How to Avoid Unnecessary Meetings in Commercial Real Estate Brokerage

In commercial real estate brokerage, each day many people will ask for a slice of your time for reasons that are important to them, but not necessarily beneficial to you.

Before you agree to have a meeting or devote time to a person, a particular task, or a request from others, make sure that the potential results and the priorities for you are existing and well understood.  Stick to your plan and time commitments wherever possible.

In simple terms, you have to protect your time and use it wisely as a broker or an agent specializing in commercial property.  Wasting time is wasting and opportunity.  All possible time has to be directed at the things that really matter to you and your business.  Learn to decline or defer unnecessary meetings and requests from others.

Self Controlled Time

Your diary is (or should be) at the centre of your property business. Everything you do should be controlled and accepted through the priorities of your diary. Determine the rules and the time frames of your working day that are important to your real estate business.

Consider every meeting and task request based on any relevance to you and the results that you are seeking.  Commercial real estate is a personal business and opportunities are created at that level.

Commissions and listings are central points of attention for most brokers and agents. A focus on that will create opportunities with both of those things will be through time and task focus.

Your Typical Working Day

So what can happen on a typical working day? Of course, sometimes you will get some requests that are unavoidable, and have to be responded to or perhaps actioned.

The important thing here is that these issues do not disrupt your overall plan, so you move those ‘low priority’ requests to later in the day away from your ‘core business’ time.

So let’s get some control set and created here in your real estate brokerage.  These are some rules to help you control your working day and your priorities:

• Key Focus – Understand the things that you should be focusing on and considering in your real estate business, especially given the pressures of the prevailing property market as it is today. Usually the priorities in your working day should be focused on listings, clients, negotiations, and marketing. Some things are important where others can be avoided. Make the right choices for your business, and not that of others.
• Priority Time – Establish a time-frame in the working day where you can get the important things done. That time-frame should be fixed and non-variable. Set the rules regards your priority time and what you will do with it. At different times of the year you will be focused into prospecting, client contact, and your business generation.
• Priority Clients – Some clients are more important than others. Whilst you may have your email and cell phone with you most of the day, don’t let those two issues distract your priority activities. If something is going to take you away from the important issues of the day, that it must be a high-grade priority to do so.
• Administrative Work – Get the ordinary paperwork done at the end of the day when the phone stops ringing and people are leaving the office. You can also do your administrative work at home where critical time-frames are less challenging.
• Acceptable Time-frames – Consider the time that you devote to particular tasks. Each important task should have a focus window of completion.  Those rules should apply to meetings, inspections, prospecting, and client contact. Move your meetings to early morning or late in the day when time is less critical.
• Keep your meetings short – Any meeting that you attend should be short and specific. Set a formal agenda or create an agenda in your own mind for every meeting. Keep the discussion moving ahead to the key points that are important to you and relevant to the outcomes required. Most meetings can be resolved within 30 minutes or one hour at the outside. The same can be said for any team meeting within the brokerage.

So you have some choices here when it comes to your real estate business.  Make the right choices that work for you and the targets that you seek in sales, leasing, or property management. Protect your time and protect your focus.