In this video, Real Estate Agent Eric Andrews gives us 10 tips which he finds useful. What are yours?
Speaker 1: What are some time management skills for real estate agents?
Speaker 2: Well, there’s lists. You can find lists everywhere on Google, but these are some of the things that have helped me, and it’s really I just have picked and chosen from different lists or whatever. But you have to prioritize. You need to divide between urgent, important, and back-burner stuff. I have a daily list, I have a weekly list, I have a monthly list and I have an annual list, which is called a business plan. You have to make time for yourself. Like I set a time aside for myself every day for exercise. There are some times where you don’t have to answer the phone. That’s really important. You need to be able to outsource. I outsource my SEO, I outsource some data entry. I outsource photography, drone, stuff like that and everything. You can’t do all things.
I found this fascinating, and this has really helped me, getting rid of inefficiencies. They said delete the games off of your phone, and I used to be one of those little phone game people, and the next thing you know, 20 minutes, half hour goes by. So I’ve deleted all those. I’ve also turned off social media notifications. Those are distracting too. I still am involved in social media, but I check it out when I have time and I want to. I don’t want the bling, bling, bling, and get distracted. One of the things I read about was determining your productive time. Some people work at two in the morning. That’s crazy, but some people do that. But I like working early in the morning before the workday starts, and so that helps me.
You need to learn how to say no. When I first got into real estate, I might have over-volunteered, and I was in too many organizations and boards and everything. So it’s just pick and choose, do what you enjoy, but don’t be overwhelmed by it. They say that routines are good. I definitely am a routine guy. I mean, I do certain things in the morning, come into work at a certain time, leave at a certain time, and that’s my routine. There’s some good apps that help you too. Hootsuite we’re using right now. That’s a social media app. There’s Slack, which is like a team app, and there’s Trello, which is task management. So we find those to be pretty helpful.
You have to track your successes. Track your results, not your hours that you work. Track the results. I find that to be a little bit more beneficial. And then this seems really crazy, but preparation. I’m really into preparation. Preparation’s probably one of the best time management skills that you could have. And people are like, “Oh, I’m wasting time preparing.” You’re not. You’re saving time. So at night, before I go to bed, I put out my clothes for the next day, I put out the clothes that I’m going to work out in the next day, I pre-pack my car at night for the things that I’m going to do the next day. We do our marketing materials a day or two in advance before I have the appointment and everything. So just to be prepared. I think preparation’s really, really key in time management.