Steve Kantor - Best Agent Business - Virtual Assistance

In a time where money is tight, any means a business can find to advertise for free is priceless. As a virtual assistant for Best Agent Business, I know first hand, how valuable these resources have become. I am the Team Leader for the Craigslist team, and I'm here to tell you about what we can do to help promote your listings.

Best Agent Business has a Listings Team. A few of the things this team organizes and manages are posting listings to various marketing sites, and staying in constant contact with our clients to make sure their needs are being met and often times, exceeded. Recently, the listings team has branched into a team specifically designed in posting Real Estate Listings to Craigslist.

Our team is in direct contact with each client's Key Assistant or Team Leader and manages the postings each week. How this works is each client chooses a day or days he/she wishes to have their listings go live on Craigslist. Using the systems we've carefully established, we proof read and post these to the clients region weekly or bi-weekly however the client wishes them to be done. This is a very valuable resource to have. It is free and can generate lots of leads for the agent's listings.

There are several different systems we can use to post to Craigslist. The first is the good ol' fashioned way of manual posting. By this we mean, no glitz and glitter, just straight forward text and attaching up to 4 pictures. Another method, one of our most popular is by using Postlets. It is a free site in which we input the listings information, and it generates a HTML code which we then use in the Craigslist ad. It creates a very nice flyer looking ad, and contains all the pertinent information, including the agent's name, a picture of that agent if he/she chooses to use one and the office address and phone numbers, and can also hold up to 6 pictures of the property. By the way, the Postlets can also be out on Active Rain for a quick, attractive post..

A few other sites we use to generate an HTML code to use for posting to Craigslist, is VFlyer, Number1 Expert, and E-Listings. These are also wonderful tools. The downside to VFlyer is you can only have 5 listings at one time for the free site, or you can pay and have as many as you would like. Number1Expert is similar to Postlets, but not as user friendly. E-Listings is a tool for our Exit agents, and it is wonderful. It generates a very nice flyer that we post to Craigslist for them.

As a Virtual Assistant, I am learning a lot about real estate. But as a Marketing Major, I can tell you, free is wonderful, especially when you can reach a market that might otherwise be left untapped. Do your research, and utilize the services that are out there. You just don't know what you might be missing.

Want more new ideas to make your business run more efficiently? Take 30 minutes today to schedule a call with Steve Kantor to see how a part time virtual assist can transform your business. Interested in a part time career with us? Visit our website for more information.

Best Agent Business Virtual Assistants don't just live in the real estate world as staff - often they enter it as clients. This moving story of a virtual assistant who just bought a house tells it all, from the importance of finding the right agent to the importance of making a fair offer based in the market conditions to the mound of paperwork necessary to close.

As a first time home owner, I can tell you one thing, very few emotions are left unturned during the process. I had no idea what I would be getting into, and here I am almost a month and a half later, still wondering how this all happened.

Let me back up and give you a quick history of the whole process and how it began. My husband is active duty Navy. When he received word that we would be staying in Jacksonville, I was ecstatic. Not only would we not have to move for at least three years, but we would actually be able buy our first home, and paint the walls a color other than white. Now, when we found out we would be able to look into buying a home, I was 7 ½ months pregnant, moody, and tired all the time. The military has a program called Movers Advantage, so we decided to utilize this program. We started with one realtor who sent us many listings to view on-line, but none that had any of the specs we were looking for in a house, our soon-to-be home. She was very passive, not as aggressive as I would have like her to be, so we politely requested a new agent.

Wow, she was wonderful. Not only did she find us ten plus homes for us to look at, she scheduled us is times to view these houses, all within a weeks time. Our first realtor did nothing of the sorts. So into the car we went, driving around, looking at house after house, and not finding anything that said Home.

Three days of looking, and I was beginning to feel overwhelmed, and disappointed. This was not only because we were growing closer and closer to time for my husband to be finishing with his training command, but also because our little baby would be arriving very soon and I knew my time was limited on being able to look for a house. It was hard enough waddling in and out of a car, then looking through house after house, but doing so with a newborn....not happening.

Day four of looking seemed to be producing the same results...nice houses, but not our home. It was the last house of that day, it had been on the market 1 day, and I just had this feeling. This house was on the same street as the house we were renting, so it would be a short move, and almost seemed too easy. We pulled in the driveway and I got a tingling feeling. As soon as my feet stepped into the front foyer, I knew it was home. I began scurrying around the house as fast as a 9 month pregnant lady could and became more excited with each step. My husband and I sat down at the bar right there in that house and put our offer on paper and the realtor submitted it.

