Why You Should Work Smarter and Not Harder in Commercial Real Estate Brokerage
In commercial real estate brokerage and agency, you should work smarter and not harder. It is very easy to fill your day with things that really do not matter. You need to fill your day with the leads and the opportunities that will help you build market share, commissions, and your database.
The process of working smarter and not harder is a deliberate choice and does require a consistent effort on the part of the individual agent. Protect your time, and direct your efforts into the marketplace in a positive and effective way.
Here are some rules to help you with time and task management. When you use these rules, your opportunities to build your real estate business will improve over time.
- Establish a standard working day that you can stick to in a regular way. You will need to put in the working hours to a plan and a process. Many top agents will start work at 7:00 AM, and continue right through the day to approximately 7.00 PM. At the start of your career, a solid time commitment is required to building your leads and your market share. That is why you need to put in the hours.
- Understand the things that really matter to the building of your real estate business. Some things that you do will be far more important than others. Prospecting will always be at the top of your list, followed closely by client contact. When you work in a busy brokerage or agency, it is easy to get lost in the time wasting activities of team meetings and mundane paperwork. Wherever possible, those activities should be moved to the less important times of the day.
- Split your day into two zones. The first zone will be the ‘prospecting zone’ and it should occur at the beginning of the day. The second zone should be your ‘contact time’ reserved for meetings, client connections, inspections, and negotiations. Any unnecessary or mundane paperwork should be moved to the end of the day or the early evening. This basic model of ‘zoning’ your working day will help with your effectiveness in the marketplace.
- A plan of this type needs to be supported by action. Consistency in focus and effort will help your plan establish the right habits to take you forward. It takes about three or four weeks of focus and effort to establish the process and get the habits into your business activities. Until that time, the comfort zone and other diversions will potentially divert your focus. Commit to the process and stay on track. Break through the barriers of procrastination.
As you move forward with your action plan and strategies, test and measure your results in prospecting, meetings, and listings. Eventually you should see an improvement in all categories.