Efficiency Means Better Business - Real Estate and Technology News for Agents, Broker

Efficiency Means Better Business

It seems you work harder every day to maintain your business. Bernice Ross, real estate coach, offers these tips to work smarter and more efficiently instead of working harder.

We all have systems, says Ross, "The question is which of your systems support your business to thrive vs. which systems create a drag on your production. A system can be as simple as taking a different route to work each day to search for For-Sale-By-Owners or as complex as doing all your business online."

Ross outlines four areas to streamline your system and be more efficient in your business:

1.) Contact Me! We all have numerous numbers listed on our business cards, making it difficult for clients to reach you. How many numbers will they try before giving up? Usually one, and they might leave a message...or not. Google Voice offers an array of features to simplify this dilemma...one number does it all!

Be Green...Go Paperless. Ross says that more and more companies and agents are going paperless. Contracts can be found online and signed on tablet PC's or an iPad. Look into systems such as DocuSign.

Create digital forms for pre-listing information, your marketing plan, digital brochures of the property and develop single listing websites for your clients.

2.) Blog About It! "Many agents struggle with the idea of starting and maintaining a blog." writes Ross. She suggests looking for ideas in your outbox. "Every email where you answered a client question is a potential blog post." suggests Ross.

"A simple way to create great content for your blog is to answer client questions using your blog rather than your email. Post both the question and the answer in your blog." says Ross. "You can also post market updates plus upcoming neighborhood events."

3.) Create a Social Media System: Ross suggests taking 10 minutes a day to contact your friends by liking or commenting on something they post.

Hootsuite is a social media dashboard which offers a simple way to automatically create a Tweet, a Facebook or a LinkedIn post by forwarding something of interest.

4.) Evernote is ever valuable! "How much time do you spend entering notes you have taken at listing appointments, inspections, or walkthroughs on your computer?" asks Ross. She suggests using the paid version of Evernote to take notes on your smartphone, iPad or personal computer. Your notes will then be available on every device with Evernote. No more wasted time transferring data.

Try these tips to use your time more efficiently for better business. "The real test," writes Ross, "is in finding a system and then developing the habit of working with it regularly. The more you work with a system, the more efficient your use of the system becomes."

Read more from The Real Estate Coach Blog.

photo credit: ChrisM70