Today I want to share an article with you by Melinda Goodwin for Inman. It discusses 5 time management tips for real estate agents that will help you make the most out of your work day and help increase productivity.
One of the most common things we hear from Agents is that there aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done. These tips and action steps can help you accomplish more, reduce stress and remain focused on real estate success. Melinda writes:
1. Set expectations.
When you are working with clients, it is important to set the expectations for them. Let them know that you are going to return missed phone calls between this and that hour. You are going to email them once a day, a week or a month. Before they get into your car to view homes, visually look at the homes via internet or paper, and then when you show homes have them organized in a circle from a starting point (your office) back to that starting point. Organizing avoids the extended travel time and keeps you on track.
IXACT Contact action step: Help your contacts form communications expectations of you by including them in regular drip email marketing campaigns and calling to touch base regularly. Following a plan with help your prospects see you as reliable and they’ll know how to get in touch with you easily.
2. Delegate less meaningful tasks.
When working with other staff or team members, make sure they know what their assignments are for the day, week and month. For instance, when you have a weekly luncheon, have that luncheon on the same day every week.
Also, having a team calendar that you can easily change is a great idea. This system stops or helps prevent deadline and activity questions that can be answered by them looking instead of interrupting work to ask.
The biggest thing I can tell you is to trust your staff or team to do their assigned tasks. They might do them in a different order or at a different speed than you would, but remember, it wastes time for you to continually check up on their progress minute-by-minute.
IXACT Contact action step: Teams can benefit from the help of a real estate CRM that allows members to easily assign tasks to one another, view calendars and share contacts. It streamlines delegation and keeps all tem members on the same page.
3. Time-block your hours.
I am sure when you first got your real estate license, someone showed you how to time block your day. Well, that is still important today.
It is important to wake up, exercise and eat a healthy breakfast. As soon as you get to the office, look at your goals. Write down what goals you want to work on for the day. Write down the list of tasks you need to do in order to accomplish those goals. Who are you waiting on for that day? Who do you need to call? You should do this list every morning before you even open your computer to check your emails. Make sure you are only checking your emails two to three times a day — and block time 15 minutes a few times a day for a walk, internet browsing, social media or games. Setting a timer at the desk or on your smartphone will keep you from taking too much time at recess.
IXACT Contact action step: Using task reminders in your real estate CRM is a great way to adhere to your time blocking goals. Block off portions of time in your calendar and stick to the schedule to make sure you’re getting through all your prospecting calls, administrative tasks and marketing initiatives.
4. Prewrite your content.
It is important to use newsletters, blogs and social media for marketing and networking. Taking an hour or two on the weekends or in the evening to prewrite content for the month is a great idea.
Sometimes using the same blog you did earlier in the year is OK if the information is still valuable. Set your Facebook, newspaper and media ads once a month and design a publication timeframe spaced out during the next month to allow for diversity. This scheduling makes you set up a specific amount of time once a month to concentrate on ads only. Once you are focused on that task, it becomes easy to design a few simple ads.
IXACT Contact action step: Set up your automated Monthly e-Newsletter to be delivered to your database on the time and day of your choice. The content is written and deisgned by real estate marketing professionals, meaning it’s fresh, relevant and informative.
5. Be consistent with your pattern.
People are creatures of habit. This includes you, your clients, your staff, your team and your followers.
IXACT Contact action step: Leverage the power of a real estate CRM to help you get better organized and save more time. With more automation around your daily tasks, you’ll have more time to take meetings and sell homes!