Clear Cut Facts to Simplify Your Commercial Real Estate Career
Think about the last 5 days in your working life. How did those days transpire? Could they have been better? If you are like most people, there will be things that you will remember that really achieved nothing for you; in fact, they probably gave you no benefit at all.
In commercial real estate brokerage, time wasting issues should be avoided and/or diverted to times where things are less pressured. Control your diary, and control your time. Time and task commitment as a business obsession is a good thing if you want to get results in our industry.
Control your time
In doesn’t matter if you work in sales, leasing or property management today; rules should apply to your time and task allocations. There are things that we all have to do, and some of those things are more important than others; they bring results or take us towards results. That’s where priorities take shape in broker activity.
If a person wants you to devote time to an issue or a meeting, remember your priorities and your focus. Stick to your rules and say ‘no’, or divert the issue or matter to a later time of the day or week where things are less pressured.
Stop unnecessary meetings
One of the biggest time wasting issues in our industry is that of unnecessary brokerage meetings. Do you have the time to get to the location of the meeting, consider beforehand the priorities to be discussed, and will the meeting add value to you and your business?
One simple meeting can take a full 3 or 4 hours from your activities so be careful what meetings you agree to. That unnecessary meeting can mean less client contact, canvassing, or listing prospecting. That may not be a good idea if you are looking to grow market share and commission income.
Here are some ideas to help you control this part of our business so that you create better individual productivity:
- Start the day with a plan – Know where you are going in targets and results. Every day a plan should be formulated in your diary to get the most important things done before anything else.
- Start the day early – Top agents start work early. A 7 am start is not unreasonable for anyone today and will give you a business advantage if you do it every day. You can get your daily exercise in before that time, so you are ready to take on the challenges of the day as your prospects and clients get to their offices.
- Commit tasks to ‘time windows’ – Online diaries and ‘smart phones’ make it really easy to set particular times of day to key tasks. Understand the time of day where you are most productive, and then put your prospecting activities into that time slot.
- Answer emails and telephone calls outside of ‘core time’ – Whilst emails and telephone calls should be responded to in a timely way, don’t let those things move you away from key tasks.
- Organize your desk, car, home, and diary – Look at how you organize your life, work-space, and transport. Get the zones of your life tidied up so that distractions are removed and organization takes over. It is very hard to get work done when you see stacks of unfinished or outstanding items laying around you.
These 5 simple things will help you significantly to get your business and commercial real estate career under control. If you are stressed currently with work pressures, look at what is not working and fix it.
