Estate agency tips for task management

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

Benjamin Franklin

1.    Preparing a Schedule

• Prepare what tasks are required to be done daily, what needs to happen each week and what is required monthly. Schedule these in your diary as reoccurring tasks.
• Schedule a day once a month, to work on your content strategy.
• Either one morning a month or on a Monday morning each week, schedule in your diary for distributing scheduled content out on social media, your blog page and add it to your newsletter.  
• On instruction of a property, ensure client marketing strategies, for the duration of the client's contract are scheduled in advance in the diary. This will ensure customers receive consistent updates and adjustments, until you find them a buyer or tenant.

“The way to create something great is to create something simple.”

Richard Koch

2.    80/20 rule - Consistency beats perfection

• Delegate tasks that can be carried out by your team or outsource them.
• Create structures around your most regular and important tasks.
• Have a process written down for regular tasks, so that the team can follow it and know what to do.
• Set deadlines to ensure tasks are met and stick to them.
• Be consistent in your marketing content instead of overthinking blogs that might take too long to create or inconsistently publishing. Mark Burgess, CEO of Iceberg Digital, explains more here - 'Consistency beats perfection'

It is not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?

Henry David Thoreau

3. Avoid unproductive work

• When concentrating on a task, make sure colleagues understand and do not disturb each other, make sure social media and phones are removed from eyesight to maximise full concentration.
• Avoid unnecessary distractions during your most productive working hours. If you have a spare room use it to remove yourself from interruptions.
• Ensure your leads are qualified prior to conducting a viewing or valuation so that there is value to your time spent on that task.

If you deprive yourself of outsourcing and your competitors do not, you’re putting yourself out of business.

Lee Kuan Yew

4. Outsource

• As estate agents, we are there to help move people, for the best financial outcome and for the least amount of stress so understand that outsourcing tasks could result in more time achieving this.
• Review processes within the business that do not affect the customer experience and see if these could be outsourced for producing team efficiencies.
• If you struggle with social media marketing, producing content, qualifying leads, or business generation and do not have the skills in-house, outsource this to people which will free up more time for you to spend on the business. Here is a helpful link on ‘Who to use to stand out in the property market’

There's a lot of automation that can happen that isn't a replacement of humans but of mind-numbing behaviour

Stewart Butterfield

5. Use automation

• Use a content management system to publish and schedule consistent content so that every day time is not spent carrying out those tasks. Have a system where one piece of content can be created in various formats instantly for social media posts, blog articles or newsletters.
• Use a system to carry out the task of qualifying vendor/landlord as well as buyer/tenant leads 24/7, so that the team can spend their time with the best people out there.
• Use technology to nurture your prospects and present to you people who are most likely to require your services. This will avoid your team calling through lists of unresponsive or unmotivated people.