VA CORNER: (full story)
Not Rain, Nor Sleet, Nor Ice ...
It was a Tuesday morning when Professional Real Estate VA,
Kim Hughes of Creative Business Concepts, woke to discover that her hometown had been hit by an ice storm.
Mineola, Texas had nearly three inches of ice coating everything. Schools and businesses shut down and many locations suffered from power outages. And if that wasn't bad enough, Kim had just committed to helping a top agent in Michigan move 90 listings over to her new
website under an intense deadline.
Living on a 350-acre cattle
ranch, Kim is accustomed to losing electricity
first and being the last to have it restored. Many
times, she has been forced to pack bags and drive
to the neighboring town for a two or three-day
hotel stay. But, this time, the "powers that
be" had left Kim's power untouched, unlike
many of her neighbors. Electricity was all she
needed to continue to serve her nationwide clients.
"As long as I have power I am in business! No
driving, no fighting traffic, no rushing out the
door."
On Wednesday, she still had
electricity, even though utility service to many
around her had not yet been restored. That day,
Janet Stockton (RE/MAX 100 www.TheStocktonTeam.com
in Commerce, MI) sent Kim an e-mail around noon.
"We need to upload approximately 90 listings
into my new website with
www.number1experts.com," she told Kim. Janet
was just launching the new site and Kim knew it
was imperative that these listings be loaded ASAP.
With a full day of work facing her, she got
organized, opened an Airborne package from Janet,
pulled out the 90 MLS sheets, sat down at her
computer, logged onto the website and began
entering the listings online.
BOOM! The power failed. This
timing was not good!
Kim grabbed her cell phone and
called her mother. But, not to bemoan her
situation, mind you. Kim's mother is one
Internet-savvy lady. At the age of 64, she has
built several websites from the ground up, taught
herself web design and coding, and also runs two
of her own successful businesses. Entrepreneurial
blood runs in this family.
Kim knew her mother would help
her with this critical, time-sensitive project.
Kim had Janet's permission to pull in a
subcontractor, so she asked her mother to load the
site and provided access information. Mother and
daughter began to work together, from afar, to get
the listings up.
Being the champ that she is,
Kim's mother dropped her own projects, hooked up
her earphones, and said, "Let's get
started!" Kim dictated the information over
the phone and her mother entered the data. As Kim
proceeded down the list, she told her mother
exactly where and how the information should be
placed. Although the electricity kept blinking on
and off, Kim didn't trust the service enough to
ensure that her clients' needs would be met
quickly, so this family team continued to enter
these listings long distance.
When approximately twenty of
the listings were complete, Kim's power was
restored. Once she was confident that the power
would stay on for a while, Kim took half the
listings and faxed them to her mother because
"time was of the essence!" Kim's mother
entered work while her daughter worked on her
half. By the end of the night, they had all the
listings uploaded.
Meanwhile, Janet was working
on her end to organize and upload the photos for
each listing. Then they loaded all the tours for
the listings. Before her website went live that
Friday, Janet had already picked up a new listing!
Now THAT is teamwork!
Once the listing uploads were
completed, Kim was concerned that she may lose
power again. This project had worked so well under
the time crunch that she sent another fax to her
mother with other pressing projects -- just in
case she lost power again. Soon thereafter, Kim
actually did lose power again. Amazingly, even
though her own office was dark and power was out
all over her town, Kim was able to keep her
business running without a glitch!
During these adventures in
Virtual Assistance, Janet didn't know Kim had lost
power. Kim says such things are merely details and
that that the #1 Realtor in the state of Michigan
had better things to do than worry about the
listings on her website.
Kim, like most Virtual
Assistants, will routinely move heaven and earth
to make sure their partners are covered. After
all, their business grows only if their clients
are well served.
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