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I love real estate events. The energy is always fantastic and I love hearing from others about their approach to real estate and what is working for them. With so many ideas being shared, it’s a really exciting and energizing place to be, even virtually!
This event was jam-packed with great insight and actionable items and I took notes for you, in case you couldn’t make it or want to revisit a few topics. Be sure to check out the table of contents on the left-hand side to jump from session to session.
Enjoy!
Mark Twain said, “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first”. While this advice is evergreen, it’s especially important during the summer months to ensure that you are accomplishing what you need to and still have time for fun activities. Here are some things to consider as we refresh on this strategy:
🐸In the long run, this approach will help you overcome the fear of difficult tasks or stop procrastinating on them. This leads to a boost in productivity and a reduction in stress levels as you will feel more in control of your day.
🐸More challenging items require more effort, and if you leave them until the end of the day it is highly unlikely that you will be more motivated to complete them at the end of the day than the beginning. Decision fatigue is real, and knocking out your important work first will take less of a toll on you mentally throughout the day.
🐸In real estate it’s wise to leave time in your day for the almost guaranteed reactive items that come your way. If you have already completed the must-do or most challenging item, you will be in a much better mindset to tackle the whirlwind than if you are still trying to complete a project.
🐸Summer schedules, especially for those of us with school-age children, can often be challenging even though they are jam-packed with fun things. Different drop-off and pick-up times and weekly shifting schedules with camps or childcare often leave either us or people on our team feeling frazzled as a baseline. Knocking out your most challenging or important items first allows you to have more ease in the rest of the day knowing that the heavy lifting is done.
🐸Take a look at your work management system and while you are listing out everything you need to do during the day, begin to prioritize the most challenging and must-be-done-today items first. Knock those out very first thing and create a habit of doing this every day so that it carries you throughout the entire year.
🐸 More effort doesn’t always yield more results. Figuring out how to accomplish the work you need to do within working hours is important not only for your business but your mental health. Many of us believe that adding hours to our work week will help us accomplish more, but that will take a toll mentally, emotionally, and physically ultimately leading to lower production and other unwanted side effects. Rather than more hours, most of us just need a re-set to our approach to work and how we manage our time.
From client meetings and property tours to strategy sessions and team management, leading in the real estate industry requires you to wear a lot of hats and use a lot of energy each and every day. The instinct might be to cram every minute of your calendar with activities, believing that a fuller schedule equates to higher productivity. But what if I told you that scheduling less could make you more productive?
Consider the concept of “time blocking” – while it’s effective to a point, overusing it can lead to burnout and reduced efficiency. The key is not just to manage time but to manage energy and focus. By reducing the number of scheduled tasks, you allow yourself more mental space to tackle unexpected issues and capitalize on new opportunities.
Research shows that our brains need downtime to function optimally. Studies have found that periods of rest are crucial for memory consolidation and creative thinking. For real estate leaders, creativity is essential, whether it’s in negotiating deals, designing marketing strategies, or solving complex client problems.
By scheduling less and allowing for breaks, you give your brain the necessary space to process information and generate innovative ideas. This “mental whitespace” can lead to better decision-making and problem-solving abilities.
In real estate, the quality of interactions often trumps quantity. Instead of trying to meet with as many clients as possible in a day, focus on deepening relationships with a few key clients. This approach builds stronger, more meaningful connections, but also leads to higher client satisfaction and loyalty.
When you schedule fewer, more intentional meetings, you’re able to prepare thoroughly and engage more effectively. This leads to more productive conversations and better outcomes for your business.
When you’re constantly moving from one meeting to the next, it’s challenging to maintain focus and productivity. Multitasking can lead to errors and omissions, which are costly in real estate. By scheduling less, you reduce the need to multitask and can dedicate your full attention to each task at hand.
Consider adopting the “80/20 rule,” or Pareto Principle, which suggests that 80% of results come from 20% of activities. Identify the tasks and meetings that truly drive your business forward and prioritize them. Eliminate or delegate non-essential activities to free up your schedule and enhance your productivity.