Then the nerves sat in, and it was almost unbearable. We gave them two days to respond, and when 5 o'clock on the day we requested a response came and went, my heart was sad. I just knew that they had passed on our offer. Several hours later, the phone rang, they had countered. Contrary to most people's beliefs, their counter actually included a few things we hadn't thought of, agreed to most of our conditions, the only thing was they wanted a little more money. We put our counter offer in and the next day, with a house full of friends cheering on our respective college football teams, the phone rang....WE GOT THE HOUSE! The whole room broke into cheers, and we were so excited to share that moment with everyone!

Then the fun part, form after form, stacks of papers, inspections, walk thrus....o my the paperwork seemed almost endless. Then, in the middle of trying to get all of this done, our son made his appearance into the world. With a 3 ½ week old in tow, we arrived at the Law office to do our final closing. What an amazing feeling. The lawyer was wonderful and explained everything as we signed our lives away. As we sat there at the round table, signing paper after paper, I felt very relieved. The process was finally over, and we had a house, a home, a place our son will take his first steps, say his first words, and celebrate his birthday. It was the most amazing feeling knowing that it was done, and we could start moving our things into our home.

Not only did we find a house that we fell in love with, we made some new friends that we now talk to regularly, and plan on having dinner with, the "old" owners. It made the process even more enjoyable, though the first word that comes to mind when I reminisce about first starting the home buying process would have to be "anxiety filled," ha!

We've been in our new home for a little over a month now and couldn't be happier. The pictures are on the wall, the furniture is in place, and we're having our first dinner party tomorrow night. You want to know the best part; it's all over for at least three years!

Want more new ideas to make your business run more efficiently? Take 30 minutes today to schedule a call with Steve Kantor to see how a part time virtual assist can transform your business. Interested in a part time career with us? Visit our website for more information.

Best Agent Business Can Manage Your Twitter Account-Freeing You To Build Twitter Relationships

Twitter is an intriguing concept, but one that takes some time to absorb. As a busy Realtor®, your concern is how do you maximize the benefits while expending the least amount of time? It's true - there is often a learning curve with anything worthwhile. You don't want that learning curve to be a slippery slope to wasted time! The fact is, many real estate agents have learned to use Twitter successfully and have even generated some sales from the relationships they have built.

Did you know a virtual assistant can help you maximize those relationships and benefits? The best thing about allowing a virtual assistant to help with your Twitter activities is the time you are freeing up. Best Agent Business can help you a little or a lot. We can set up your Twitter account and services for you, and then pass it off to you to run with. Or we can set them up and then provide you with good steady content relevant to your target "tweeple" via a service such as SocialOomph, formerly known as TweetLater. If it's already set up, but under-used...well we can help you develop the best plan to get it back on track.

By providing you with steady content, we will help increase your following and free up at least an hour of your time each week. We can provide this service as a compliment to your own personal tweets. The content we provide for your Twitter stream is up-to-date local information relevant to the housing market and national mortgage or real estate news. We can also tweet links to your new blog posts, recycle older blog posts, and link to other local blogs that you might suggest.

Our Twitter management services can also include finding people for you to follow, after all those you follow are more likely to follow you back. We can spend 15 minutes a week searching for local tweets that would indicate an interest in real estate and "follow" them. We can weed through the new follows, direct messages, and retweets, finding those that are relevant and taking good action on them. If you would like to respond directly, we can alert you to any that you may have missed.

Twitter is easy for you to use because you update it from your phone or computer, whichever you prefer, or both. If you show a house, you can send a short text message from your phone to your twitter account saying something like "Just showed the house at 123 Maple Ave...I think they liked it!" This goes beyond that simple "what are you doing" and lets your followers know that you are busy, you are actively selling houses, and they can trust you to do a stellar job when they are wanting someone to help them buy or a sell a home.

Don't forget the personal things. Taking your dog to a dog park? Tweet it. Did you just see a great movie? Tweet that too! Your followers don't want to see that you are just a Realtor...they want to work with a human being...someone just like them.

