The phrase "time is money" often resonates more with the commercial real estate professional than your average person. When making deals that have such long purchasing cycles, it's important to maximize every minute of every day and thus, consistently work towards contracts in the future. Below, we have compiled five tricks for CRE professionals to maximize their time that our brokers utilize in the Block Real Estate Services offices (BRES):
1. Tame and Train Your Email
If left unattended and untended, your email inbox could become a beast that hampers your work towards the next big deal. Keeping your inbox organized and lean will ensure that important emails don't slip through the cracks and you don't miss a big follow-up item. Some ideas for managing your email box are:
- Clearing your inbox daily
- Using filters to weed out unimportant mail
- Using rules to make sure emails end up in their rightful place
The more CRE professionals make walk-through appointments and meetings with their other "at-desk" tasks in mind, the more efficient they'll be. A trick that we have seen many brokers in our office utilize involves staggering meetings, walk-through's and appointments on the same day(s) and then dedicating days without appointments to follow-up, prospecting, paperwork, etc. This allows a person to work most efficiently as they can focus on a bulk of similar tasks versus changing gears between appointments and desk work.
3. Utilize Off-Business Hours
You don't want to be using precious business hours doing administrative work, when you could be reaching prospects during these times. Use off-hours for in-depth organization of your CRM database, inbox, etc. Attempting to organize your email or CRM database during business hours can be difficult with phone calls and the usual business hours interruption anyway so off-hours are also the most productive time to do administrative organizing.
4. Maintain An Organized Database
As a CRE professional, your contacts are gold. Therefore, maintaining an organized and up-to-date CRM database is essential to success. Picking the right CRM database is the first step. Choosing a cloud-based CRM is recommended so that you can access it on-the-go and your information is most safe and secure. Once you have established your database, maintain it. Keep track of all transactions on properties in your database, keep up to date notes on contacts, contracts and progress on deals.
5. Use The Tools At Your Disposal
One of the most valuable tools to maximize your time as a CRE professional is probably in your pocket. Choosing and utilizing the right apps on your smartphone can help make the most of your day. See our post on the best productivity apps for iOS and Android.
Contributor:
Matt Ledom
Sales and Leasing
Block Real Estate Services
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