Author page: Jacques Greyling

Digital tools paved the way for VAs

One area where digital tools – especially communication and project management tools – have made a significant impact on Estate Agency worldwide is that they’ve facilitated taking on Virtual Assistants who are able to work remotely and fulfil a broad range of tasks. They allow VAs to manage important yet time-consuming day-to-day tasks to free up Agents’ valuable time so they can focus on mission-critical priorities, like selling property and growing the business.

AI is paving the way for increasing sales while saving time and money 

While digital tools have been used increasingly since the mid-1990s, it was only in 2023 that AI truly went mainstream. Today, if Estate Agents want to stay keep up with competitors, AI is no longer a nice-to-have. It is essential for speed and accuracy in gaining industry and market insights through data manipulation. It is pivotal for seamless, personalised client interaction. It is a strategic imperative for staying cutting edge by wowing sellers with bespoke property videos that impactfully market their property – or moving the dial on sales by offering incredibly life-like virtual property walk-throughs. 

It is important to remember, though, that AI is a tool. It’s only as effective as the people who wield it. It’s not a replacement for human originality. 

AI is a very powerful tool in the hands of a tech savvy Virtual Assistant

Estate Agency will always be a ‘people industry’. In both the sales and letting sectors, providing a top quality, personalised service relies heavily on human expertise, insights, and emotional intelligence. However, in the hands of a skilled and experienced Virtual Assistant, AI tools will allow your VA to be more productive and efficient than when they use conventional tools. Not only will their turn-around time be faster, their job description will expand as AI allows them to automate routine tasks, produce valuable information and reports, generate more leads, better identify and reach your target audience – and then use sophisticated AI-enhanced marketing campaigns to nurture them and turn prospects into clients. 

To align with the typical property buyer’s journey, which often begins with online searches for suitable properties, digital transformation has become essential in the UK estate agency industry. More than seamlessly reaching prospective clients, the rise of the digital era has allowed Estate Agencies to cut back on expenses, increase their efficiency by automating and streamlining processes, and improve on data security.

In addition to a quality CRM system, what are the essential digital tools that Estate Agencies can employ to generate leads, enhance and streamline their operations and improve their ‘client experience’?

Here are our top five must-have digital tools for Estate Agents:

1. Online project management

Project management software, like Trello or Asana, is designed to help companies and individuals track projects, tasks and schedules. The key value of this kind of software is its ability to bring structure to business operations. The software should be easy to use, with a logical interface. Choose software that can integrate seamlessly with other IT systems you use, such as your CRM software. The ideal software will have the facility to grow with your business and be adaptable to changing needs.

2. Customer service integration

A chatbot is an entirely digital Virtual Assistant that can handle client inquiries, simulating conversation and answering questions, with the benefit of being on duty 24/7.  For Estate Agents, this can mean answering questions about buying or selling properties or the sales process using artificial intelligence or pre-defined conversation scripts. Integrating your chatbot with your CRM (managed by your human Virtual Assistant) can enable seamless and consistent communication with customers across multiple channels, which include website, mobile, email and social media, etc. This integration allows the chatbot to access and update the customer data stored in your CRM system seamlessly.

3. Social media content creation

Social media is an indispensable tool for modern estate agents. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn provide opportunities to generate leads, engage with clients and share listings. High-quality content has the potential to drive traffic, increase conversions, and build brand awareness. Online graphic design tools like Canva make creating quality visuals and videos in-house really easy. Canva can be integrated to directly post your designs to messaging apps and social media and messaging platforms like Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest.

4. Advanced marketing analytics

There are many ways that data is useful to Estate Agents – from determining a suburb’s demographics to a specific property’s sales history to market trends. One very important aspect of data analytics – it is crucial to ensuring the success of digital marketing campaigns, including measuring the performance of social media, digital advertising and a company’s website. These analytics help to determine which areas of your marketing strategy are successful and which areas need more attention, allowing you to invest your marketing budget wisely.

