Time Management Skills for Commercial Property Agents

One of the biggest problems in commercial real estate agency is getting organised for your business day and keeping to your time management plan.  So many things happen every day as an agent that can easily distract you; distraction leads you down a path that generally wastes your time.

Your commission and your quality listings depend entirely upon your ability to stick to the essential tasks that will bring you results.  Clarity is required to determine the key issues that make all the difference in your business.

Lots of people will want part of your business day.  They include:

• Clients need to be kept up to date
• Prospects will require networking
• People calling from your advertising and marketing efforts
• Inspecting new properties and new listings with buyers and tenants
• The boss will want to call meetings with the team
• Other Agents, etc

Some of these people are more or less important than others.  You can make the assumptions and set the priorities.  The most successful agents and top agents that I have worked with will protect their time allocations, and their time commitments with both themselves and other people.

There are just three or four things that will make all the difference in your career and real estate business.  Those three or four things need to be done every day.  Top agents will do those things to stay on top of their market and maximize the opportunities that are available.

Here are some strategies to help you with your business activities and time management procedures:

1. Create a list of things to do every day.  Prioritise those things into the essential tasks and the general tasks.  The essential tasks should be done every day without fail.  One of those tasks will be prospecting with new people.
2. To help you in this process, you can create a mind map of critical issues that relate to your agency and your activities.  On most days, you will only ever achieve four or five things of great importance.  The rest of the time will be taken up with general issues and general problems.  Do not confuse the issues of great importance with general problems.  It is far too easy to get distracted and you are the only person that can make the decision regards your actions and tasks.
3. Plan your day the night before so that you are well organized before you reach the office.  When you reach your workspace or desk, you should already have a list of things to take you into the essential tasks and the critical issues.
4. Top agents tend to use a focusing system on the essential tasks for the business day.  You can do this with a simple spread sheet and a tick box process.  Every day you simply pick up the spreadsheet and move through the critical items are required to be actioned.  You do this before anything else.

The commercial real estate industry offers significant opportunity for organised and active salespeople.  Your degree of success will depend upon your ability to focus on the critical issues that are most important to your commissions and listings.