Sales and Customer Service Virtual Assistant

About the Role

Hillman Outdoor Living is looking for an experienced, highly organized Virtual Assistant to manage incoming leads, appointment scheduling, lead qualification, customer communication, and sales pipeline. This is not a basic administrative VA position. You will be the first point of contact for many of our potential customers and an important part of our sales process. We need someone who is professional, responsive, organized, confident speaking with homeowners, and extremely good at follow-up.

Primary Responsibilities

Lead Management

You will manage incoming leads from sources including:

• Website inquiries
• Facebook and Instagram
• Google
• Phone calls
• Text messages
• Email
• Referral leads
• Existing customer inquiries
• Marketing campaigns

You will:

• Respond quickly to new leads
• Call, text, and email prospects
• Enter and maintain accurate information in our CRM
• Move leads through the correct pipeline stages
• Schedule follow-up activities
• Track every lead until they either schedule an appointment, become a customer, or are determined not to be a fit
• Re-engage leads who have stopped responding
• Maintain a clean and accurate sales pipeline

We expect persistent, professional follow-up. A homeowner who does not answer the first phone call is not a dead lead.

Lead Qualification

Before scheduling appointments with our sales team, you will help determine whether the customer is a good fit for Hillman Outdoor Living.

You will gather information including:

• Customer name and contact information
• Project address
• Type of project
• Project goals
• Desired features
• Approximate budget
• Desired timeline
• Whether they own the property
• HOA requirements when applicable
• Whether they already have plans or designs
• How they heard about Hillman Outdoor Living

Typical projects include:

• Custom swimming pools and spas
• Patio covers and pavilions
• Outdoor kitchens
• Fireplaces and fire pits
• Concrete and masonry
• Retaining walls
• Artificial turf and putting greens
• Outdoor lighting
• Motorized screens
• Complete outdoor living projects

You should become knowledgeable enough about our services to recognize a strong potential customer versus an opportunity that is not a fit for our company.

Appointment Setting

Once a lead is qualified, you will:

• Schedule appointments for our sales team
• Coordinate appointment times with customers
• Send appointment confirmations
• Send reminders before appointments
• Verify addresses and customer information
• Reschedule appointments when necessary
• Reduce cancellations and no-shows
• Make sure the salesperson has the information they need before the appointment

Our goal is for the salesperson to walk into every appointment already understanding: who the customer is, what they want, their approximate budget, and why they're considering the project.

Customer Service

You will also help manage communication with existing Hillman Outdoor Living customers. Responsibilities may include:

• Answering routine customer questions
• Receiving customer concerns
• Determining the urgency of an issue
• Gathering the information necessary for our team to respond
• Creating tasks for the appropriate team member
• Following up to make sure the concern was addressed
• Keeping customers informed when additional information is needed
• Maintaining professional communication even when a customer is frustrated

You are not expected to solve construction problems yourself. You ARE expected to make sure the concern gets to the correct person and does not disappear. If a customer contacts us, somebody owns the response.

Follow-Up

Follow-up will be one of the most important parts of this position.

You will manage follow-up for:

• New leads
• Leads we couldn't reach
• Appointments that haven't been scheduled
• Customers who received proposals
• Older opportunities
• Customers considering their options
• Leads who asked us to contact them later
• Previous customers
• Customer service concerns

You must be comfortable communicating through:

• Phone
• Text
• Email
• CRM automation

You should know the difference between being persistent and being annoying.

CRM & System Management

You will be responsible for maintaining accurate information in our systems. Experience with GoHighLevel is strongly preferred.

You may also work with:

• Buildertrend
• CompanyCam
• Microsoft 365
• Outlook
• Microsoft Teams
• Calendars
• Spreadsheets
• AI tools and automation platforms

Responsibilities include:

• Updating customer records
• Updating pipeline stages
• Creating tasks
• Scheduling follow-ups
• Maintaining appointment calendars
• Recording notes from customer conversations
• Ensuring salespeople can quickly understand the history of an opportunity
• Identifying leads that have not been properly followed up with
• Helping improve CRM automations and workflows

If it isn't documented in the CRM, it didn't happen.

Who We're Looking For

The ideal candidate is:

• Extremely organized: You enjoy keeping information organized and making sure nothing gets forgotten.
• Proactive: You don't wait until someone tells you a lead hasn't been contacted. You notice it and fix it.
• Strong communicator: You are comfortable speaking with homeowners on the phone and communicating professionally through text and email.
• Persistent: You understand that good follow-up often requires multiple attempts.
• Customer-focused: You know how to make customers feel heard without making promises the company cannot keep.
• Detail-oriented: Names, phone numbers, addresses, appointment times, notes, and project details must be accurate.
• Accountable: If you're responsible for the lead pipeline, you own the lead pipeline.

Experience We Value

Strong candidates will have experience in one or more of the following:

• Lead management
• Appointment setting
• Inside sales
• Customer service
• Construction administration
• Home improvement
• Swimming pool companies
• Landscape or outdoor living companies
• Residential construction
• CRM management
• GoHighLevel
• Buildertrend
• Sales support

Previous experience supporting a construction, home improvement, pool, landscaping, or outdoor living company is highly preferred.

Requirements

• Excellent spoken and written English
• Professional phone presence
• Strong computer skills
• Strong organizational skills
• Reliable high-speed internet
• Quiet professional work environment
• Ability to make and receive customer phone calls
• Experience using CRM software
• Strong follow-up habits
• Comfortable managing multiple conversations simultaneously
• Comfortable being measured by performance
• Ability to work during U.S. Central Time business hours

Spanish/English bilingual is a major plus.

Performance Metrics

This position will have a clear scoreboard. We will track metrics including:

• Speed to lead
• Percentage of new leads contacted
• Qualified appointments scheduled
• Appointment show rate
• Follow-up completion
• Number of leads without an active next step
• CRM accuracy
• Customer response time
• Customer concerns successfully routed and followed through
• Lead reactivation
• Sales pipeline cleanliness

Our expectation is simple: every lead has a next action. There should never be a good lead sitting in our system wondering whether somebody is going to call them.

This Position Is Not For You If

• You don't like talking to customers on the phone
• You wait for someone to tell you what to do
• You frequently forget to follow up
• You don't document conversations
• You are uncomfortable asking customers about their project or budget
• You become easily overwhelmed by multiple conversations
• You prefer working without measurable performance expectations
• You think one unanswered phone call means the lead isn't interested

This Position Is For You If

• You enjoy taking a messy inbox and turning it into an organized pipeline
• You like talking with people
• You enjoy helping customers
• You naturally follow up
• You notice when something isn't getting handled
• You get satisfaction from seeing: New Lead → Qualified → Appointment Scheduled → Sales Opportunity → Customer

About Hillman Outdoor Living

Hillman Outdoor Living designs and builds high-end outdoor living projects throughout the Fort Worth, Texas area. Our projects include custom swimming pools, patio covers, outdoor kitchens, fireplaces, concrete, masonry, retaining walls, turf, lighting, motorized screens, and complete backyard transformations.

Our core values are:

• Get It Done
• Get Our Hands Dirty
• Bring Solutions
• Own It
• Go For It

We are looking for a VA who brings that same ownership mentality to our customer experience and sales pipeline.