5. Virtual tour software

Virtual tours can help agents market properties more effectively by providing a more immersive and engaging experience for potential buyers. They offer convenience, flexibility and a 3-D view of a property before ever stepping foot inside it and are seen to be a valuable service for both buyers and sellers. As technology has evolved on the back of the Covid pandemic, the software to produce high-quality 3D tours, 360-degree panoramic views, and even virtual reality experiences have become readily available for Estate Agents to create their own virtual tours in-house. Despite the initial capital outlay required, this is a more cost-efficient approach in the longer term.

In today’s digital age, virtual tours and property videos have become powerful marketing tools used to showcase properties for sale. These innovative tools have become “must haves” for competitive Estate Agents, helping to enhance property listings and offering a unique way to engage potential buyers both local and those from further afield.

• Property videos

Property videos can be made up from a combination of video and still photos. They are an effective marketing tool in that they can be used to generate interest from prospective buyers. They are more impactful than still images to emphasise the unique features and benefits of each property. Leveraging property videos saves time in that these allow a potential buyer to get more comprehensive first look at a property without having to schedule an in-person showing.

• Virtual tours

Virtual property tours allow potential buyers to narrow down their search by experiencing the layout, size and features of a property from their own laptop. They are an ideal way to communicate the dimensions and features of a physical space, allowing an Estate Agent to showcase 3-dimensional indoor and outdoor spaces in a way stills photography cannot accomplish. They also allow clients to better envisage renovations and upgrades as they get a sense of a home’s space and flow. They expand Estate Agents’ reach, allowing them to showcase properties to remote clients. If a prospective client calls to schedule a viewing after seeing your virtual tour, they have already shortlisted the property and have a genuine interest in putting in an offer.

Yes, there is upfront financial outlay to be made when launching into creating virtual property tours. But the return on investment has been proven¹ to be well worth it. One way of making the creation of virtual tours more affordable is (rather than using an external service provider) to take on a Virtual Assistant who understands the technical ins and outs of creating property videos and virtual tours. This can greatly enhance your ability to showcase your properties in a more budget efficient way.

Cold calling feeds the lead pipeline

To maintain a decent level of stock, Estate Agents need to maintain a healthy pipeline of leads. One way to do this is cold calling. Agents engage in cold calling to accomplish a variety of purposes that have both short and long-term benefits. These include:

• Generating new leads.
• Starting a relationship that can be nurtured.
• Initiating meeting in person with potential clients.
• Plus it can be a great source of referrals.

Cold calling is both daunting and time consuming

No matter how important it is, cold calling is time-consuming when done well. Significant amounts of time are spent researching prospects, making calls, reaching prospects’ voicemails and then phoning again, and encountering uninterested prospects to weed out those people who become qualified leads.

The answer lies in taking on an experienced VA

Taking on a Virtual Assistant who has experience in cold calling, lead generation and lead nurturing will not only level up your lead generation activity and improve on the number of face-to-face meetings you have scheduled. Their upfront work will also have you fully apprised with valuable information before you meet each client and will free up your time to focus on relationship building, signing business and closing deals.

The goal of using a customer relationship management (CRM) system is to improve relationships to grow your business. To this end, a CRM system provides a highly organised, online collection point for customer-related information. This makes managing and tracking information easy. For example, you can document and track the buyers’ journey for current clients, keep in touch with old clients and keep a record of prospects. CRM technology helps companies stay connected to customers, streamlines processes, and improves efficiency. This helps to save time and grow the business.

Here are 3 benefits of using a CRM system:

1. Since a good CRM system can store a wide range of information, it can be a central “archive” for all information, aligning processes between marketing, sales, customer service and administration.
2. By intelligently storing and managing your existing prospect and clients’ information, an automated CRM system more than maintains an existing database, it can help to improve the strategies that determine the number of leads your marketing and lead generation campaigns generate.
3. CRM systems allow both sales and marketing teams to personalise communication. This helps companies to build a relationship with their clients and prospects that converts prospects into clients, fosters loyalty, and nurtures customer retention.

