Why Commercial Real Estate Agents Run Out of Time
Many commercial real estate agents struggle with time management and tasks every day. It’s not unusual; it’s a fact of the business. Many things will arise on an average day that will easily shift the focus of most salespeople as they strive for more listings and commissions. So there is a problem here to deal with.
Your ability to work through the pressure and maintain your focus will largely impact your results as an agent and commercial real estate specialist. There are lots of real estate salespeople out there that are ‘ordinary and generic’ simply because they have no system to base and build on their daily activities, and then they find it really hard to improve. You can’t improve on chaos, you can only improve on the system; everything else is pure luck.
Rules of Building Your Real Estate Business Faster
So how do you deal with this issue and improve your real estate business faster? The problems that you strike every day will include:
- Calls from clients
- Inspections of properties
- New listing opportunities
- Paperwork
- Negotiations on current listings
- Taking enquiries
- Prospecting
- Team meetings
- Listing requirements and marketing
Some of these things are more important than others. On that basis, you should be prioritising the things that really matter. The most important things on the list from a time perspective are prospecting and negotiations on current listings.
When you stop prospecting you lose market share and that’s a fact. Prospecting is the toughest thing to do for many salespeople and on that basis, it is the first thing to go ‘out the window’ when other things have to be done. Habits need to be created and established. It doesn’t come automatically. An effort is required.
Have a serious look at what you are doing today and identify the poor choices of time use that are holding you back. If you struggle with that information, try looking at yesterday as an example. What happened yesterday that took a lot of your time but was in reality not overly important? How would you handle that today if you could rewind the clock and do it again? I think you can probably see some answers here.
Career Improvement Systems
Here are some tips to help your commercial real estate career and how you use your time:
- Determine the 3 things that are most important to you now and how you grow your business. Those things should happen every day before you do any of the other things.
- The mornings are more manageable than the afternoons when it comes to getting things done. Take charge of the mornings and control what you do with them. The afternoons can be left for the less important things.
- Use a paper-based diary for the daily organisational things that have to be done. There is a lot of power in writing things down. It helps you organise your thinking and priorities.
- Write things down that come to mind during the day. You can come back to your notes later. Only the very urgent things get done immediately.
When you simplify your business day you can do a lot more and feel as though you are getting somewhere. That feeling of control is very powerful and will help you gain the real estate results that you need. A person that feels ‘in control’ is more inclined to build the results and the business that they require. A person that is out of control most of the time lives a life of luck. Luck is a random process that doesn’t work well in commercial real estate.
