be quite common on here.

I don't think that I'd be too discouraged either. It doesn't seem to me like this person was completely turned off by her whole VA experience. Instead, she realized that lessons were learned from this and she'll do her homework a bit more thoroughly before she hires another VA. So, that's a good thing

We see so many articles that excite us because the author is raving about how wonderful hiring a VA is only to find out at the end of the article that what they're really raving about is hiring someone to do a lot of work for pennies. So, I actually kind of enjoyed seeing this article because it was by someone who got burned using one of these "sweat shop" VA companies and realizes the true value of paying more and doing the research.

What really made my jaw drop was the person (in the comments) who said they hired a VA and said they did all the research to make sure they were getting an American based person to work with only to find out later that the VA was farming the work out to "third-world countries". I got the impression that this client wasn't using a company like eLance, but what they thought was a one-on-one partnership. Shame on that VA if it's true. That would put a bad taste in anyone's mouth. IMO, It goes against everything that we try to educate prospective clients about. Sure, VAs outsource themselves, but to other reputable VAs (or as a mentorship type thing maybe), but I would think that the client would be well aware of this beforehand.

Unfortunately, "rotten" experiences tend to spread wider and farther than good experiences, so you don't see a whole lot of articles out there raving about the WONDERFUL experience someone had working with a VA and encouraging everyone to run out and get their own (except for the people that are raving about being able to hire a VA for $1 an hour...lol). So it's up to us to make sure that we provide the best experiences possible for our clients and to be as transparent as possible with our references and testimonials.

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Stephanie
New VA in the research phase :daisy:

Good discussion. Because of this kind of thing, sometimes I wonder if calling myself a VA is a liability. We really should work to dispel the bad vibes - I wonder how? Those of us on the up-and-up do work very hard to provide the best possible experiences for our clients ...

What we need are testimonials from people who are in high level leadership positions. And more visibility in the press would help, too. Sigh. We have a long way to go.

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Mary H. Ruth/Virtual Writing & Communications
http://www.writingVA.com

Stephanie said:

Originally Posted by StephanieP

We see so many articles that excite us because the author is raving about how wonderful hiring a VA is only to find out at the end of the article that what they're really raving about is hiring someone to do a lot of work for pennies. So, I actually kind of enjoyed seeing this article because it was by someone who got burned using one of these "sweat shop" VA companies and realizes the true value of paying more and doing the research.

Well said & I agree! I read an article - maybe it was posted on this site? - but the man was going on & on about how one could find young VA's in Asia who would work for only $5 an hour. ~jaw drop. He didn't discuss the quality of work or if he had any issues with communication.

It's the same mind set we see with the big business, who think that just because they hire people at considerably less money, they are strengthening their bottom line. I believe Dell brought some of their out sourced service back to the states & also had to put additional training into their off shore workers communication skills, due to the number of complaints from customers.

Lezly

Great Post! A lot to learn and think about.

That was a very interesting post, I came away from it with a positive outlook. This individual sees the advantage of working with VAs and is suggesting to others that they should pay more for the best results. Also asking for references is a positive because clients will choose their VA based on past and present client feedback and then work with a VA that is qualified which only helps our industry.

If every client was that informed all of our experiences would be great.

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Sharon Clark
Administrative Results

As a VA, have you set yourself up as an "employee" (as referred to in this article) or as a business owner? The author went to a 'business' to 'hire' one of their VA's (which means as an employee).
If you're a VA Business Owner (and not hired out via a VA outsourcing company), then you are not an employee. There is still confusion about outsourcing to a VA business owner and outsourcing 'hiring' a VA as an employee.

I think it is each VA's responsibility to educate their clients (via website, ezine,ect) that they are not an employee but a business owner.

What's your thoughts?

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Your Marketing, Research and SEO assistant www.buckeyeva.com