There is light at the end of the tunnel. You are wondering how you are going to get everything done today and still present an offer and then a counter offer as well as open two of your listings for potential buyers, and answer the myriad of questions that seem to be endless in your pending sale transactions. Not to worry, you will get through it and still be home at a fairly decent hour. How? A little planning goes a long way.

Prioritize

Do what is important first. There are four items that a busy real estate professional should focus on daily:

1. making a sale
2. taking a listing
3. getting an appointment
4. getting a lead

All other activities are secondary. If you look at your activities and concentrate your personal efforts on these four items you will find others to help you with all the other items that need to be done.

Plan

Use your appointment book to plan your day so that you do not neglect prospecting activities. When it is in your schedule, do it. That takes discipline, but you will have a steady flow of business coming your way when you stick to your schedule. If you will be faithful to prospecting two hours each day, you will have consistent, high production. It is a numbers game, but you don’t have to worry that the numbers are so huge that you can’t get to it. Keep it to the number of hours that you are going to work on getting more leads and appointments.

Schedule when you are going to look at properties coming on the market so that when you are preparing a comparable market analysis you can do it quicker. It’s also much more professional.

Systemize

Keep all your notes in one place. I use a simple 5x7 spiral binder as a journal for every day of my career. I have over 23 years work in these notebooks and I never lose phone numbers, notes from seminars, or important sale or listing information. I use my journal for everything. I take notes in it when I am taking a new listing. I keep transaction notes in it. I put phone numbers in it from my voice mail. I put new client information in it to put in my computer database later. I use it at open houses. It is where I have my notes for my entire career. How simple to have it all in one place.

Take an hour every week to update your database in your computer. That’s it. Find an hour first thing in the morning before you get on the telephone or leave for the office. If you use a Palm Pilot, then transfer the data at the same time each week. It is easy to remember when it is part of a routine. You tend to let things slip if you just do it when “you are thinking about it.” Have these systems written into your schedule and it becomes a habit.

Answer your telephone calls in clusters and try very hard not to take calls while you are in the office first thing in the morning. You can control your time and not let others do it for you. Good things happen when you are not available by telephone first thing as well such as others solving transaction problems for you. Your clients understand when you have appointments and are not available to take their call. You need to get back to them quickly, but within three hours is just fine.

Miscellany

Use checklists on your transactions. Do all your paperwork at one time and not piecemeal. Work with professionals who also do their jobs well. Be succinct. Leave messages or questions on voice mail systems with a time when you can be reached by telephone. Automate your mailing program so that it is done for the year and you don’t have to think about it monthly.

There is so much that you can accomplish in a day if you have the right attitude about what you need to get done, plan a little, and have systems in place that will make your job easier. Time management is really fun when you see the results! More sales in less time.