When Rob Levy of Prudential Northwest Properties in Portland, Oregon, needs graphic work, he contacts Virtual Consultant Gabriel in Romania (yes, you read that right, Romania!) When he needs HTML coding, website work or assistance with enhancing his Realtor.com listings, he calls on Virtual Consultant Joe Lininger in Eugene, Oregon. And when he wants assistance with farming expireds, client follow-up and general office administration he calls on Alicia, his Virtual Assistant.

Alicia was actually Rob’s in-house assistant for many years. When she decided to work from home, the technicians at the office helped build a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to allow her to remotely connect with his LAN (local area network).
(EDITOR’S NOTE: you can achieve the same results using GoToMyPc.com)

Here is how Alicia has helped Rob achieve an astounding success rate when farming expired listings utilizing the remote access to his computer and a systemized approach:

Alicia first logs into Rob’s computer via the VPN, runs the expired report in the MLS, double checks it against the new listings and verifies they meet the criteria Rob has established. She then accesses the county tax rolls to obtain mailing addresses and then verifies the accuracy of those addresses with the ones from the United States Postal System using their free online service (www.usps.com). Alicia can also obtain any missing zip codes there. At www.anywho.com, she obtains the owners phone numbers to be used later in the marketing process. Then she sends each owner an information booklet and enters them into Rob’s contact management program and assigns each one an action plan to keep the contact flowing. Using this approach, Rob reports a 40-60% success rate within the first 3 – 6 months!

As he lists the properties, Rob typically needs some graphic and photo work done to enhance their appearance on his Web sites. This is where his Romanian virtual team member comes into play. You may be curious how Rob found this (very affordable!) graphic artist from Romania —Elance.com of course! Elance.com is the online virtual service provider marketplace that Mr. Internet speaks and writes about extensively. Rob went to Elance, posted his project, and waited for competitive bids to come in. Gabriel from Romania responded with the best combination of price, skill and experience. Rob was so pleased with his work (and blown away with how little it cost) that he now uses Gabriel for most of his graphic design needs.

With Alicia managing the administrative and expired listing tasks and Gabriel handling of all graphic design requirements, Rob hired Joe Lininger (joe@insidelane.com) to round out his virtual team by taking care of his Web site management needs. For example, Joe enhances Rob’s Web site, MLS, and Realtor.com listings using HTML coding. CLICK HERE take a look at how Joe significantly differentiated one of Rob’s listings on Realtor.com –which of course is a very powerful way to stand head and shoulders above your competitors (Seller’s love the extra touch during competitive listing presentations also!)

In addition to being highly effective, the beauty of Rob’s virtual team is that he has this high-powered, well-oiled “machine” helping him grow his business and have extra free time, and he didn’t have to add even one square inch to his office to accommodate them! Having your own virtual team is truly a “win-win” —they help you achieve your dreams while you give them the opportunity to achieve theirs from the comfort of their own home. And it just doesn’t get any better than that!
 

Michelle Thornton is our VA CORNER columnist and a RESS Certified VA.  You can visit her Web site at ProRealtorSupport.com and contact her via e-mail at michelle@vacorner.com