Get the most out of your working hours

Estate Agents, whether they’re seasoned professionals who know how to get the most out of the working day or are new to the industry, are smart to consider the importance of time management. Even with all the helpful technology and resources available, taking control of your time is crucial to success and minimising stress. While the concept of “work smarter, not harder” is thrown around and four day working weeks remain in discussion , what does that really entail in practical terms?

The first step to effective time management is to figure out which of your tasks are the highest priority. But here’s the thing with Estate Agents and to-do lists – agents have so many tasks to accomplish in any given day, that once they’re written down, it’s easy to become discouraged.

You can mark each task if it is important and/or urgent and take care of these tasks first. However, if it becomes apparent that almost every task on your list is important, you may want to apply the Eisenhower Matrix.

Here, you organise tasks by urgency?and?importance. For tasks that are both urgent and important (in quadrant 1), get to them today. For those not urgent but important, slot some time in your schedule to complete them. If you can delegate urgent but non-important tasks (answering the phone, sorting through your inbox, etc.), do so. For tasks that are neither urgent nor important, such as distractions from your day’s work, wait until the workday is over.

Every Estate Agent will benefit from sitting down for an hour or so to plan out the week ahead. As you focus on scheduling time for your upcoming week, you can adopt the strategies that work best for you. Block time in your days for urgent and important tasks. Know how your agency can directly increase productivity.

Are you being strategic with your availability? Our data shows that the highest number of SmartVal requests and leads come in between 12pm-1pm and 8pm-9pm on weekdays, and between 12pm-1pm on Saturdays. Make sure you're taking this into account when planning out work.

Ensure you're nurturing relationships with leads that have actively reached out to you as hunting down buyers and sellers is time-consuming for agents. We ran a LinkedIn poll last month which showed that agents expect to respond to an email within 2h of it landing in their inbox. Are you matching your competition?

If you're looking to ramp up your lead generation, we have a whole host of innovative features that source leads and keep them warm, including MatchMaker and ChainMaker, that can help you land more sales in less time.

If possible, start to automate tedious tasks, such as outreach, appointment scheduling, segmentation, email sends and follow-up messages. An easy-to-use customer relationship management (CRM) software is a good place to start as you'll know from our previous Boomin Ahead newsletter. CRMs help you target the best leads at the right time – and with the best message. Automation not only saves you time, but it helps you conditionally nurture your leads to keep them warm.

Connect with your team on a day-to-day basis and make sure they can handle a variety of tasks. Training courses not only help improve employee skills, but can motivate employees and encourage personal growth and development.

Ensure that all the team members know how to respond to the incoming SmartVals. You will have an hour to accept a SmartVal unless you’re offline, and another hour to deliver it back to the customer. Time is of the essence.

While to-do lists and automation are important, so is taking time off. Even if you have a hundred and one things to do, it’s essential to take care of your mental and physical health. Not only does this avoid burnout, but it ensures long-term productivity for you and your team.