8 Easy Ways to Gain Time and Control As a Real Estate Agent

The only thing a real estate agent wants more than new listings and buyer leads, is more time in a day to work with those listings and buyers.

With all of the fancy gadgets, apps, and programs available for you to invest in, some of the cheapest and easiest solutions to save time can easily go overlooked.

Here are 8 amazing real estate agent techniques that will help make your day go faster and be less stressful!

1) Get your 15 minutes of “tame”:

Setting aside 15 minutes at the beginning and end of every day is a great way to take control of your days and cut down on wasted time. Start off by going over your ‘to do’ list at the beginning of each day, and at the end of your day spend another 15 minutes reviewing how much you accomplished and what needs to be done the next day. Setting up these periods of time corrals scattered thoughts and keeps you on track.

2) Cross the sauce.

With so many different tasks surrounding the operation of a healthy real estate business, it’s easy to get “lost in the sauce” and spend too much time on things that aren’t really making you money. Create a list of everything you do in your day and prioritize the action items that will directly lead you to a commission check quicker, and cross anything that doesn’t right off your list!

3) “No.”:

That’s a full sentence. There’s no need to feel bad or guilty saying no, but it can be easier said than done for many agents. The sad reality of being a real estate agent is that when starting out, you’re told to take everything that comes your way. Unable to draw upon a past list of clients or relationships, the hunger and drive to get your business off the ground will inevitably have you scrambling to convert every lead and sell every house. While this is great starting out, oftentimes it forms a bad habit that will lead to stress and overload down the line. Not everybody you encounter will lead to a commission check. So why chase every single lead? Is it worth the inordinate amount of time an unrealistic buyer will take? Pick your battles and succeed on the moneymakers. Remember, if you don’t treat your time as valuable, nobody else will either.

4) Be a double agent:

Teams get a lot of attention in the business, but that can be a huge undertaking and beyond what many agents want to take on. But, if you’ve reached the point of your career where you’re turning business away, it may be time to expand. Even if this just means finding one other agent to partner up with who has availability at times that don’t work for your schedule, it will make things much easier on you. If you want something a little more official, start interviewing potential assistants. Getting an assistant (either physical or virtual) is a great way to dip your toes into the management aspect of expanding your business. Oftentimes you won’t need to look farther than your own office to find a good one. There are many agents who may excel in the back-end, but not be too great on the client-facing side of the business. The melding of two people, one good with paperwork and marketing, and another good with meeting clients face-to-face can be a powerful thing.

5) Take a vacation…from expectation:

Taking the time upfront to establish expectations with your clients will save you time and headaches later on. If you don’t typically work after 9pm, convey that to the client. You don’t have to be “on” 24/7. Clients will respect your time, as long as they know the boundaries. They don’t know what to expect out of you until and unless you communicate it. Ambiguity can breed confusion and ultimately discontent. If everyone is on the same page at the onset, transactions (and ultimately your entire work life) will go much smoother.

6) Hone in on phonin’:

In the past, new agents would be sat down in the office and told to write a list of every single person they know and start hitting the phones. While outdated, the concept remains the same—the agent who talks to the most people will most likely close the most transactions. There has been a resurgence of interest in cold-calling in the industry, and now you can reach 10 times as many people in 1/10th of the time. Services like Mojo and Redx can call multiple people at once and scrub out the no answers and voicemails.

7) This could’ve been an email…:

Wanna hit up even more people than you can by hitting the phones? One of the easiest and most cost-effective ways of doing this is an email campaign. Hypothetically speaking, let’s say you had 1,000 people in your database and you wanted to talk or have your name in front of these people 3 times a year, leading your name to be in front of people 3,000 times. By calling and taking an average of 3 minutes each to touch base and say ‘hi’ you’re looking at a cumulative yearly total of 3,000 minutes or 50 hours. That’s over an entire normal workweek or half a real estate work week’s worth of work! Now let’s say instead of calling all 1,000 people, you take an hour a week to create a killer email, and just hit send to touch base with your people 52,000 times for only 52 hours’ worth of effort. Work smarter, not harder.

8) Go to social hour:

Social media can be a blessing and a curse. It’s a great way to stay in touch with, and top-of-mind with, so many people without having to leave the comfort of your home or office. But it can also be a time-suck that eats up your whole day scrolling away. Rather than letting it take control of you, carve out an hour a day where you deliberately get social with a few people per day. Don’t just passively like or comment on whatever posts you’re seeing. Dig in and have a conversation with a few of your friends or followers. Truly connecting with a few people per day will be time better spent than an entire day of scrolling through hundreds of peoples’ lives!

There you go. Now stop reading and get out there and save yourself some time!