Time Management For Real Estate Agents

The modern real estate agent needs to be very efficient to build and maintain client relationships to build their business pipeline. They need to keep promises that they make and must also regularly follow up their contacts. This may mean talking to over a hundred people a week, managing hundreds of emails, dozens of letters in addition to the work required to sell the properties. Poor time management is enemy number one.

Typical agents will work intensively on prospecting for new clients until they have a few properties to sell and then they will virtually stop while all the effort goes into selling those properties. Then when most of the properties have sold and the inventory is low, they will revert to prospecting for new properties again. This cycle of events is very disruptive to client relationships. The clients will face broken promises and inconsistent follow up and will lose respect for the agent.

The really good agents, on the other hand, are very systematic and maintain a balance between prospecting and sales so that the relationships are continuously built and maintained. How do they do this? Two ways: firstly by the rigorous use of systems; and secondly by effective time management.

The following seven time management tips will feature highly for most successful real estate agents:

(1) Have a realistic business plan that will drive your sales. This could be a single piece of paper that clearly recognises the funnel effect for the number of contacts that lead to the required number of prospects which in turn leads to the required number of property listings. This helps to determine how much time to allocate to each key activity.

(2) Develop a plan for a typical working week. This should include time slots for follow up phone calls, new prospecting, managing clients, administration, etc. Try not to be too detailed or specific about these time slots or it will not stand the test of time. My preference it to break the working day into five time slots of two hours each i.e. 08:00 to 10:00, 10:00 to 12:00 etc. Remember to leave time for lunch and personal breaks.

(3) Build systems for each category of contact. For instance you may want to contact a potential buyer every day for the first week, and every third day for the rest of the month, then stop. Whatever works for you needs to translated to an action list that is both beneficial and realistic. It is up to you how you manage these action lists but these days most agents will use a real estate client relationship database.

(4) Handle each piece of correspondence once. It doesn't matter whether it is a post-it note, an email or a letter. Get into the habit of leaving it all to the allocated time slot. Then read it and take the appropriate action immediately and close the action. The two time killers here are procrastination where you keep coming back to an item without closing it. The other is constantly checking the emails during the day. It is amazing how much this can chew up your time.

(5) As you sign up new clients, agree how you will be communicating with them. By setting realistic expectations and sticking to them, they will have more confidence in you as an agent and you will dramatically cut down on the unplanned "emergency" phone calls. This will allow you to focus on the key task for each time slot without too many interruptions.

(6) Try to arrange your weekly schedule to make the most efficient use of your time and avoid unnecessary travelling. For instance, complete all office work before lunch. Group the activities such as prospecting and appointments that are in one part of town to the one afternoon. Driving, even small distances, backwards and forwards between suburbs can ruin your day.

(7) Plan to have your own time. Many agents switch off the phones when they get home in the evening. It is very important to switch off from work and tune into your family and home life when you get the chance. Being available 24 hours a day for the special clients doesn't really improve your pipeline but can certainly leave you exhausted.

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