5 Reasons Agents Don’t Hire Help When They Should

Running a real estate business is actually running a small business. However, since a lot of agents actually come to the industry from the “9 to 5" mentality they do not have the mindset of a business owner when it comes to hiring and operations.

In order to run the business effectively and to grow you need to hire help and some of them realize it, but
still are hesitant on pulling the “hiring” trigger. Why is it happening and why do agents have this mental freeze on bringing the help they need?

1) Fear of the Unknown: Will I Have Enough Funds to Pay the Salary of My Employee?

This one is the biggest fear most new entrepreneurs have and it’s understandable. We are all afraid of the unknown at some point, but if we want to elevate our business, we need to overcome these fears.

You might be thinking, “What if I don’t have enough funds to pay the salary?” “ What if I do not have sales next month?” How do successful real estate agents deal with that?

They evaluate their budget and have predictive models for their businesses. Besides, they know that by hiring help they actually free up their time for money-making activities.

So by delegating prospecting or marketing tasks to someone who is already trained for that, you’ll start making more money by concentrating on your clients, new leads, etc.

So you’ll end up increasing your income and all the worries about being not paying your employee will disappear. It’s totally worth it!

2) Not Knowing How to Delegate and What to Delegate

That’s true! More than 45% of real estate professionals who hired help simply don’t know what tasks to delegate and how to do that.

The answer is simple! You should ONLY be engaging in income-producing activities. Networking, building relationships, working with your clients, attending listing appointments, negotiating contracts.

All the menial non-income-producing other tasks should be delegated to your assistant.

It is a good idea to have an SOP (standard operating procedures) manual for your business, where everything is spelled out, and in case your current assistant leaves, a replacement can be easily trained and be onboarded.

Some agents already have it ready before they hire an assistant, and some build one up together with their assistant.

3) No Infrastructure to Onboard an Assistant

When you hire an assistant, you also need to provide infrastructure for your employee. Computer, workstation, internet connection, etc.

Some agents are mobile and don’t even have office space and work from home. So, bringing an employee creates a challenge.

The best way to go about doing it is to hire a virtual assistant, who already has all the necessary equipment and infrastructure. There are a few really good companies that provide already trained virtual assistants who are ready to start with minimum downtime for onboarding.

4) Liability vs Asset Mindset

What’s a liability? Something that takes money out of your pocket without adding value, right? Successful entrepreneurs treat their assistants as assets, not liabilities because they know the value of leverage.

By delegating tasks you’re saving your priceless time and redirecting it into money-making activities which will give you more profit in the future, than the money which you pay at this current moment.

When you pay your assistant $10/hr and your rate is $100/hour, you are saving $90/ per hour because
essentially you are buying your own time back so that you can only engage in the higher paid activities as discussed earlier.

5) Working in the Business Instead of ON the Business

A lot of agents get consumed in the work of taking care of their clients that they stop noticing that at some point they only work in their businesses instead of working on building and growing their business.

As Robert Kiyosaki explained about the four quadrants of cash flow, a lot of people never make a transition from an Employee or Self-Employed status to a Business Owner status.

When a business is working for them instead of them working to run the business, that’s when the growth and proper alignment happens.

In order to make the leap into the Business Owner quadrant, the agent must learn how to delegate and prioritize because operating a company is a different skill than selling homes.

By actually hiring an assistant who will take on some of the tasks, the agent starts the process of actually building a business that can run without the owner’s involvement someday. Or at least go on vacation and not have to worry about the operations and closings.

If you're interested in getting the massive help virtual assistants can provide, fill out this form and one of our Consultants will get in touch with you.

More Articles From Virtudesk:

• 26 Industries That Benefit From Hiring Virtual Assistants
• What is the Executive Administrative Assistant Role at Virtudesk
• 37 eCommerce Virtual Assistant Tasks
• 20 Virtual Assistant Tasks for The Beauty Industry