5 ways agents can become more organized and in control

Interested in becoming more organized, proactive, and in-control of your business? After all, real estate can be hectic. These five tips will help you get a grip on the disorganization and chaos in your everyday life.

1. Manage your active business

Use a CRM for REALTORS® to manage and organize your listings and the buyers you’re currently working with. In one place, you should be able to see all the listings you have at the moment and details about that listing such current status, property details, asking price, commission rates, contingency dates, related parties, and more.

What’s more, if you’re working with a number of buyers at once, it helps to view at a glance who these buyers are and their requirements. When it comes to listings and the buyers you’re working with, you don’t (and shouldn’t) have to rely on your memory.

2. Reminders and to-dos

It’s important to ensure you’re maintaining contact and building relationships with past clients and your sphere of influence (SOI). Top real estate coaches and trainers suggest that you make quarterly keep in touch calls, send out direct mail pieces, do some email marketing, and plan periodic events such as client appreciation nights.

You can schedule, plan, and organize everything you’re doing to keep in touch with your real estate database right from your CRM. And then you can set reminders so you’ll know what to do and when you need to do it. And that’s not all. Have an appointment with a prospect? Meeting with a client next week? Need to prepare paperwork? Set reminders in your CRM so you don’t forget. Tip: a good CRM will include the option to send yourself email reminders.

3. Calendar and task list

Organized agents log into their Realtor CRM on a daily basis to check their calendar and task list. This lets them immediately see the appointments they have for the day and what tasks need to be accomplished.

And as you complete various tasks, make sure you check them off of your list. This serves two purposes. First, it helps you keep track of your progress and be aware of where you stand work-wise. Second, it “feels good” to check off items on a “to do” list. If you’re feeling overwhelmed or discouraged, you can look at your task list and see just how much you’ve accomplished.

4. Listing and closing activity plans

It’s easy for things to fall through the cracks, especially when it comes to details pertaining to listing and closing a home. Listing and closing Activity Plans will help you manage and remember the steps involved in these processes. By assigning a listing or closing Activity Plan, all the things you need to do to move a listing or closing forward automatically appear in your task list and calendar, and as email alerts if you so choose.

5. Drip marketing plans

From a sales perspective, it would be great to be able to call every single person in your real estate database regularly and send them ongoing direct mail. These things are fantastic relationship-builders and often help with getting more referrals and repeat business. But in reality, calling and mailing everyone isn’t too feasible from a cost and time standpoint. For your best clients or “A-List,” it is possible and should be done.

But what should you do to keep in touch and build relationships with everyone else in your database? This is where drip marketing comes in. Email is cost effective and takes up very little of your time. That’s why you need to be regularly emailing everyone in your SOI. A good CRM for Realtors will come with automated drip email campaigns for different types of contacts. You would simply select the marketing campaign that works best, and assign the contact(s) to it. The beauty of drip campaigns is that emails automatically go out (or “drip” out) at various points in time, which means that while you’re showing a client a home, you’re also marketing to a lead or keeping in contact with a past client at the same time.

The takeaway

Put into practice the suggestions above. You’ll find that they’ll work wonders increasing your day-to-day organization. And when you’re more organized, you’ll be able to perform your job better and project a more professional image.