When it comes to data input, IT specialists will tell you, “Garbage in, garbage out.”  In other words incorrect or poor-quality data input will produce flawed or useless output. Today CRM data management is of such importance to Estate Agencies that it is seen as an advantage to have someone in your team who oversees your database to ensure it is comprehensive, accurate, and up to date. To the point that some Estate Agents are taking on a dedicated CRM Virtual Assistant – in other words, Virtual Assistants with the appropriate knowledge to manage customer relationship management systems to keep client data organised and actionable.

Here are 3 valuable ways that your Virtual Assistant can help you optimise the use of your CRM system:

1. Data management: To ensure that data is updated regularly and accurately entered in the CRM system.
2. Lead management: To track target markets and lead generation campaigns – from prospect through to lead conversion.
3. Analysis: To mine the information for valuable trends and insights. For example, to analyse and report back on what is working and what is not working in generating and converting leads.

People who are successful business owners will tell you that there is great fortune to be had in consistent follow up. This makes sense when you consider that, according to research studies, only about 2% of sales happen upon initial contact. Clients who are among the 2% have already done their research and clearly know what they want.

What about the other 98%?

Each person within the remaining 98% is a warm lead – a potential client who has already shown interest in your stock or service. As they have already engaged with you personally or via your marketing channels they are typically receptive to outreach. However, their journey to becoming your client is still in progress. They need to be communicated with, educated and guided through an established sales funnel to keep them warm so that they don’t lose interest.

How can your Virtual Assistant help?

At its heart, lead nurturing is about making lasting connections with prospects. The three main elements of lead nurturing are building relationships through meaningful conversations, providing valuable insights that answer customer questions, and driving action by moving prospects closer to becoming a client over time. There are many ways your Virtual Assistant can help you in consistently gathering and nurturing warm leads. These include:

Gathering leads

• Market research: Conducting research to identify potential customers and target markets.
• Cold Calling: Reaching out to potential leads directly by phone.
• Referral marketing: Asking satisfied customers to refer your company to their associates and friends. To make your referral programme sing, consider adding incentives like an extra discount or reward. This will encourage clients to spread the word.

Nurturing leads

• Regular person-to-person follow up: Creating a follow up schedule then checking in with qualified leads via phone call, email or WhatsApp at appropriate intervals – depending on where they are at in the buyer’s journey.
• Email campaigns: Managing an email drip campaign. Email marketing campaigns can be quite effective at keeping leads warm because they provide the opportunity to keep in regular contact with prospects.
• Re-engagement campaigns: These campaigns are designed to specifically target leads within your database that have fallen dormant and re-engage them in the sales process.

• Digital marketing: Building relationships with your prospects with the goal of earning their business when they’re ready. This includes:

• • Social Media: Engaging with potential clients on social platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram
  • Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): Enhancing website visibility to attract organic leads.
  • Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC): Using paid ads to target specific demographics and drive traffic to landing pages.

• Online education and networking events: Organising webinars and other online events to connect and add value for potential clients.
• Reporting and analytics: Monitoring and analysing lead generation efforts to optimise strategies.

Calculating the return on investment (ROI) in the months after taking on a Virtual Assistant is more than a financial exercise for UK Estate Agents. It has more facets to it than only determining a growth in the number of properties sold before and after they joined – or calculating their impact on annual turnover.  When you evaluate ROI on a more holistic basis there are multiple factors to consider. Ultimately, all of these – financial or non-financial – have been proven to impact positively on a company’s bottom line.

Here are the financially related facets to consider when evaluating the source of ROI your company will enjoy through taking on a bespoke VA through VA Central.

Financial returns on investment

Saving money

• Saving on upfront recruitment costs: Not having to pay recruitment costs when growing your team lowers annual business costs.
• Not having to pay employee benefits and compensations: Not having to pay employee benefits reduces monthly cost-to-company.

Containing costs

• Cost-effective rates: Paying for a half or full day package in which the hourly rate for your VA equates to the National Minimum Living Wage regulates annual salary costs (making growing the team affordable).

