4 Productivity Tips for Real Estate Agents

Time is money. Therefore, the more productive you are able to be with your time, the more revenue you will bring in. It's important to realize that you don't need to work 12-hour days everyday to be successful. As long as you are truly being productive with the hours you are working, you will be able to achieve your professional goals with a reasonable time commitment to work. Make an obligation to yourself to implement one or two of the productivity tips for real estate agents described below. You will see an increase in your productivity, as well as your projected revenue, that will put you on track to be a top producing agent.

Delegate

Delegating tasks to others is the most effective way to quickly increase your productivity. Yet it is often a struggle for many real estate agents to give up enough control to effectively delegate. If this is a problem for you, start small. Hire a virtual assistant, or virtual transaction based contract to close coordinator. Both of these positions are relatively inexpensive to fill, especially when compared to the cost of hiring an employee. You also have the ability to easily terminate their position. While these positions require low commitment on your end, they still possess the ability to significantly increase your productivity.

For example, a contract to close coordinator, or transaction coordinator, performs all the paperwork tasks, and many administrative tasks related to a real estate transaction. This includes tasks such as coordinating all inspections, and ensuring all documentation is submitted on time, as well as coordinating the entire closing process. If these tedious tasks were taken off your plate, you would have more time to dedicate to tasks that would expand your business.

Stop Multitasking

This suggested tip for real estate agents to increase productivity comes as a shock to many agents. Many agents practice multitasking everyday at work, especially during the busy season. When a person attempts to multitask, though, one of the tasks always suffers. You simply can not commit your full attention to two tasks at the same time. When you try, you will end up missing something important for one, if not both, tasks. This results in a significant decrease in productivity, because you will most likely be forced to go back and review one of, if not all, the tasks you were trying to complete.

One way to combat the habit of multitasking is to implement a chunking system. Say you need to return phone calls, reply to emails, and prepare a new listing. Instead of switching between these tasks while having your favorite podcast in the background, commit a block of time to each individual task. So, for example, you would dedicate an hour to each task in which you have no other distraction for the entire hour. After each hour, let yourself enjoy a 5-10 minute break, and then begin on the next task. Implementing this method will significantly improve your productivity, and the quality of your work, giving you reason enough to try this method out today.

Set Specific Goals

Specific goal setting is a tip to increase productivity that every school teaches, yet adults rarely practice. When you engage in goal setting, it allows you to have a constant source of motivation, as well as an increased feeling of accomplishment when the goal is finally achieved. This helps you to maintain drive and passion for your work.

When practicing goal setting, it is not sufficient to create general goals like increasing your income from last year, growing your social media presence, or writing for your blog more. All of these goals are too vague for your progress to genuinely be tracked and therefore make it difficult to truly be held accountable. Goals such as increasing your income by a specific amount of money, successfully scheduling two social media posts per week, or posting to your blog once a week, are specific enough to hold you accountable. Implementing specific goals gives you a sense of accountability, satisfaction, and achievement that is difficult to achieve on a day-to-day basis otherwise.

Utilize Technology

Many technology platforms have been specifically created for real estate agents, and they can take your business to a whole new level. Utilizing advanced technology, and the automation of tasks to the fullest extent is sure to increase not only your productivity, but the prosperity of your business. There are automation tools for a variety of tasks, ranging from posting to social media, to sending emails to clients. You should be using all of them.

Any tool that automates a simple task frees up your time to be working towards growing or improving your business. Advancements in technology have allowed agents to work smarter instead of harder. When you use these advancements, you are giving yourself a strong advantage that will help propel your business to a successful future.

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