What are your thoughts on VA's calling homeowners for STR's?

Question

I've been kicking around the idea of hiring a VA to make calls for my PMC to generate leads. The company is netting 70-80K a year (This is split between my partner and I) so obviously this isn't something right now that I can live comfortably just yet to step away from my full-time job. This also means I don't have the bandwidth to cold call all day to gain traction.

So questions for you all:

Do you have experince with a VA? How did that work for you? How many SQl's did they bring you?

How many doors or what was the company generating when you hired a VA? Am I jumping the gun to early?

Do you have a company you recommend to get a VA?

Andrew Steffens · Answer

It is definitely doable. We use VA's in Philippines for our reservations team.  They work for me directly and have been with me for years.  They also do a lot of data entry and admin tasks.  However, I handle the biz development.  I feel like you only get one shot at a first impression with a potential client and I want my best foot forward.  That means it would be myself or a trained and trusted sales professional if I decide to hire one.  Would getting a good VA to handle some of your admin tasks free up enough time for you to make the necessary calls?

Gustavo Munoz Castro · Answer

Hey @Chayton Wagner, wanted to chime in here since I run a Real Estate call center and train and manage VA callers for RE Agents and Investors. Here are my general thoughts (gonna try and approach as objectively as possible):

1) Having a VA call for your CAN work, but a few requirements need to be in place: a) you need to have a proven system for them to plug into (solid lists, proven offer and results), too many newbie investors are afraid to call and think that hiring a VA is all they need to do. It's usually not, and b) you need to have TIME to dedicate to them, listen to their calls, provide feedback and get them to the level you need. Most folks abdicate instead of delegating tasks to their VA.

2) Don't expect your VA to book a ton of appointments off the bat. It doesn't work that way. Have them do what they can do best: make the calls, prequalify folks that you will then follow-up with and close. Too many investors get frustrated because their VA doesn't deliver a bunch of motivated sellers ready to convert. They're great at generating leads for your pipeline, not as great at appointments.

3) Make sure they have the right tools, the right dialer and data are super key. A great person with terrible tools will not get the right results.

Anyways, I'm sending a connection request in case you want to chat about this.

Andrew Steffens · Answer

I would maybe use them as an appt setter and have them call the leads with 3-5 questions and move the warm lead to you then.

Chayton Wagner · Answer

Yeah, that was my concern is having a VA aimlessly make phone calls and not convert because they aren't asking the right questions. My goal is to have them be more of a "BDR" and hand it off to me to close. I have a couple thousand "cold leads" to go through, they are all the homes in the area with a TPT license, so I know a lot of them are trash. So I need this VA to also do a good amount of research before calling to make sure the property is a good fit. We don't have that many properties for admin yet, we aim for properties that make at-least 60K a year in revenue, which has proven to be a slow crawl for our company and are not growing at the pace I would like. I like to keep things lean as possible and obviously recoup the money invested into these as quickly as possible. My mind-set is if I could find 5-6 more of these properties I could leave my job and focus on the company full-time.

Joshua Messinger · Answer

I've used onlinejobs.ph before but find the quality isn't as good, I got connected with someone who does the work for you to find/vet the VA. If you'd me to connect you I'd be more than happy, feel free to PM.

Joshua Messinger · Answer

If you can hire and find the right talent then they will take care of everything for you when it comes to the backend work! I wouldn't hesitate to find one! If you need help finding the right talent I got connected with someone who specializes in finding the right VAs for your team. Just feel free to reach out and I can send you over the contact info.

Nadeem Alamgir · Answer

You're trying to use your time instead of cold calling to train someone else to do so.

So my question is, are you generating more qualified leads with this free time you'll get back, or are you trying to replace this with a VA?

If you're generating more qualified leads with this free time you'll get back then you should hire a VA and train them to cold call, vet and qualify. It will take time, but you will have to provide a script, teach objection handling, and roleplay. The return on investment will come a bit later down the line as you free up your time, focusing on higher leverage activity and having all these extra qualified leads coming in.

The best part is once you have procedures and training down, you can scale this to the moon.

Jeff Langley · Answer

I love my team(VA’s). None of them do my REI business,  but I’ve encountered plenty that have. The vetting process is the most critical step. I use onlinejobs.ph.

Mark Miles · Answer

Love it! Quality VAs can do anything. They run my whole company, top to bottom. My VAs even hire more VAs when they need to

https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/530-short-term-and-vaca...

What are your thoughts on VA's calling homeowners for STR's?

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