Increasing capacity

• Time is money: Freeing up the Agency Principal and Estate Agents’ time so that they can take on more properties, spend more time nurturing client relationships and closing deals will increase turnover.

Increasing efficiency

• Streamlining workflow: Having experienced VA’s onboard who will automate and streamline workflow has been proven to increase efficiency and level up Estate Agents’ service offering. This further capacitates Estate Agents to service the socks off their clients, increase their fees and grow the business.

There are benefits to be enjoyed where there is an indirect correlation between the cost of growing a team and ROI. What is tremendous about these non-financial gains (such as satisfied and engaged team members and a happy work environment) is that they also have a calculable impact on the company’s bottom line.

What are the costs associated with taking on staff?

Estate Agents in the UK are right to be hesitant in taking on additional full-time employees, even if extra hands are greatly needed in the business because of the time and costs involved. They know that the expense of taking on a new employee entails more than just the person’s salary and benefits. Additional costs cannot be ignored when crunching the numbers to ensure it is financially feasible to grow a team.

Here is an overview of 5 cost categories to include when considering the financial outlay for a full-time staff member:

1. Recruitment costs

Traditional recruitment agencies can charge 20-30% of the starting salary, which for a role associated with a salary of £25,000 per annum would equate to 5,000 to £7,500 in agency fees.

2. Remuneration

• Salaries

The average base salary for an Office Worker in the UK is £25,310 per year.

• Employee benefits

Additionally, employers of full-time staff are also responsible for the following monthly costs for each employee:

• Employer’s National Insurance Contributions (NICs) of 13.8% on any salary above the National Insurance Secondary threshold.
• Auto-enrolment pension contributions, the minimum total contribution is 8% in the 2024/25 tax year, with a minimum of 3% coming from the employer and the balance from the employee.
• Employees’ liability insurance.

• Payroll costs

There is also time-consuming employee-related administration to consider. There can be overheads associated with the cost of running an RTI-compliant PAYE payroll system to facilitate Income Tax and NIC deductions from your employee’s pay.

3. Employee entitlements

Employees are entitled to the following non-working days with pay:

• Holiday pay, which includes their leave entitlement plus bank holidays. UK holiday entitlement equates to about 6 weeks’ salary.
• Sick pay, for which employees pay eligible employees £99.35 per week for 28 weeks if they claim Statutory Sick Pay.
• Maternity/Paternity pay, for which you may need to pay employees up to 52 weeks.

4. Training and onboarding

Whether in-house or through an outside company the average cost to a UK business of training new employees is about £1,000 per employee.

5. Overhead expenses

To properly equip a new in-office employee, overhead costs will be incurred. These once-off or repetitive costs can include:

• Suitable office workspace
• Office furniture
• Computer equipment and software
• A phone line
• Extra insurance
• Travel expenses
• Increased utility expenses
• Office consumables, including stationery and refreshments

The pandemic brought on a ‘race for space’

In what has been called a ‘race for space’, the arrival of the Covid pandemic in 2020, saw the UK property market take off – in spite of predictions of a slump. During this property boom, even hard to sell houses were being snapped up. The outcome, according to the Lloyds Banking Group¹, was that at a national level, average UK house prices grew by +20.4% between January 2020 and December 2022.

For Estate Agents to conduct business as usual during lockdown, two things had to happen. In-office support staff had to work from home. And property software providers had to ramp up the development of digital solutions to facilitate remote work and client interaction. Advances in PropTech have since vastly enhanced many estate agency businesses and streamlined processes.

Post-pandemic problems

However, even with the post-Covid downturn in the UK’s domestic property market – and the subsequent equilibrium leading to a predicted upturn – three problems have arisen within Estate Agency’s “new normal”.

1. Technology has ramped up the need for speed and fitting more into each working day.

Yes, technology is an essential tool for automating workflow and facilitating seamless client communication. But it also means that clients have the marketplace at their fingertips 24/7. Prospective clients start their house-hunting online, giving rise to the need to market online, respond instantly to client enquiries and a whole host of other responsibilities that are added to each Estate Agent’s working day.

