No matter what business you are in if you are self-employed, you are a manager. It could be managing as many as 150 employees or as little as 3. Regardless of the amount of people, the time spent keeping track of projects, calculating the books, following up with emails to clients, and spending hours on the phone can take the time away from your business.

Many individuals become self-employed due to the luxury of working on their own schedule, developing a business, not answering to any boss, and many times, working in a career at which they love. The ironic part is no one realizes that self-employment is not just about delivering a service or product to the client. All the backend and HR part to the business also has to be done by the self-employed individual.

How can a Virtual Assistant take the hassle out of managing?

To answer this question, a VA can do it all! From answering phone calls, emails, instant messages, to organizing employee records, distribution sheets, and payroll. Think about the amount of time you spend each day just managing while you could be spending the time actually working on projects.

For example, you work as a real estate agent. Many of your inquiries come through the internet from your website on email. Depending on the request, time is spent responding to the email or making a phone call to have a conversation with a potential client. There is never a guarantee of the sale and sometimes just managing this end of the business can be an all day event.

A real estate VA can do the responding for you. These assistants have a large source of knowledge and experience in the real estate field. Many have been involved with real estate and know the ins and outs, the rules, and how to fill out all the paper work without question.

All the legal documents, title documents, phone calls to mortgage lenders, and other realtors can all be done by a Virtual Assistant. Your VA can be anywhere in the world and work as if they were right in your own office.

Managing your clients and work does not have to be an individual chore. Virtual Assistants are here to help take the hassle and stress away so your energy can be focused on the product or sale.

Kandra Hamric, a Real Estate Professional Assistant certified through the National Association of Realtors, has taken her years of expertise and brought it to the internet. As a Virtual Assistant or VA, Kandra’s leadership skill has led to many successful closings with no stress or hassle by the Real Estate agent. Kandra takes care of all the specific details of a project from start to completion to guarantee each project is perfect!

Client’s continually work with Kandra due to her strong background and years of experience in real estate sales; as well as her understanding of what it takes to make a business grow. Holding a board position with the Michigan Virtual Assistant Association (MIVA), Kandra continues to mentor potential new VA’s entering the field.

With her creative approach to sales, having patience, understanding, constant contact, and strong listening skills; Kandra always produces the greatest profits for every client. With the need for success, Kandra is always learning new ways to drive business sales.

A certified Home Stager, a Notary, a mentor; Kandra does it all!

Through phone, email, instant messaging, or webcam, Kandra is available. She is always ready for the next project and her enthusiasm shines through every conversation. With the computer skills of a guru, and the personality which makes you feel as if you are in the same room; Kandra continues her multi tasking ways to be the backbone of many of her client’s success with their own business.

A Virtual Assistant can be a massive benefit for any small business – but what exactly do they do? And how do they do it?

There are many day-to-day tasks that can be delegated to a Virtual Assistant. For instance, simply forwarding all incoming telephone calls to your VA will allow him or her to filter out unwanted calls. This filtering is important when it comes to communications with your customers. Any assistant would be typically charged with taking calls and making bookings. A Virtual Assistant – thanks to the modern age of technology – is just as able.

You can give your VA access to your diary system and emails, enabling them to book meetings, reply to mail on your behalf, dig out that vital email from 6 months ago that you misfiled and even log reminders for you to complete particular tasks, as well as manage your contacts list.

It is important of course to hire a Virtual Assistant according to their skills. In a Real Estate business, a considerable amount of information will need to be recorded about each client and the properties involved. As such, a VA with database skills is very desirable. Similarly, if you’re delegating tasks such as bookkeeping and billing, spreadsheet and tax knowledge is important for your VA to possess.

These two examples would normally require the assistant to be available on your business premises, whether that is a dedicated office space or a box room. But thanks to software such as Symantec’s “PC Anywhere”, both you and your VA can work on the same document, stored either on your PC or your assistant’s. Meanwhile you could work with your assistant on a complicated piece of work utilizing this remote viewing software and an instant messaging (IM) application such as MSN, Yahoo or AIM in order to make suggestions.

A fax machine meanwhile can prove vital if you have all business mail filtered by your Virtual Assistant. Any documents that require signatures can be faxed from the VA’s fax machine to you and back again. Your VA really can be based ANYWHERE in the world!

You might want to conduct meetings with your VA over the telephone – or even business meetings with your Virtual Assistant present utilizing conference call facilities. Alternatively, a webcam system (again via an IM program) might be used for online conferencing or simply to illustrate information quickly.

These systems are successfully utilized in Real Estate and other businesses across the country in day to day business – don’t worry if your knowledge of how to implement them is weak, as your Virtual Assistant will know exactly how to get started!

You run a busy Real Estate business. Business is booming, and you have more and more clients every week. But with overturn in business comes an uproot in administration… fully-trained permanent staff is hard to come by, while temporary staff often require training – what can you do?

More and more, Real Estate businesses are turning to “Virtual Assistants” (or VAs). With the amazing communication possibilities offered by the Internet, businesses across the country are turning to Virtual Assistants to provide administrative assistance at a moments notice.

Never heard of a Virtual Assistant? Over the last five years administrative services provided by these means have been slowly thriving, and featuring in the news reports of the BBC among others. Virtual Assistants are more than just cyber secretaries; charging hourly rates which allows many to be considered entrepreneurs.

Full-time staff might be well trained, but they also require office space and computer hardware, a telephone, demand holidays and it is really hard to find a truly competent administrator that isn’t already snapped up by a corporation or a competitor. It is estimated that full-time staff actually cost an organization three times the annual salary in holidays and benefits! Temporary staffing solutions, meanwhile, come with added stresses – while hiring them for a few hours a week might seem ideal, as soon as a permanent position becomes available you’ll be left with no temp and lots of paperwork.

Virtual Assistants really are a godsend. They only bill for the hours they have worked, come ready-trained, and don’t have the standard overheads that come with fully employed staff such as tax and holiday pay. They make themselves available by utilizing the latest communications technology such as cell phones, instant messaging and email, and have all of the same clerical and conveyance skills of the real-life Real Estate administrator. Working from home they can also utilize snail mail if necessary, and many even provide web development, desktop publishing and event planning services.

All of these skills underline the benefits of contracting a Virtual Assistant to your Real Estate business. No longer should you worry about contacting hard-to-reach clients or answering the phone – a Virtual Assistant can take care of these things for you and at the same time contribute to your Real Estate brand.

The Virtual Assistant industry itself is taking off in quite a big way, with very professional and polished websites advertising these services are listed on Google. With the massive benefits involved in contracting such services, your Real Estate business could reap huge rewards from utilizing a Virtual Assistant as your business continues to thrive.