4 Simple Steps to Get Started Outsourcing Your Property Deal Sourcing Business

There are lots of ways you can try and improve processes but one solution that many small businesses find to be effective is outsourcing. If you haven’t looked at outsourcing before then you might be bit wary of what it entails. In a nutshell, if you can put in the effort needed to get the right person for the job and to develop them in terms of what you require, outsourcing can be the ideal long-term solution to your problems.

You really do have to see it as a long-term benefit because it may take up a fair amount of time to get the ball rolling. You need to put in time to get to a position where you are delegating tasks and they are being completed in the way that you require.

Here are 4 simple steps that you will need to take to be in a position where you can outsource key tasks:

1. List your tasks

Obviously, you need to look at all of the current tasks that you are doing to see which ones you are able to outsource. Write a full list of tasks and pick one that takes something like 1-3 hours to complete. A typical task in property sourcing might be data scraping, creating a spreadsheet of properties that have been on the market for a while etc etc.

2. Develop a brief

So that the person you’re outsourcing understands the task, you will need to develop instructions. This shouldn’t be a huge step-by-step document because you don’t have the time to put that together. Keep it fairly simple but with enough information to ensure they have all of the key points. If you want to, record a task you perform on your screen as part of the instructions, there is some software called Jing that you should look into using. It basically allows you to create a video of your screen and then provides a link that you can share.

3. Find the VA/Freelancer

The next part is to find the person who can perform the task for you. There are many websites that freelancers sign up to such as Upwork, Freelancer, PeoplePerHour etc. Probably the best one of the lot is Upwork.com, which covers all kinds of skills, experience and costs.

You will need to create an account and then post a description of the job, including the deadline, and you can also upload the instructional video. You have the option to leave the job open (so every Upwork user can see it) or closed. We mention this because leaving it open could result in you being inundated with applicants and it could take you hours or even days just sifting through them.

If you leave it closed, you can search for freelancers who have the necessary skills and then invite a select number to apply for the job. In terms of pay, most freelancers will have an indication on their profile of their hourly rate.

4. Hire the Freelancer

Once you have found someone that you think has the necessary skills, you then hire them. A good approach is to hire them on an hourly basis and ask them to do one hour’s work. You then check the work to see if it is up to standard and decide whether to continue with them or go to another freelancer.

You may find that you hire a freelancer that doesn’t work out but don’t be put off by it, if you keep going and keep communicating with freelancers you can build great relationships. At some point you might even be able to have a full team of freelancers and employ a VA to take over the process of working with the virtual team. This will save so much of your time and enable you to concentrate on the other tasks like property deal sourcing.