<p> Hiring a Personal Assistant: An Investment in Your Productive Time! By John Q. Podesta, ABR® As a real estate professional, you’ve probably invested in the latest technology—Palm tops, lap tops, Web sites, computer forms, real estate software, virtual reality home tours, Web mail, email, voice mail, and so forth—in an effort to make your time more profitable. And you’ve probably spent a lot of time mastering and keeping up with the ever-changing technology. Time you don’t have to spare. Right? </p><p>Well, for my money, the best investment of time and money you can make in your daily life as a buyer’s rep is to hire a personal assistant to help you manage your time. Here’s a simple way to make your customer and client services more productive—all without technical downtime. A person, well schooled, trained in the basics of your business, who is technologically astute, may be the practical answer to most of your needs. </p><p>When should you hire a personal assistant? The time to consider whether or not you can be more productive and profitable with the help of a real estate personal assistant is when you need that person the least. This comes under the category of simply planning ahead. It’s a little like waiting for a snowfall to begin before checking to see if you had enough salt and sand and a snow plow to do the job. When you’re snowed under by your workload at the peak of your market season, you should already have your human resources available to free you to do your job. Finding, interviewing, hiring and training a personal assistant requires considerable time and attention. You will be much more successful if that person in place and ready to go to work when you need him or her the most. </p><p>How do you find a personal assistant? Begin by writing a job description. Include all those non-productive tasks that take so much of your time without any immediate return, such as preparing promotional mailings, maintaining your customer database, searching for listings, and answering questions from prospective clients. </p><p>Potential candidates for your personal assistant job can be found among  college students (certainly no problem finding computer skills in this category);  retirees (can be amongst the most dependable);  newly licensed salespersons (looking for experience);  more experienced salespersons (seeking the security of a salary and the stability of regular hours). </p><p>A classified ad in the Help Wanted classified section is an obvious step in recruitment, but also check with your local real estate association to see if they have a roster of trained or certified assistants who might meet your needs. Consider the each candidate’s skills strength in relation to your primary needs. Do you need advertising experience? Writing and communication skills? Web design and maintenance? Or just good people skills? </p><p>Should you hire a licensed assistant? Rules and regulations will vary from state to state on the tasks that can be performed by an assistant who holds a real estate license and one who does not. In quick summary: If your needs are primarily clerical (paper work, MLS processing, report generation, forms completion, advertising) an unlicensed person may work very well for you. On the other hand, if you want someone who can handle client or customer contact and show property to prospective buyers, you should consider hiring a licensed salesperson as your personal assistant. Be sure to check the regulations in your state and follow them in assigning work to your assistant. If you hire a licensed assistant, his or her license must be hung with your Broker, who will ultimately be responsible for the supervision of this licensee. </p><p>1 Do you need full-time or a part-time help? Your budget may have a lot more to do with this decision than your workload, but consider how many hours a week you may need to employ an assistant. You will more likely than not find candidates who are looking for part-time employment. However, if you find an individual looking for full time work, consider sharing the assistant with one or more other associates in your office. In this way your budget may also get some assistance as well! </p><p>What is the true value to you? Think of the time it would save you to have someone to write and manage your promotional materials and place the ads telling consumers about your services as a real estate professional. Consider the benefits to you of time saved researching and compiling reports such as CMAs, or making appointments and planning the logistics for your tours and showings, or searching for open houses that meet your buyer’s criteria. Contemplate the customer satisfaction and distinction you can achieve by being among the few real estate professionals to have a real person take and evaluate the importance of your messages; to have a personal assistant track your deadlines and due dates for you, to actually have the time and peace of mind to focus your time on giving undivided attention to your customers and clients. </p><p>Think about it. Your best investment of time and money may not be in hardware and software. Consider the value and potential financial return to be gained when you increase your productive time by hiring a real, well-trained, personal assistant. </p><p>JOHN Q. PODESTA, ABR, of Great Southern Realty has been a REALTOR® for over 12 years specializing in waterfront condominiums in the Palm Beaches, Florida. He is a past president of the Realtors Association of the Palm Beaches and is a member of the Board of Directors and Legislative Affairs Committee of the Florida Association of REALTORS®. His interest in developing programs for training personal assistants began when he recruited his own real estate professional assistant over seven years ago. He is currently an educational consultant on the subject to the National Association of REALTORS®. Email him at [email protected]. </p><p>2</p>