Working long hours and sacrificing personal time for professional obligations is an unfortunate habit many of us have fallen into in an effort to build our businesses and show our potential clients what great service we can provide. However, a well-balanced life is crucial for sustained productivity and well-being. By scheduling less, you create more opportunities for personal activities and self-care, which in turn improves your overall performance.
Remember that your health and happiness directly impact your effectiveness as a leader. Taking time for yourself can lead to increased motivation, better work-life balance, and a more positive outlook.
Still aren’t convinced? See what Warren Buffett and Bill Gates have to say about this concept.
When you’re ready to start scheduling less and boosting your productivity, here’s how you start:
Scheduling less isn’t about doing less—it’s about doing more of what truly matters. By focusing on high-impact activities, allowing for downtime, and maintaining a balanced life, you can enhance your productivity and effectiveness as a leader in real estate. Embrace the power of less, and watch your success grow.
I’d be insane to think that you don’t understand the importance of time management, but there is an aspect that is important for us to consider this week that we don’t normally talk about. The importance of practicing what we preach. Our staff, our agents, and any other professional that comes into our orbit learn so much more from observing what we do and how we do it than what we tell them to do. So if we, ourselves, aren’t masters of time management, how can we expect those we coach and lead to be?
The subject of practicing what you preach always makes me think of my Dad. He never talked to me about the importance of showing up, but this is something that has served me well both personally and professionally and I learned it from watching him. Yes, we stayed home if we were truly sick, but observing him never missing a piano recital, a sporting event, a Girl Scout meeting, or work – even when he was going through chemotherapy – taught me infinitely more than what he could ever say to me on the subject. I learned that the act of showing up is important. It builds and strengthens relationships, develops you as a leader, and helps you to get that promotion or land that big client.
So using this same theory here – what are we indirectly saying to the people we lead and influence? Are we telling them that we cannot manage our time and our work during the 40ish hours allotted for it during the week? Do they see us burning the midnight oil, choosing work over our friends and family on weekends? Are we telling them that the expectation is for them to be overwhelmed and reactive with their responsibilities? You may be able to say, “Well, I never TOLD them they had to work nights and weekends!” but the indirect implication that this is expected or encouraged can lead your team toward a path of burnout, careless mistakes, and poor customer service.
Happy staff and agents = happy clients. By modeling amazing time management, you will help them to excel in their responsibilities and achieve that highly coveted work-life balance so that they can feel great about their career and stay with you for many years to come.
Do some self-reflection and try out some of these tips. If this is something that your organization struggles with, you have the power to change it!
💰Understand Your High-Value Activities. High-value client interactions, strategic planning sessions, networking with potential partners. Prioritize the tasks that strengthen and grow your business the most to ensure you’re focusing your time and energy where it matters.
⚖️ Use the Eisenhower Matrix to help you categorize your responsibilities. Draw four boxes and enter your items accordingly:
🗣️ Delegate to Empower Your Team. Delegating not only frees up your time, but it builds trust and fosters a sense of ownership, which boosts overall productivity. It also helps your organization to grow. If you are the lone person within an organization that can do something, they will be completely handicapped if you need to take leave, get sick or injured, or God forbid, go on vacation. Be sure when you are delegating that you give clear instructions and deadlines and be flexible on HOW these items are done. Your way may not be the best way. Replace yourself and watch your business grow!
💻 Leverage Technology. Tools like Asana, Trelly, or Monday.com can help you organize tasks, set deadlines, and track progress. They facilitate collaboration and keep everyone on the same page, reducing the time spent on meetings and following up.
🚀 Automate Routine Tasks. Use tools to automate repetitive tasks and create slides instead of stairs for things like routine email responses, appointment scheduling, and data entry.
🏗️ Have a Structured Schedule. One strategy here is to dedicate mornings to strategic planning and afternoons to client or staff meetings. Blocking your time helps you to maintain focus, minimizes distractions, and allows you to schedule work according to when you can perform your best. If you like to crush it in the mornings, keep your strategic work and big-thinking items early in the day. If you need a while to warm up and rock the afternoons, flip it around. Bear in mind, though, that this strategy only works if you protect your time blocks. If you are regularly breaking your own rules, you’ll soon be back into chaos. Find something that works and commit to it.
