As a Realtor, you know that every day brings new challenges and opportunities. But it’s also important to stay organized and focused on what you need to do to keep generating leads and making sales. Thankfully, there are plenty of ways you can use technology to get organized so you’re never overwhelmed and always cool, calm and collected. To help, we’ve put together this guide to take control immediately with task management for Real Estate.
Create a master list of your tasks and delegate
The first step in task management is to create a master list of all the tasks you need to do. This should include both short-term and long-term items, as well as ongoing tasks and those that will only take a few minutes. For example, if you have a weekly meeting with your team, it’s probably more efficient for you to set up the room than for one of them to do it—even though it only takes them five minutes.
For repeating projects, such as marketing and selling a property, you need to create a master task template that can be applied to all future sales. Don’t fixate to much on getting it right the first time, perfect is the enemy of great! Instead, focus on continually reviewing the task list and update the master as you go.
The second step is identifying which tasks can be delegated or assigned to others on your team as well as identifying which tasks require your personal attention and expertise. This will streamline your property sales as everyone in the team will be familiar with their specific tasks for each campaign.
Use a calendar
Then, use a calendar to map out deadlines for each task and set reminders for yourself or your colleagues to complete them. For example, you can use the “remind me” feature in Google Calendar to tell it when you need something done by. That way, if someone else needs the same information from you at different points in time (for example, before an open house or showing), he or she will be reminded of it as well.
Another important tip for keeping track of your tasks is sharing them with other people on your team—but only if those people are involved with completing that task! For example, if one colleague has already completed his part and another colleague hasn’t even started yet, sharing won’t do any good because there’s no reason for him/her to see it until after he/she finishes his/her own work on time.
Make the calendar collaborative
Sharing your calendar with others can be a great way to stay organized.
- Team sharing: If you have colleagues who need access to the same calendar, then sharing it is a must to help remind them what’s happening and what they should be prepared for
- Vendor collaboration: This is especially helpful when it comes to time sensitive property marketing activities such as property improvements, marketing photography or open homes
- Share with boss: Your boss may have their own workflow system that uses Google Calendar as well! By sharing your calendar they’ll understand your workload and availability at a touch of a button
Use tags and custom fields
If you want even more detail, add custom fields (e.g., phone number, email address, status) in your task management solution so everyone has the information they need to complete their jobs. For example, if an agent is scheduling a client meeting and doesn’t know where it will be held yet, she can use a custom field to note that the location hasn’t been decided yet.
You can also use custom fields for tasks that don’t have a due date or time attached to them.
Go visual
In order to streamline workflow management even more, start using our tool to create visual workflows that show everyone how to proceed with each task. Visual workflows are a great way to keep track of who is doing what and make sure everyone is on the same page.
Ibenta’s task management provides visual reminders and displays the status of each task or action item as it changes throughout the process. Use these tools not only for tracking progress but also for showing how property marketing tasks are connected (or not).
Lean on tech
There are plenty of ways you can use technology to get organized so you’re not overwhelmed by your workload. Some examples include:
- Task management software, such as Taasky and Trello, which allow you to create a visual list of tasks. It’s also possible to add deadlines or labels to each task, making it easier for you to track where your time is being spent.
- Ibenta has in built task management tailored for the Real Estate industry that automatically generates all your tasks for each new campaign, allowing for collaboration, deadlines, reminders, notifications and calendar integrations
- Calendar apps like Google Calendar—particularly useful if multiple people need access to any given appointment schedule or event information.
Conclusion
If you’re worried about the time it will take to get your team organized, don’t be. It’s never too late to start using a task management tool like ours. We know that our product can help Realtors manage their workload more efficiently, which means you’ll have more time for what matters most: serving your clients!