Hey! @Jerryll Noorden I didn't even see that you had responded! Thanks for the lengthy response as always :)
Ha! I love that, super smart and it's outsourced now. Does that same VA do the hiring for the new recruits or manage the current ones in any way?
I would have to agree with that, I'm finding that the most important thing when it comes to a VA is not necessarily experience or skill but willingness to grow, coachability and personality. You can mold someone into a rockstar as long as they're willing to learn and become that person.
Yup we've definitely had the SEO conversation and I still agree with you. I know it's super important to start investing into our branding and build our reputation more. We've focused so heavily on just acquiring new deals and on the cold calling front that the SEO and brand building has fell to the wayside although we have enough of a site to keep seller's satisfied when they visit. Right now we're working on expanding our cold calling team with the help of VA's and plan on creating a VA chain to manage that entire force. Sounds like the opposite of what you're suggesting which is to focus on FB Ads and PPC first then market on the phones. The way we decided to build this way was because we didn't generate enough income (close enough deals) in the beginning to invest money into PPC or FB ads and we had done all of our deals over the phone. When we moved markets from LA to Tennessee we continued those efforts and saw triple the results. That is NOT to say that PPC and FB Ads or SEO couldn't be total goldmines as well in our market, I actually know of a few people killing it using those systems.
However we'll still need people to answer those phones or inbound messages. Right now we're finding that there's only so much our team of 3 can handle, with one partner focused mainly on acquisitions and HR, the other on acquisitions as well as system implementing, list pulling and all the technical stuff and myself in the full time dispositions role (plus two lead generators) we need more people on our team to qualify and close these leads. That of course will take time and implementing the right people, I don't want just anyone talking to our leads. Eventually we'll move our VA's to the junior acquisitions role and them potentially to the senior acquisitions role. Or like you said pay someone a great salar who's a rock star! In my opinion that person would be a killer on the phone, great at sales and negotiation, experienced in real estate sales, super personable and is even better at closing our deals than we are. All that said, that's just the cold calling system and team we want. SEO, PPC and FB can all be done through VA's as well in a different more technical role.
We eventually do want to have a fully paid staff down to the very least significant role and we do want to have people that will be working with us for years and can grow within our company. I know we'll always have turn over but I want to limit that as much as possible by choosing the right people (the best we can). I believe that comes with time and experience hiring the wrong people until you realize the qualities you actually need in a long term team member.
Fully agree on having a well lubricated machine! It's a systems business and can be fully automated with the right systems in place. I love the the desire to strive for a perfect system driven machine, I don't know if we'll ever have it all the way at 100% but if we can be at 95% I'll take it.
Thank you for the reminder and the great advice! We'll certainly be tapping into the online marketing game this year with the help of our 4 cold callers we'll soon be able to invest a decent amount into long term SEO and in quicker returns like PPC and FB. Actually super excited for this and can't wait to start building our brand and content, it's one of my favorite parts of the business!
