1. Don’t be dominated by the clock
One of many lovely issues about being an actual property agent is that you simply aren’t restricted by a Monday via Friday, 9-to-5 schedule. This offers you an incredible quantity of freedom to handle your day in response to your distinctive productiveness patterns.
When you’re an early hen, frontload your day by getting all of your paperwork and analysis finished in the course of the morning hours. When you’re an evening owl, wait till everybody’s asleep to deal with that day’s workload.
Work out what works finest for you thru trial and error, and embrace these finest practices. By aligning your work time along with your pure productiveness durations, you possibly can financial institution large positive aspects in how a lot work you full.
2. Make a schedule and persist with it
When you’ve recognized your finest work instances, create an in depth each day schedule that blocks off time for all of your duties. A tried-and-true technique for that is to have a look at all the pieces in your to-do listing for that day and put an important objects on the prime.
A barely completely different time-management technique, generally often known as “consuming the frog,” recommends placing essentially the most troublesome or most disagreeable activity upfront. This ensures that it’ll get finished, permitting you to maneuver on to the remainder of your work with out the dread of an disagreeable activity weighing you down. Both means, set up a method to prioritize your day’s work.
When you’re deciding what to deal with first, determine the objects in your to-do listing that aren’t really pressing. Everybody has a pair issues on their listing that may most likely be crossed off. When you’ve recovered somewhat time, hold it open for these inevitable instances when a shopper wants a last-minute displaying, or if another emergency pops up.
Lastly, don’t neglect that your schedule isn’t simply on your profit. It additionally communicates your priorities to your co-workers and staff. Blocking out your time tells them that you simply’re busy doing vital work. It additionally discourages drop-ins, small discuss and different pointless time-wasting conduct.
3. Ruthlessly delegate
Ideally, you need to expend your effort on the kind of work that you simply’re finest at — whether or not it’s advertising, negotiating offers, constructing relationships, or one thing else. Clearly and objectively determine the place your specific strengths lie, after which delegate the remaining as a lot as potential.
That is going to require you to rent the suitable group. One frequent mistake that brokers make is to rent people who find themselves just like themselves. Sadly, all that does is make one in every of you redundant. Rent individuals who carry complementary expertise to the desk or who’re good on the duties you might not excel at.
When you delegate, it’s vital to step again and never micromanage. When you employed the suitable individuals, it’s best to belief them sufficient to work independently. Nonetheless, it’s best to monitor and verify in recurrently to verify there’s some sort of outlined accountability course of in place.
4. Cordon off communication
Most of an actual property agent’s job is communication — from reassuring purchasers face-to-face, to performing as a go-between for the customer and the vendor, adopted by answering texts and emails. Actually, communication is such an vital a part of the job that it might probably simply surpass any boundaries you attempt to set till you’re basically on-call 24/7. This cannot solely exhaust you, it might probably additionally unfold you so skinny that once you do reply, it might not get your full focus.
For that cause, one of the vital productive time-blocking methods might be to designate a sure part of your day to reply to emails, telephone calls, and textual content messages. In any other case, don’t permit your self to reply non-emergency communication. You’ll be extra productive, and the individuals who need to get in contact with you’ll come to worth your time extra.
5. Benefit from know-how
For time administration and productiveness, there are a number of apps that may assist you to optimize your workday. Each agent is aware of about ShowingTime and Mailchimp. However doc administration apps — resembling PandaDoc or CamScanner — or transaction administration instruments, resembling Dotloop, generally is a large assist.
When you want extra normal workflow enhancement, you possibly can faucet into your true potential with Pomodoro apps for time administration or apps that limit your social media utilization or on-line time so you possibly can give attention to vital tasks.
6. Don’t let conferences steal your time
A few of the greatest time sucks for actual property brokers are countless conferences. In lots of workplaces, it’s usually a two-pronged drawback. Some conferences are pointless. Others serve a objective however are likely to eat into productive hours. Meaning it’s a must to take a top-down strategy to overhauling your assembly tradition.
First, ensure each assembly has a well-defined agenda. This prevents meandering conversations that usually stretch conferences previous their productive period. The agenda must also listing the mandatory attendees, which ensures everybody there has a well-defined position. Lastly, the agenda ought to embody a begin and end time.
Structuring conferences like this could make them way more constructive. However to essentially make your conferences productive, you could have an open and inspiring office tradition. Your staff ought to really feel empowered to step up and make actual contributions or register disagreement when needed.
Nicole Lehman is a PR Strategist for Intelligent Actual Property.
This column doesn’t essentially mirror the opinion of HousingWire’s editorial division and its homeowners.
To contact the editor answerable for this piece: [email protected].