🤝 Optimize Your Meetings. Every meeting needs a clear purpose, an agenda, and a strict time limit. Similar to our item above, you have to stick to the agenda once established to avoid wasting valuable time. If you can’t build an agenda, cancel the meeting and actively practice not running over on time. A meeting that runs late sends everyone into reactive mode for the next day and a half and can easily be avoided by sticking to the planned agenda.
🧘♀️ Practice Self-Care and Work-Life Balance. Incorporate short breaks. Drink water. Eat lunch. Regular breaks and taking care of yourself boosts your overall productivity and mental well-being. Be sure to set boundaries between work and personal time. If you’re taking time off to relax and rejuvenate, you will prevent your own burnout and maintain that crusher level status you have for a long time. Modeling this for others will help the overall organization to achieve it as well.
👂 Ask for Feedback and Adjust. It’s easy to get into patterns and habits, regularly review your time management strategies and their effectiveness, and ask for feedback on ways both you and the overall organization can improve. Your team will offer valuable insights from their own experience on how to streamline your processes.
Staying organized and efficient is crucial to your success and there’s no better tool to achieve this than a solid CRM system. We install Ferrari engines into Follow Up Boss Accounts every single day, but our efforts would be lost if the agents fail to understand how to use the system that we installed.
One way we combat this is by building a manual for the team to unite behind, and we’re here to show you how to build a similar one for your team!
Understanding why you need a handbook for your CRM will assist you in creating one. It will ensure that everyone, from new hires to seasoned veterans, is using the same definitions for stages and tags and managing the database of leads in the same way.
Having this also streamlines your operations, reducing the risk of errors and missed opportunities. It also helps your team have the knowledge and confidence to work independently and excel in their roles. If they have a reference point for troubleshooting, they will experiment more with advanced features which fosters a culture of continuous learning and innovation.
Work to clearly show all processes, best practices, and tips so that your team is harnessing the full power of your CRM. Cover how you want your leads managed, follow-up protocols, and client communication strategies so that you can feel confident that no matter which member of your team receives a lead, they will know exactly what to do with it.
Do not assume that everyone will understand a basic description. Go into as much detail as you can, likely more than you think is necessary, and be sure to use screenshots and links to a quick video tutorial wherever possible.
Approach this project as something ongoing, it’s definitely not a set-it-and-forget-it scenario. With every change, new lead source, and tool you integrate you will need to go back to update the document and re-circulate it for your team. Best practice here is to update one live document and ask your team to bookmark it rather than having to circulate updated .pdfs over and over again. This will ensure that they are always viewing the most up-to-date information.
Use the below template to get started!
Effective leadership isn’t just about making decisions; it’s about fostering an environment where problem-solving thrives. Whether you’re managing a small team of agents or overseeing a brokerage, giving your people strategies they can use to brainstorm creative solutions and solve problems independently will enhance productivity, collaboration, and the success of the business. One technique to offer them is the 1-3-1 problem-solving approach.
Here’s how it works:
Identify the Problem: Clearly define the issue at hand. Whether it’s a lagging sales strategy, client communication is in the dumpster, or your operations staff needs to get organized, pinpointing the problem is the crucial first step.
Generate Three Potential Solutions: Brainstorm to generate a variety of potential solutions to the problem. Emphasize creativity and diversity in ideas to explore different perspectives and approaches. You’re going to be pleasantly surprised with what your team comes up with!
Select the Best Solution: After evaluating the pros and cons of each proposed solution, choose the one that aligns best with your objectives, resources, and values. Consider the feasibility, impact, and long-term implications of each option.
Easy enough, right? Encouraging and employing this strategy will do so much more for you and your business than just taking things off your plate.
🤔 Promotes Strategic Thinking: Rather than reacting hastily, individuals are prompted to analyze the root causes of problems and devise thoughtful solutions.
👯 Fosters Collaboration: Each team member contributes unique insights and expertise, leading to more robust solutions.
📈 Boosts Accountability: By actively participating in generating and evaluating potential solutions, individuals feel a sense of ownership and accountability for the outcomes. This fosters a culture of empowerment and initiative within the organization.
