Daily Habits of Highly Effective Agents

Real estate agents set their own hours, generate their own leads, and create their own business. The most effective agents work on creating positive daily habits that set them up for success. We've been in the real estate space for 20 years, and we can attest to which daily habits can make or break an agent. To start on the path to productivity and success this summer, read on to get our top five habits that highly effective agents practice daily.

Set Daily Goals

You can't track if you're getting anything done without daily goals. The agents who get things done know exactly what they want to do and when, because they set goals that are relevant to their local market and clients. Goals can be simple—post active listings on Craigslist—or well defined, like call my running list of clients before 2pm. Setting goals that are relevant to you keeps you driven and happy when you succeed.

One piece of advice: Your goals should be measurable and easy to monitor. Effective agents don't set impossible daily goals—they establish goals they know they can meet with reasonable time and effort.

Create a Plan

Agents that set a schedule and follow through accomplish more in the long run. While we know that many demands of being a real estate agent aren't plannable—like when a client returns your phone call—having a schedule for the sections of your time that you are able to manage makes life much easier. Effective agents don't over-commit or do any tasks that won't further their success during their day. Planning at the daily level is just the starting point. Most successful agents plan their months and their years in advance, too. Good daily plans include slotting out time for lead generation and nurturing, direct contact with clients, networking, website and blog maintenance, social media management, and miscellaneous marketing efforts.

Take Active Breaks

While sitting indoors and getting work done all day might seem like a great option, it is extremely helpful to go take a short walk around your office or outdoors. Fresh air and physical activity are great for refreshing your mind. Agents who seem to get a ton done often take quick walks or stretch on their breaks instead of drinking coffee or scrolling through their newsfeeds.

There are increasing amounts of evidence that exercise is a stimulant for productivity, and fitting it in during the work day can help you stay on task and concentrate all day long. If your day is too jam-packed and it feels like you don't have time to just exercise, you can always call a few leads on your walk around town.

Generate Leads

Effective agents work hard every day to generate leads online and in person. By sharing listings on social media, creating great blog content, or attending a local event, these successful agents aren't just closing deals with existing leads, they are adding more prospective buyers to their system each day. Lead generation is so essential to a great agent's daily process that we wrote a whole article on 10 Great Ways to Generate Real Estate Leads to keep agents everywhere inspired.

Research and Learn

Agents that stay on top of the latest trends and real estate insights have better opportunities to grow. The National Association of Realtors is a great place to start: they offer a Quick Real Estate Statistics page that can get anyone up to speed on real estate marketplace facts from the past year. Researching and learning can take many forms other than online searching, of course, including:

• Attending local events to get to know your community
• Posting polls on social media (e.g., What's more important to you: Location, lot size, or school district?)
• Keeping up with what other agents in your area are doing and which properties are selling
• Parsing through and looking for trends in client comments, emails, and voicemails
• Read our real estate marketing articles on website creation, blog writing, search engine optimization (SEO), and lead generation

We hope you enjoyed our list of daily habits of highly effective agents. For more practical real estate agent tips and tricks, download our Real Estate Marketing 101 ebook.

To view the original article, visit the WolfNet blog.