As a real estate agent, your work is endless!
Managing your time effectively and, most importantly, efficiently, can take much of the headache out of juggling your practice against your personal life. As a self-employed contractor who knows that managing the time and the activities that you perform is crucial to your financial well-being, you are probably already aware that your avoidance of time-wasting activities is critical to your success — but how?
Starting your day, any day, without a goal and a plan in place can leave you running in circles and wasting a lot of time. As a real estate agent, it’s important to have a plan of action for each day and to stick to the plan in order to achieve the goals of the day or to achieve long term goals. Don’t ever start the day without a plan of action that will help you drive your success in the right direction.
You know the tasks that you don’t really want to do but you know that they have to be done—don’t procrastinate and put off what can be done now. Certain tasks, especially those quick tasks that we often don’t make the time to handle, can be taken care of in between major tasks to save time. For instance, you can call a potential client while you’re driving to an appointment, or you can review a to-do list the night before so that you have a plan of action ready and in place for the following day. Even if you’ve only got five minutes to spare, using the time wisely is important.
Effective time management is not performed when you have contact details written all over the place and you have to search through 100 pieces of scrap paper to find the information that you’re looking for! Using a contact management system, such as RealtyAPX, can help you manage your time more efficiently and effectively. Managing your contacts, knowing who your leads are and in what place of the purchase cycle they are will help you to be a more effective real estate agent—and you’ll save some trees too!
We all get interrupted sometimes—the phone rings when you’re in the middle of an important project, a partner walks in while you’re working on something you’ve been trying to get to for days, another project comes up and you feel like it takes priority over what you’re doing now—it’s very easy to become distracted with other things, especially when there’s so much already on your plate.
Avoid interruptions that create obstacles to the completion of your daily plan by making the time to handle your activities uninterrupted. This may mean turning the ringer off for a period of time, locking the office door or even working at home when others are not around. Do whatever it takes to avoid interruptions when you are working on planned activities for the day.
Jan. 01, 2014
