Jun. 10, 2008
If financial advisers, your lawyer, your CPA – considered to be “trusted advisers” – are anything like mine, they always seem organized, busy, yet in control. My financial advisor gives me a call every month or so to update me on the market. When I want to speak with my lawyer or my CPA, I need to make an appointment.
How do they do it? Why is it different with us? Should it be?
No.
We just have to take control of our professional career.
Put all the great platitudes aside; let’s look at the practical day to day stuff that needs to be done to move you into the “trusted advisor” category.
A couple of questions to think about first:
· What day part are you at your best? Mornings, afternoons, evenings?
· What time do you usually get to the office?
· Have you maintained basic contact information on your friends and acquaintances as well as those who have contacted you for real estate services? (If not get cracking on these contacts so you can develop your “sphere of influence.”)
· What periodicals, news sites, news sources etc do you read at on a daily basis?
· How organized, detail oriented, are you?
· Do you work in a team or have an assistant?
OK. Now we are ready for the next part. Each day of your work week needs to have standardized tasks (for you and/or your assistance or team). These tasks you set up at the beginning of each week. For example; I am an early morning person and I have certain things I do every day and every week, so every single Sunday afternoon, I start to schedule the upcoming week.
My first step is to write down what standard tasks I have to complete that week and assign a priority to each. If I had an assistant or a team I would delegate as appropriate.
For example your list may look something like this (and always put personal items down so you a lot time to these important aspects of your life):
Sample
Category Item Priority within Category
General business Check e-mails A
Blog articles A
Check networking sites A
Gather statistical info from MLS B
Read the Wall Street Journal B
Website updates A
Current clients Check MLS A
Contact clients A
Transaction Man. Check contingencies A
Attend closing A
Potential clients Check in with them A
Sphere of influence Call 5 people per day M-F A
Send contacts a thank you note A
Marketing Write ads A
Place ads A
Personal time Dinner with your love A
Family time Family outing A
Community time Rotary meeting B
Now I look at some of these as “tasks” I will work on at the same time every day or week. For example:
· Sphere of influence; I allocate one hour, at the same time very day, to call and check in with 5 people from my contact list (please put it in an spreadsheet or a database!). I rotate through my contacts so I end up speaking with 25 people a week, 100 people a month – not an impossible task at all! These calls are short and sweet, just finding out how they are doing, giving them some new fact about the local real estate market and then reminding them that it they know anyone who needs real estate services, to please give them my name and number (or give me their name and number so I can contact them directly). While I am calling I write a thank you note to every person I called (whether I was able to reach them or not) thanking them for their time (and including a couple of business cards of course).
· Checking e-mails; I allocate my first hour in the morning (and no more) to going through my e-mails and phone calls and responding as required.
· Networking sites: when I turn my computer on in the morning I also log on to my networking sites to check for messages and to post what I am doing that day
· Every Sunday I write the article for my Blog; it is a day that I have down time and therefore can dedicate the time to write.
· At the end of every single day, I never leave until I have responded to every e-mail and to every phone call.
Taking the time to organize your base schedule for the week, each Sunday, helps you better plan and organize your schedule each day during the week. It also makes it easier to handle the unexpected. Following through the ideas in this series, you will look and feel more in control of your career.
Combine getting better organized and taking exceptional care of your clients and you will be on your way to being your client’s trusted real estate advisor.
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