Here's the transcript of this video 👇
Hey everybody, it's Ran Biderman. Today I want to talk to you real quickly about a phone call that I had this morning with one of my clients, who is interested in hiring an assistant. So we had this conversation. I think it's important to share with everybody exactly what we spoke about and what was the conversation all about. And by the way, you can see Dalia (my 9 year old German Shepherd) over there behind me. She's actually waiting to play with the hose, with the water over there. She's probably going to wait until I'm done with this video, because she knows that the next thing that's going to happen today, she's going to chill out and play with some water. Let's have a discussion about hiring an assistant. First of all, there is many different types of assistants that you can hire. The real question is: When is the right time to actually hire an assistant? If you're contemplating these thoughts like, "Should I hire an assistant? And if so, who should I hire? And what's the process? And how do I know if I am hiring the right person?" It's a long discussion. I just want to touch a few points right now, just to summarize the phone call that I had this morning, and to see maybe I can bring you guys some value. We're talking about an agent that is doing about 30 to 35 deals a year. She's interested in hiring an assistant because she needs to clear more time on her schedule to be able to then obviously prospect more and spend more time on generating more leads. The focus is, if you get to a point where you feel that you're held back from generating more leads because you're too busy with the things that needs to be taken care of in the business, for example, customer service, following up on leads, transaction coordination, marketing, branding, all that stuff. Here is my suggestion: When you get to do about 25 transactions a year, when you get to that point by yourself on your own, I'm not talking about with other agents, just you going out there, hustling getting 20, 25 listings, getting them sold. You're doing about 20, 25 transactions a year by yourself, at that point, you should contemplate hiring an assistant to help you. The first couple of things that you really need your assistant to do is, number one: To remove from your schedule, certain things so that you can then go and do what needs to be done, which is really prospecting and generating leads. You want to get in front of people, face-to-face with people, over the phone, meeting with them, prospecting, calling for sale-by-owners, expired listings, calling your center of influence, calling your database, and obviously reaching out, seeking for sellers leads. While you do all that stuff, your phone is ringing, you're getting emails, there's stuff going on, and you always worried about, should I check my emails, should I just return a phone call, et cetera? The most important thing to understand is what do you need an assistant for? A lot of people hiring someone that they don't really need at the moment, and they're not really feeling as if they delegated enough, and that, for example, if someone goes and hires a marketing person to do marketing for them, but before you get to that, before you go out there and you hire yourself a marketing expert, the first thing you got to do is hire in an assistant to help you clear your schedule. Here's what an assistant should be doing for you and what you should train an assistant to do. By the way, some of these things can be taken care of by a VA. But in this video, I want to focus on hiring an assistant. When you do hire an assistant, here's a couple of things that she needs to do, or he needs to do for you. The assistant has to help you manage your schedule. Their job is to hold you accountable and make sure that you're staying on your schedule. For example, if you're supposed to be prospecting between the hours of 8:00 AM and 12:00 PM, their job is to clear the schedule for you to be able to do that. What does that mean? The phone is ringing. They answer, they take messages. Important emails are coming in. They're dealing with all this important stuff. Basically what they do is they clear your schedule. They also help you find all your leads, organizing all these leads in a way that helps you to prospect and not focus on, "Okay, who should I call next?" They prepare the schedule for you. They prepare prospecting for you. They help you deal with important appointments and help you picking up calls and making sure that leads that are coming in are being dealt with on the spot. Basically, they do whatever you supposed to be doing between the hours of 8 to 12. Therefore, you should hire yourself a licensed assistant. When you hiring a personal assistant, is someone that you trust to handle phone calls, incoming leads, to handle them in such a way that is capturing all these leads and is basically helping you do whatever it is that you need to be doing, and that clears a whole schedule for you. Remember something, when you hire someone to do administrative tasks, you got to make sure that you're training them. Here's what you should be looking for when you hire an assistant. Hold on a second. My dog is over there and I think that she's licking stuff that she shouldn't be licking. So hold on. [foreign language 00:04:53] All right. So now that we dealt with Dalia, let's go back to our conversation. Let me just show you what she's doing right now. She's been sitting right here in the shade. There is a spot in the sun, but no, Dalia. She doesn't go in the sun. She likes to sit in the shade. All right, let's go back to what we're talking about. When you hire an assistant, here's what you should look for. You're looking for the DISC profile that everybody that you hire, by the way from now going forward obviously, should be taking the DISC profile assessment. I recommend it on a different video. You can probably see it popping up right here. The video that talks about the DISC test on the Tony Robbins website. I found that this test to be fairly thorough, it gives you a lot of information. I'm talking about the free version. Then obviously if you want to hire somebody to do things on your behalf, you want to give the more in-depth test. Therefore, maybe you want to do the paid version and make sure that the person that's coming on board is actually the person you're looking for. Now, you're looking on the DISC profile. You're looking for a high Can, high conscientious, and high S, which is steady. You're looking for steady conscientious, which is also known as the amiable/analytical. That's what you're looking for. You're not looking for someone to be super driver. You're not looking for anything like