A common theme in real estate salespeople’s conversations is, “I’m too busy“, or “I’ve got a lot on“. Check in with those same salespeople at the end of the month and you will often find that their results were poor.
This begs the question, “Busy doing what?” Clearly, while these salespeople might have been busy, they have been busy on the wrong activities. Either that, or their actions were incompetent.
The key to getting more done is to simplify. Time management is not that hard – determine your priorities and work on those until completed.
Real estate sales IS this simple:
Find Sellers – a large amount of a winning salesperson’s day is devoted to searching for new business, for listings.
List Sellers – getting appointments is good, but you have to convince sellers that you are their best option.
Coach Sellers to have an Understanding of the Market – I don’t mean that disgusting practice called Conditioning. This is where sellers are given good news at the listing presentation, only to be bombarded with negatives after, and pressured into reducing.
Coaching is different. We give an honest opinion of value at the listing presentation – it takes skill to do this – and then we feed the sellers honest feedback from buyers. They learn market price, without pressure from the lister. Coaching is gentle, understanding, and ensures happy clients and repeat business.
Find Buyers – match the right buyers to the right properties.
Present Properties to Buyers – the property inspection.
Negotiate Sales – doing our best to get the highest prices for the people who pay us – the sellers. It takes knowledge and skill to negotiate well. When was the last time you read a book on negotiation?
Repeat this process from step one – replace stock, list clients, coach, work with buyers and negotiate sales.
What else do we do?
Anything we add to our lists of things to do, which does not involve any one of the above steps, may keep us busy, but it will not keep us productive.
Distractions abound, but you have a choice: focus on the right actions, or drown in distractions.
Keep it simple and work on the actions that give the highest results.