How to introduce outsourcing to your real estate team

We are often asked by Real Estate Principals how they should go about introducing the idea of  Philippines-based outsourcing to their existing team. Often there is push back from the local team, which can be difficult to overcome and sometimes be a deal breaker.

We have compiled the following tips on how you can introduce outsourcing to your team to achieve buy in from them.

1. Sell the benefits!

2. It’s time to introduce Philippines-based Real Estate Virtual Assistants

Sell the benefits!

Often change management is all about selling the benefits to stakeholders and, more importantly, highlighting what’s in it for them. Get your team in a room together and, before explaining anything to them, tell them you want to help them get the most out of their work and ask them these two questions:

• What tasks do you hate doing in your job?

• What tasks do you want to do more of?

Get them to write their answers down in a notepad.

When completed, ask each individual to repeat their answers to the group. Write down the answers on a whiteboard, separate them into tasks that could be completed by a Philippines-based Real Estate Virtual Assistant and those that cannot. You should end up with two lists:

1. Tasks that your team hate doing (I’m going to guess that these are also mostly tasks that a Virtual Assistant could do)

2. Tasks that your team want to do more of (should generally be Business Development and Customer Service based tasks that are about building growing relationships)

Once you have these two lists, ask your team:

1. If you didn’t have to do list 1 tasks, what would it mean for the list 2 tasks?

2. If you didn’t have to worry about list 1 tasks what impact would this have on the performance of the business? (You can decide if improved business results leads to a review of your employee KPIs or rewards)

3. If you could focus on list 2 tasks what impact would this have on you personally?

It’s time to introduce Philippines-based Real Estate Virtual Assistants

Tell your team this change is not just a pipe dream. It is possible with the help of outsourced staff. Explain to them the benefits of having some staff in The Philippines and the fact that they could do all the list 1 tasks for the Australian Team.

Your team will have a bunch of questions at this point. Here’s some key points about The Philippines and the outsourcing industry that will help answer your team’s questions:

• Filipino schooling is completed in English from Preschool all the way through to University and The Philippines is the 3rd largest English Speaking country in the World.

• The overwhelming majority of Filipinos working in the Outsourcing Industry have at least one university degree and there are 500,000 University graduates per year in The Philippines.

• Experts predict the Business Process Outsourcing industry to grow to $55 Billion by 2020.

There are a few other things you can also do to introduce the idea of Philippines Outsourcing to your team:

• Show them what other Agencies are doing

  There are plenty of other Real Estate Agencies leveraging the benefits of a Philippines outsourced team. If you have a colleague or someone in your Franchise group who is outsourcing, get them along to speak to your team (you could do this via web conferencing if geography is a barrier here). If you don’t know anyone, ask us at Beepo, we’ll be more than happy to introduce you to some non-competing agencies who your team can chat to.

• Get them talking to a Beepo Consultant

Obviously, one of the Beepo team would be more than happy to visit your office and chat further with your team. We can run through how it works, answer all of their questions and even arrange a hookup with our Real Estate team in The Philippines.

We’re here to help you with getting your local team on board so you can get your Philippines Outsourcing strategy up and running as soon as possible.

Why not hear what an Australian Property Manager had to say about the experience of outsourcing to The Philippines? From the initial resistance of the team, to the training and onboarding, to the final successes, this interview has it all. Listen to the Podcast or download the transcript.

Want to understand exactly how implementing an offshore team can impact your property management department?

In our free eBook, Sonia, the head of a property management department responsible for 1,200 properties, speaks about her experiences of implementing an offshore team, some of the challenges and the rewards they are reaping from the additional capacity that comes with it.