that. They can also have a mid-level I, which is the influencer. You want to make sure that they have a CS profile or SC profile with a mid-level of I, that's what you're looking for under the DISC profile. Obviously, every single person that you're interviewing has to take the DISC assessment. Once they take it, you see the results. If it fits, you go into a discussion about whatever it is that you need to talk, salary, benefits, et cetera. Now, obviously it's always good to hire someone full-time, because you're going to get probably better quality of people, but you could also start part-time, and you could maybe start part-time with another agent that fits the DISC profile. The DISC profile is always the first layer. If they pass the DISC profile assessment profile, if they match the profile, then you go in and you're starting to have discussions. You could probably hire someone part-time at the beginning. I would talk about four hours a day, more or less, just to clear the time of prospecting for you and take care of all the rest of the stuff that needs to happen during these hours so you're not busy in your mind while you're prospecting. Now, obviously, and I recommend in another videos, you should have someone to do your transaction coordination. A TC is someone that you can hire from the outside, you should pay per deal at the beginning stage until you really do a big volume. I'm talking 75, 100 deals a year. There's really no reason to hire a transaction coordinator full-time or part-time. You can just do that with a freelance transaction coordinator. I have a phenomenal person for you. So if you want me to hook you up, just scroll down and contact me. We covered the DISC profile. You're looking for SC or CS profile with a mid-level I, the D should be low. Then you're looking for someone, obviously, that has some experience, that maybe is also licensed, or you need to send them to get their license. Remember, you need someone who is licensed so that they can actually deal with the important stuff that needs to be dealt with every single day. Here are the different tasks that you should hire someone to do on your behalf. Number one: They should do all of your postcards. They should all your Eflyers, everything like that should be done by an assistant. But before you get to all that stuff, the first thing you really want them to do is research and find leads for you to call. If you're hooked up on services, like for example, TheRedX, or Landvoice, or any one of those companies that give you leads every morning for sale-by-owner expired listings, just listed, just sold, geographical farming and all that stuff. That's what you should be focused on. Obviously, you should have a database, so the assistant should help you also build your database. Every lead coming into your funnel goes directly into your database, and the database starts to feed emails, newsletters, hard copy mail postcards, and all that stuff has to start going out to all of your prospects. Every single person you meet needs to go into the database. Obviously, your assistant should be making sure that the system works. Building the system, helping you to build a system, creating tools, booking showing appointments. Remember showing appointments, some of you guys are spending hours trying to reach out to an agent that never returns your phone calls, which makes no sense. There's a lot of agents out there. You call them to, "Hey, hi Charlie, it's Ran Biderman from XYZ Realty. I want to show that you're listing tomorrow at 2:00 PM." Leave a message, and then they don't call you back. Then you're texting them again. Then you call them again. Sometimes we were spending half an hour to an hour to two hours, just trying to reach somebody to have a showing. Booking showings is one of the main thing that your personal assistant should be taking care of for you. Another thing is, people are calling you for your listings. Other agents calling you. There's no reason for you to pick up the calls. All these calls go to your assistant. Your assistant is handling all the incoming calls. Obviously, if there is a leader issue, call immediately, like say a for sale by owner, or say that somebody is calling on one of your postcards, or they found you online, and they want you to list their home. There's a lead coming in. Your assistant is going to pick up the calls, giving you the leads immediately while you're prospecting so that you can call these people immediately. Another thing your assistant should be doing is go over all your emails and make sure which emails are really important that you and only you should answer. Obviously, you're going to make the rules for that. But if your assistant is giving you an email and says, "Hey, there is something urgent over here that you should take care of." Then obviously you jumping on it when you're done prospecting. But your assistant's job is to protect your schedule. That is the real main job. Why should you hire someone to protect your schedule? Because you're not doing it. I'm talking to a lot of different agents. I'm coaching a lot of agents. I tell you right now, the majority of agents don't have the discipline to hold themselves from calling someone. There is an urgency. "I have to get on the phone and call the seller and see what's going on." Dude, it's 9:45. You should be prospecting right now. You want to hire someone who is strong enough to stand firm and hold you accountable. That's another thing that's important. We're talking about a lot of different things over here. Obviously, the discussion is longer than what we are capable of putting in one video over here. I suggest you to go and check the other videos on the channel. In the next video, I'm going to discuss exactly what is the difference between a personal assistant, what you should be looking for, and then compare that to a VA, and can you start with a VA? By the way, you could start with a VA, which is very affordable, comparing to hiring someone full-time, obviously. We'll talk about all that stuff. I have a lot of experience with different VA companies. I can give you a lot of different tips on what to do and how to hire them. What to write in your contract with them. If you have any questions regarding what we spoke about in this video, please make some comments down below. We'll have a discussion. I promise I'm going to answer all your questions. That's a promise. I'm going to see you guys in my next video. Hey, before we finish this video, remember go up here and subscribe to the channel. Don't forget to hit that like button, and don't forget to open up notifications because my next video is coming in a couple of days. I'll see you guys in my next video.