While a virtual assistant cannot add the personal touch to your twitter account, we can certainly supplement it. Wondering what we can develop for YOU? Want more new ideas to make your business run more efficiently? Take 30 minutes today to schedule a call with Steve Kantor to see how a part time virtual assist can transform your business. Interested in a part time career with us? Visit our website for more information.

Social media is the big buzzword in the marketing field these days. Whether your business is real estate or new shoes, almost everyone is doing it. But what is "it" and how can you get started? Do you have to do it all yourself, from set-up to daily maintenance? Can a virtual assistant help you with it?

Social media is the catch-all phrase for all things "social" using "media," primarily the internet. The social media networks that are familiar to most people are MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. A blog can be considered a social media outlet as well.

When you participate in social networkds, it is not advertising per-say, but rather partipating in "get-to-know-each-other ongoing events". While many people use social media just for fun, a great number of professionals use it for business as well.

Is it appropriate to share your work and, if you are a real estate agent, some of your listings? Yes, with moderation. Depending upon the network in question, there are rules about this and you want to avoid becoming a spammer. Nothing will cause you to lose internet "friends" faster than hitting them with a constant, or even a daily, demand for them to use your services.

Getting started can be a daunting task to those who are uncomfortable with internet accounts. Each one of the networks is different, but they all require a user-name and email to get started. Some need more information, such as birthday, security information, etc. The more information you can throw at some of them the more connected you will be.

Getting started in social media is a great task for a virtual assistant to help you with. At Best Agent Business we will charge a small hourly fee for setting up the social media networks that you choose. We will ask you a bunch of questions that will provide us with the information needed to get the ball rolling. And within a few days you should hear back that you are set up and ready to go.

There is even more we can do. Your virtual assistant at Best Agent Business can help you maintain your social media, to whatever degree you would prefer. Discuss this with us and we can work out a social media plan tailored to your needs.

Want more new ideas to make your business run more efficiently? Take 30 minutes today to schedule a call with Steve Kantor to see how a part time virtual assist can transform your business. Interested in a part time career with us? Visit our website for more information.

Best Agent Business offers you the advantage of using virtual assistants that we have hired, which relieves you from having to so. We also offer you team of people to approach the tasks you delegate. Have you ever wondered how we hire?

Best Agent Business has never had to place a help wanted to ad to recruit virtual assistants. All of our part time staff have found us via word of mouth, or from work-at-home websites. What intrigues most applicants is non-traditional application they have to fill out. Before an applicant even reaches the application stage, they receive a series of emails from Steve Kantor explaining to them in detail what the job is all about, and various expectations of the company. After a week of these emails, the applicant then decides whether to continue with the process or opt out.

Many find the company diverse and continue on with the process. The application questions are quite a bit different than a regular application, and urges the applicant to think outside of the box when filling out the answers. Here at BAB, we would rather read about someone who impacted an applicant's life, or what news story of the year they found most interesting, instead of where they see themselves in five years or what are their goals in life.

After filling out the application, applicants then log into a website and attach the application, along with their resume, and a brief biography about themselves. This three part process can be edited by the applicant three times. Some applicants may even be asked to rate other applicants based on certain criteria. By requesting the biography, we can tap into a person's writing skills, and learn more about them as a person, instead of just touching on their work background. The rating of the applicants gives the person applying a chance to see how what type of person we are looking for at BAB, and gives them the chance to help decide who would be a true fit for the company.

When reviewing the applications we look for those with real estate experience, those who came up with creative or thought-provoking answers to the application questions, and we also look at their other work background. We get to see if they can follow directions, how they can write, and how they exhibit the creativity and critical thinking that will be useful for our clients.

Virtual assistants with unique talents we need is what we strive for. Many start out using a specific unique talent, but find they have many others as they begin their journey at Best Agent Business. Tapping into an applicant's unique talent makes for happy workers and is a great asset to our clients. Our clients are diversified and each need particular tasks to be done. With so many assistants with different backgrounds, we can serve all of our different clients needs, whether they need a listing assistant or someone with excellent writing skills.

Hiring never stops at BAB; we are always on the lookout for those suitable for our company. By continually accepting applications, we will always find those who are the right fit for to help serve our clients and their various needs.

Want more new ideas to make your business run more efficiently? Take 30 minutes today to schedule a call with Steve Kantor to see how a part time virtual assist can transform your business. Interested in a part time career with us? Visit our website for more information.