Are you struggling to stay organized? Do you feel that organization is an area where you need some help? Are you already organized but interested in learning how to better stay on top of your game? The tips below will help you become and stay better organized in your real estate sales career so you can focus on what really matters – helping clients buy and sell real estate.
Organization Tips for Agents
1. Schedule “Keep In Touch” events. It’s important to ensure you’re regularly meeting with those in your sphere of influence (SOI). This is an important part of making certain that you’re not losing touch with people, staying relevant in their minds, and continuing to build and strengthen key relationships. Oftentimes, agents have good intentions to meet regularly with those in their SOI, for a coffee or for a client appreciation event, for example, but fail to do so because they’ve simply forgot or felt too busy and overwhelmed. By scheduling keep in touch events for your contacts and ensuring that you have a system in place to remind you when to do what, you’ll never forget to meet with that important past client. You can also schedule “Keep In Touch” events to remind you to call and send a gift to a client or prospect on their birthday, for example.
2. Create drip marketing campaigns. Like “Keep In Touch” events, ongoing communication through email, letters, and/ or other marketing pieces are important in ensuring that people don’t forget you and in building trust and creditability. Many Agents understand the importance this holds for their real estate sales careers yet do not have a system in place for creating drip campaigns. Set some time aside to sit down at your computer and schedule drip campaigns so you know a certain email, for example, will automatically be sent at a certain time. Drip marketing campaigns are also important because they allow you to effectively promote yourself to a first-time buyer or snag that expired listing or FSBO property with minimal time investment on your end.
3. Keep a record of all interaction with prospects, clients, and past clients. Make sure you’re using a contact management system that allows you to record emails and calls sent and received and any meetings that you’ve had with your contacts or those in your sphere of influence. Unless you have a superb memory (and most people don’t), this is vital. Next time you call Mike Jones, or he calls you, you’ll be able to easily see where the two of you left off.
4. Ensure you have a system in place to put buyer, seller, and listing information. You should be able to sit at your computer and view a complete overview of your listings and the buyers and sellers that you’re currently working with. Seeing all this information and having a system to record and change details about current buyers, sellers, and listings will help you feel less overwhelmed.
5. Keep a comprehensive business directory. Not only will this be useful when buyers and sellers ask you to recommend an Attorney, Painter, or Mortgage Broker, for instance, but by offering various recommendations and promoting yourself as an expert on all things home related, these buyers and sellers will continue to come to you for advice and recommendations for years to come, long after a transaction has taken place. What’s key here is making sure you’re using a business directory that will allow you to search for business-to-business contacts by city, keyword, and business type so contacts can be easily organized for you and can be easy to pull up in a pinch.
As an effective Agent with a flourishing real estate sales career, the above five suggestions are an absolute must. You want to stay organized, continue to build relationships with your SOI, and manage your real estate leads effectively. If you do not have a real estate CRM, or real estate specific contact management solution, you’re missing out. IXACT Contact will allow you to easily implement all the suggestions offered above. If interested, start by signing up for a 5-week free trial.