1. Don’t be dominated by the clock
One of many lovely issues about being a actual property agent is that you simply aren’t restricted by a Monday by means of Friday, 9-to-5 schedule. This offers you an incredible quantity of freedom to handle your day in line with your distinctive productiveness patterns.
In the event you’re an early fowl, frontload your day by getting all of your paperwork and analysis completed throughout the morning hours. In the event you’re an evening owl, wait till everybody’s asleep to sort out 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 together with your pure productiveness intervals, you may financial institution large positive factors in how a lot work you full.
2. Make a schedule and follow it
When you’ve recognized your finest work occasions, create an in depth each day schedule that blocks off time for all of your duties. A tried-and-true methodology for that is to take a look at all the pieces in your to-do listing for that day and put an important gadgets on the high.
A barely completely different time-management technique, typically often called “consuming the frog,” recommends placing essentially the most tough or most disagreeable activity upfront. This ensures that it’ll get completed, permitting you to maneuver on to the remainder of your work with out the dread of an disagreeable activity weighing you down. Both method, set up a method to prioritize your day’s work.
Whilst you’re deciding what to sort out first, determine the gadgets in your to-do listing that aren’t truly pressing. Everybody has a pair issues on their listing that may in all probability be crossed off. When you’ve recovered slightly time, hold it open for these inevitable occasions when a consumer wants a last-minute exhibiting, or if another emergency pops up.
Lastly, don’t overlook that your schedule isn’t simply on your profit. It additionally communicates your priorities to your co-workers and workers. 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 wish 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 remainder as a lot as potential.
That is going to require you to rent the suitable group. One widespread mistake that brokers make is to rent people who find themselves just like themselves. Sadly, all that does is make one among you redundant. Rent individuals who carry complementary abilities 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. In the event you employed the suitable individuals, you need to belief them sufficient to work independently. Nevertheless, you need to monitor and test in repeatedly 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. The truth is, communication is such an vital a part of the job that it may simply surpass any boundaries you attempt to set till you’re basically on-call 24/7. This cannot solely exhaust you, it may additionally unfold you so skinny that once you do reply, it could not get your full focus.
For that purpose, one of the vital productive time-blocking strategies may 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 enable your self to reply non-emergency communication. You’ll be extra productive, and the individuals who wish to get in contact with you’ll come to worth your time extra.
5. Make the most of know-how
For time administration and productiveness, there are a number of apps that may make it easier to optimize your workday. Each agent is aware of about ShowingTime and Mailchimp. However doc administration apps — equivalent to PandaDoc or CamScanner — or transaction administration instruments, equivalent to Dotloop, is usually a enormous assist.
In the event you want extra normal workflow enhancement, you may 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 may concentrate on vital initiatives.
6. Don’t let conferences steal your time
A few of the largest time sucks for actual property brokers are infinite conferences. In lots of workplaces, it’s typically 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 method to overhauling your assembly tradition.
First, make sure that each assembly has a well-defined agenda. This prevents meandering conversations that always stretch conferences previous their productive period. The agenda also needs to listing the required attendees, which ensures everybody there has a well-defined position. Lastly, the agenda ought to embrace a begin and end time.
Structuring conferences like this may make them far more constructive. However to essentially make your conferences productive, you should have an open and inspiring office tradition. Your workers ought to really feel empowered to step up and make actual contributions or register disagreement when crucial.
Nicole Lehman is a PR Strategist for Intelligent Actual Property.
This column doesn’t essentially replicate the opinion of HousingWire’s editorial division and its house owners.
To contact the editor answerable for this piece: [email protected].