🛸 Encourages Innovation: By empowering team members to think outside the box, you can drive continuous improvement and adaptability.
💡 Streamlines Decision-Making: By weighing the pros and cons of each option, you can make informed decisions with confidence.
Give it a shot and see what it does for your to-do list and your team as a whole!
I’ve been in sales for the past twenty-two years (“Gasp! How could that be? She looks so young!” they all whisper,) …and you would be surprised how many sales meetings I’ve sat in where “sales” is never mentioned, let alone the discussion of sales strategies.
It’s an insane number of them. But as I grew into leadership roles I saw how easy it was to get caught up in the red tape of everything (waves hands) and use the meeting time for housekeeping and reminding of policies and procedures and discussion of upcoming events instead of the things that we all needed to do to grow the business.
Sales meetings aren’t typically something our agents and staff get excited about and for good reason: They believe that it’s a waste of their time.
If you want to retain and grow the talent that you have, you’re going to want to put a very intentional effort into making your sales meetings more engaging and truly help your agents learn how to develop and grow their book of business.
Teaching them how to practice real estate is what they came to you for and to keep them working with you, it’s wise to take action on fulfilling that promise. Making a plan for your sales meetings is a perfect way to do this and greatly impact those you are mentoring through this wild world of real estate sales.
Click the button below to download your free guide and perform a check on the current structure of your sales meetings. Shift things around so that you are spending your precious in-person time in a way that is going to benefit everyone in the organization. You’re going to be so glad you did!
Putting together a sales meeting twice a month or even weekly can be a challenge! Including a brief training is something that will really help your team get a lot of value from the session together, but it often takes time to research and prepare.
Set aside the time within your meeting for this training, and then let us do the heavy lifting! Use our Follow Up Boss Playlist for agents to supply you with a short training video to watch as a group and discuss during your meeting.
Choose one video from the playlist to cover each meeting and revisit often as we will be continually adding to this to help support you in your quest for building the perfect real estate team.
You might also want to check out our full list of offerings for more in-depth training sessions.
Onboarding your new agents smoothly is not only a key piece of your recruiting puzzle, it’s crucial to create a healthy, growing team or brokerage.
This process is the agent’s first impression of how the organization works and you want to do everything you can for it to go smoothly to show them what a professional, organized, and committed-to-their-success place this is.
In a lot of cases, those new agents are scared. They’ve left salaried positions with benefits or a brokerage that they know inside-and-out and have taken a leap of faith to try something new. Especially those who are new to a commission-only pay structure, this can be a really intimidating thing.
The goal with onboarding is to have them land with you confidently on their feet. If they were to show up on that first day and you say, “Oh, great! Uhh…I didn’t know that you were starting today! Uh…here’s some information for you to read, here’s the wifi password, and here’s some things to read that I just slapped together just now,” that’s going to cause your new rockstar agent to have some immediate job-change remorse. Worse, if mistakes happen down the line, they will say, “I knew it from the first day that this was a bad decision!”
So how do you accomplish this soft yet ready-to-go landing for your new agents? Give yourself a runway of time to prepare. 48 business hours should be sufficient, depending on your process. This way, you and anyone else assisting you with onboarding has plenty of time to get everything prepared before they walk in the door. Agents are READY. TO. GO. and they will become frustrated in having to wait on their basic needs to work.
Create an onboarding checklist to ensure that each item you have identified that an agent needs when they begin is prepared for them. Similar to the results of having a transaction or closing checklist for your clients, you want the process of working with you to be the same for your agents: consistent, thorough, and positive.
Use our guide below (make a copy and save it to edit,) and add every single thing that you do when you onboard someone new. Yes, even the small stuff. As you grow and bring on multiple people at once it will be harder and harder to remember each detail.
Once you’re done, save another copy and name it “Exit Checklist” and update it so that you are turning off and performing all the tasks needed when an agent leaves and nothing is missed on that end as well.
This is all about consistency. If you need to do something to onboard or exit one agent, you will likely need to do it for all of them. Building systems around the regular actions that you take means that nothing will be forgotten, the organization is working efficiently, and there are fewer items to remember and decisions to be made around recurring events, freeing you up to spend time and energy on the business building activities instead.