2. Talent is hard to find.

Even before the pandemic radically changed employees’ expectations and the working environment, a looming talent gap was noted as one of the most pressing concerns facing UK companies. UK-based Estate Agents are particularly hard hit in this regard, as industry-related skills and know-how are hard to find.

3. Remuneration costs are on the rise.

Today, with the cost of living on the increase, not only have salary expectations skyrocketed, younger employees are looking for faster career progression. They are taking on more senior roles without sufficient experience behind them and may quickly move on, changing jobs after a relatively short period of time.

Filling the talent gap – affordably

Award-winning Estate Agent and Mentor, Sanjay Gandhi, from Moss Properties and his Operations Director, Bronwyn Schmidt, quickly spotted the critical need to build an expanded talent pool from which UK Estate Agents could source a wider range of experienced support staff to grow their business.

Sanjay and Bronwyn understand that to be successful, freeing up valuable time and saving money is every Estate Agents’ imperative. They founded VA Central in 2020 to provide each of their UK-based Estate Agent clients with access to a global talent pool whose salary requirements are affordable – in line with the National Living Wage. Every VA Central client gets to take on the best Virtual Assistant to suit a variety of needs from among top quality, English-speaking candidates who reside in a parallel time zone.

How VA Central is transforming UK Estate Agency

Our Virtual Assistants have emerged as a game-changer for more and more UK-based Estate Agents – saving them time and money while supporting their business growth. As our clients’ needs grow, we assist them scale though taking on additional Virtual Assistant support. In this way, the business can adapt quickly to meeting changing demands.

Have you ever worked in an environment where one individual in the team is a nice person but clearly bluffed their way into their job – they don’t have the right skills – or where a person is good at their job but has such a poisonous personality – through grumbling, gossip or spite – that they cause havoc with team relationships. Both these situations can derail efficiency and productivity at a tremendous cost to a company. The costs are felt in lost revenue through inefficiency, fixing mistakes or bad service that loses clients. They are felt in having to pay recruitment costs to replace an unsuitable person and then spend time training someone new.  Plus they are costly in terms of damaging team morale.

Our mission at VA Central is to recruit Virtual Assistant who become valuable, long-standing team members who help each of our clients’ companies to flourish and grow. It’s the reason we take extra care to ensure that our candidates have the right skills and experience – and positive personal attributes that match each clients’ unique culture.

Here are three ways our clients benefit from the quality of our bespoke service:

1. Well-matched, bespoke Virtual Assistants

Every one of our bespoke Virtual Assistants is sourced with a particular client’s needs and culture in mind. Our meticulous selection process involves first getting to know each of our clients and understanding their needs. Only then do we set about sourcing the best candidates for the job. We put the top three candidates forward for a client interview and there have been several instances where the candidates have been of such a high quality that a client decides to employ more than one of them.

2. Skilled and experienced professionals

Only experienced candidates with the right skills make the cut. Successful applicants who make the shortlist are those that have the right tertiary education plus 3 – 5 years’ prior experience working in the role we are looking to fill. We have many instances where senior candidates are keen to work as Virtual Assistants in a first world market. These are highly qualified individuals who are passionate about their work and who are delighted to earn an hourly rate in keeping with the UK’s National Minimum Living Wage.

3. Well-supported through ongoing training and development

We believe in life-long learning – for ourselves and our team of Virtual Assistants. Our clients benefit from our team of VAs being provided with ongoing support through regular training and personal development initiatives. There have been instances where our clients have requested bespoke training for their incoming VA – and of course we have been happy to upskill their VA accordingly.

And there is a fourth benefit. Our clients find it invaluable to take on a Virtual Assistant who lives and works in a compatible time zone so that the whole team’s working day is in sync. Our Virtual Assistants live in a time zone that is only an hour (or two in summer) different to the UK. They enjoy keeping UK office hours. The outcome is that in every way that matters, our VAs are present and working alongside the team, competently handling important routine tasks to free up their boss’s valuable time.