Battle Tested Time Management Systems for Commercial Real Estate Agents
In commercial real estate agency today, it is a fact that your time is the only resource that you can carefully manage and control. Everything else is more difficult. When you have controlled your time to a program and a process, you can get far better results with listings, clients, and commissions.
This then says that you need a number of systems within your agency and personally to integrate into your day plan and diary process. Here are some rules to help the process and allow you consolidate further results in your commercial real estate career:
- Meetings in commercial real estate agency can take up a large chunk of your time. Generally speaking no meeting has to go beyond 1 hour in duration. It is simply a matter of keeping people organized and focused to the tasks at hand. The same can be said of the weekly sales meeting with the team. Keep it to one hour. Get the meeting over with early so that the team can get back out into the marketplace and continue prospecting.
- It is a fact that the habits that you have developed over the years are the habits that are shaping your results today. If you haven’t got enough clients, listings, or commissions, take a serious look at your personal daily habits as they apply to building market share and prospecting. It may be that you need to modify your processes and time management systems. Develop new habits, and most particularly the habits that can take you forward into a bigger and better market share.
- Prioritise the things (1,2,3) that need to be done so that the high priority items are done every day. Second and third level priorities can wait until time permits. Always get items 1 done every day.
- As a general rule, 80% of our business will usually come from 20 to 25% of our day and its activities. The formula is driven from the ‘Pareto principle’, and is well known in business circles around the world. If you can get 20 to 25% of your day completely focused on the tasks that really matter, you will find that your market share will start to lift and sales and leasing results will begin to occur. The trick is to get the 25% right.
- The Circadian Cycle is a proven fact of human physiology and psychology that indicates we are more inclined to top performance at certain times of the day. It also says that we have a certain amount of downtime or slow time when it comes to personal performance. The circadian cycle will usually have two peaks of performance in the given working day. Understand where your opportunities are, and adjust your diary accordingly. With most people, the most productive time of business is between 8.00 AM and 11 am daily. Around the middle of the day things become less effective and take longer to achieve; you slow down. At around 3.00 PM you have another smaller peak of personal performance that you can optimise. It goes for around about 2 or 3 hours. A simple pattern like this will help you build better results when your mind and your actions are aligned.
- When you start anything new, or take on a fresh task as part of your daily business processes, it takes about 20 minutes to get into the task. On that basis, you should remove any distractions and people that can take you away from the task at hand. Get into the process and stay with it through the first 20 minutes and continue on for another 2 hours. That’s how you get things done.
When you get your time and your diary under control, the commercial real estate business seems a lot easier and more direct. If you have been struggling with time and results to date, take a serious look at how you’re using your time currently. Use some of these advantages and systems detailed above.
You can get more ideas like this in our Newsletter right here.