As a successful agent and team leader who is also trying to scale your business, one of the most common hurdles is maximizing your time so you are truly leveraging it to meet with more buyers and sellers. You want to create a system in which you are utilizing the highest and most profitable use of your time and not getting bombarded in the minutia of admin and MLS duties and paperwork.
Follow these effective strategies to leverage your time so you are making a higher dollar per hour and doubling your appointments, sales volume and income. You will also have a much higher work/life balance.
- Delegate the admin work and focus on dollar-producing activities. The secret to scaling your business is going on more appointments each week. Ask yourself how many hours a week are you working? How many face-to-face appointments are you going on? And then how long are each of those appointments? Chances are you are only going on 2-3 actual new client appointments per week and the rest is all admin/busy work that someone else could be and should be doing, which will allow you to schedule in more dollar-producing appointments.
- Hire an assistant to work at least 20-30 hours per week. If you are hitting a plateau of sales and maxing out on time, you need to create more time for yourself. Hiring an assistant, even part-time, will leverage your time so you can go from 2-3 appointments a week to scheduling 4-6 to even 8 appointments per week. An assistant should do your social media, MLS paperwork, marketing of your listings and website—all the backend tasks and details. They should schedule the photographer, sign installation and everything else on your checklists. Licensed or not, the person you hire can help with admin, and some of you reading this might consider hiring two people to really grow.
- Create a system for everything. Creating a system for every process in your business will help streamline it and save you time and money. Getting a CRM or database up and running with systems, following up on open house leads and online leads, and having a system in place for how you interact with your clients, will help you offer amazing service and have an organized method for how you work with each client. This will take a little extra time to set up in the beginning, but over item you will reap the benefits of a well-oiled machine that saves you and everyone on your team time and money to generate and follow up with new and existing clients. It is paramount to have this set up if you want to fully maximize your past clients and referral sources to build a massive referral business. Having everything in a system creates consistency too for when you add people to your team. Everyone on your team knows what, when and how to do anything from adding a new client into the CRM to sending a client a gift.
- Master your calendar with effective time-blocking. Having an assistant and system will allow you to master your weekly calendar of more appointments. You can go on twice as many, if not three times as many, appointments if you create the system and delegate your admin work to another team member. Make sure you are leveraging your time so that you are in front of as many prospective buyers and listing prospects a week as possible. Allowing yourself more prospecting time on the phone or at outside events, and making sure you are setting up more appointments each week, will create more appointments that put you in a position to get a listing contract or an offer to purchase signed. Mastering your weekly dollar hours means having the discipline to keep your appointments with your phone, if you are prospecting for more new business, or making sure you schedule more appointments that you can actually turn those hours into “money hours” or the best ROI of your time.
Double your appointments by delegating administrative work to an admin staff who is hired to help leverage your time. Master your calendar so that you are only focused on dollar-producing activities where you can list or sell a house. Take the time to assess where you are spending the majority of your time. I guarantee that you will be shocked at how much non-dollar-producing time you are spending each week. By doing this you will take your business to the next level because you will duplicate yourself, double your appointments, and grow your listings and sales production.
For a FREE copy of our “Hiring a Social Media and Business Manager” assistant ad, email yourock@sherrijohnson.com. Also check out www.sherrijohnson.com or call 844-989-2600 for more information on Sherri Johnson Agent, Manager and Team Coaching.
Sherri Johnson is CEO and founder of Sherri Johnson Coaching & Consulting. With 20 years of experience in real estate, Johnson offers coaching, consulting and keynotes, and is a national speaker for the Homes.com Secrets of Top Selling Agents tour. For more information, please contact coaching@sherrijohnson.com or 844-989-2600 (toll free) or visit www.sherrijohnson.com.
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