Building a real estate business can turn into a exhausting treadmill if you aren't careful. The more business you do, the more administrative tasks you have; the more time you spend on administrative tasks, the less time you have to generate new revenue. The only sensible solution to growth is to multiply your manpower. Yet, you may have a multitude of reasons that prevent you from hiring a personal assistant, even though it's obvious you need one. Wouldn't it be great if you had an assistant that was always ready to work for you, but only when you need him or her? Meet the virtual assistant, a creative new labor force that provides practical solutions for small businesses and job growth potential for outsourcers.

The virtual assistant takes the role of the temp and elevates it to the status of entrepreneur. Because the virtual assistant is self-employed, bills only the hours work or by tasks completed, and is dependent on referrals and steady work flow from existing clients, s/he can be the perfect solution for a busy agent.

A virtual assistant offers several advantages over a paid employee. When you hire a virtual assistant you get all the benefits of outsourcing - no employee tax and benefits issues, coupled with the loyalty and steadiness of a company employee. If you have found that traditional staffing solutions don't work for you there may be many reasons. Temps are a transient solution, and they can be expensive. If you need someone only a few hours a day or week, a temp can prove more costly in terms of training than s/he is worth. Most are also looking for full time employment, so as soon as you find someone you like, s/he has left the temp service for greener pastures.

Paid employees come also come with a host of issues. You not only must provide tech equipment and furniture for them, you also have state and federal obligations, and employer compliance and unemployment liabilities. Then there are the benefits packages - sick leave, vacation time. It is estimated that the true cost of an employee is over double and sometimes triple the cost of their annual salary in terms of benefits and liabilities. Significant for some is also the loss of privacy and personal issues - you are sharing your small space with others. Do they make good roomies?

As more agents move their marketing and communications to the Internet, virtual assistants become more and more the obvious solution to staffing problems. For an hourly fee of $15 to $35, less than the cost of temps or employees, agents can take advantage of professional assistance and a variety of skills at the click of a mouse. Virtual assistants are already computer trained, and can assist with your specific needs from traditional office support services to highly specialized areas including Web page design. Call upon your virtual assistant for basic word processing, phone answering, bill paying, appointment scheduling and calendar maintenance. You can train your virtual assistant to go beyond administrative support to client development and marketing support. There is no need to share space or even for the agent and the virtual assistant to live in the same city. Work assignments are communicated through e-mail, phone, fax, "snail mail," or diskette. The agent can take advantage of Web-based tools such as instant messengers, like ICQ, and online calendars and planners are often used as a means of keeping in touch. Schedule changes, project reports, or customer-service alerts such as new listings for a client can be performed immediately. The virtual assistant can lend "size" to your company, which will impress potential clients.

"As cable Internet, wireless Internet, and other broadband solutions grow in the marketplace, the VA will be well-placed to leverage the additional communications tools and grow even closer to the small business or startup client," says Christine C. Durst, president and CEO of Staffcentrix, LLC.

There are several effective ways to find a virtual assistant. Simply enter "virtual assistant" in your favorite search engine. Another solution is to search the directory at www.staffcentrix.com. Staffcentrix is a resource/support company for virtual assistants. You can search the pool of virtual assistants manually, or use the free referral service to search the database for those who most closely match your needs. In the directory, you can learn the virtual assistant's experience level, services provided, software and hardware capabilities, and his/her email, URL address, and other contact information. The International Virtual Assistants Association also has a comprehensive directory of virtual assistants. Contact the virtual assistant who most closely match your needs via email. Most virtual assistants are used to proving themselves with small projects of an hour or two. Any more than that and they should be paid for their time. You can set up payment arrangements by time or task.

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Blanche Evans is the editor of Agent News and associate editor of Realty Times. Ms. Evans is the principal of Newbury Communications, an editorial marketing and business writing firm, and she has been published in numerous newspapers, magazines and visitor guides across the nation. She has served as senior editor of Exclusively Dallas, an annual fundraising publication benefiting the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation for six years.

Stories by Blanche Evans

E-mail Blanche at: BlancheEvans@realtytimes.com

Virtual Assistant

Help manage client's office from your home office.

By Paul and Sarah Edwards

You're a valuable, trustworthy office assistant or administrator. You're successful at your job because you complete tasks in a way that makes your boss look good and feel better. But you'd rather work for yourself and be in charge of your own time. Maybe you want to be at home when your kids arrive from school, or maybe you're just tired of commuting. Maybe you dream of living in the mountains or your rural hometown, but you still want to produce an income.

The good news is, the explosion of the Internet and the global economy has produced not only the virtual organization, but also a new business opportunity: the virtual assistant.

As a virtual assistant, you take on the nitty-gritty work for independent professionals and small businesses that don't need a full-time secretary orofficemanager. Your tasks may include secretarial work, meeting and travel planning, project managing, and logistics coordinating.

If you work as a virtual assistant for a start-up company, you may be busy finding sources of insurance or outfitting an office on a minimal budget. You may help an independent professional like an author or consultant manage his or her hectic life by arranging for pet sitting, calling a plumber, scheduling doctor's appointments, planning a family reunion or coordinating a move. You may do market research, write proposals, send out marketing materials and news releases, handle the billing and bookkeeping, or update your client's Web site.

Depending on the needs and personalities of both you and your client, you may work "on call" or set your own schedule. But in all cases, you're virtual, working from your home for clients who may be based in your community or on another continent, communicating via e-mail, phone, fax and online instant messaging. You and your client may even coordinate via online intranets or have access to each other's computers with software like Symantec's PC Anywhere .

Virtual assistants typically earn between $20 and $45 per hour, but those with more specialized expertise and upscale clients like attorneys may charge more than $100 per hour. Some VAs have retainer arrangements with clients who commit to paying for 10 to 20 hours a month, sometimes at a discounted hourly rate.

There are several places you can obtain training to become a virtual assistant. Stacy Brice, one of the founders of the field, offers virtual training at AssistU, and the International Virtual Assistants Association (IVAA) offers a certification program.

Once you're trained, some job sites like Guru.com and FreeAgent.com have specific listing categories for virtual assistants. Another matching service where virtual assistants can list their services in more than 50 different categories is IVAA affiliate Staffcentrix, which bills itself as a "Virtual Assistant Internet Portal."

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Paul and Sarah Edwards are the award-winning co-authors of thirteen books, including Working From Home, The Best Home Businesses for the 21st Century and their latest book, The Practical Dreamer's Handbook. More information is available on their Web sites, www.workingfromhome.com and www.simplegoodlife.com.

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