Managers/Brokers are supposed to recruit, retain, review, train, encourage, systemize, plan, strategize, mentor, handle complaints, and "walk around" manage. Geesh! What comes first? How do you keep the "got a minute’s" from taking hours out of your day? Planning your day when you are a manager seems to be somewhat difficult from the moment you step in the front door of the office. There are a few ideas that will help.

Prioritize

I believe in the advice that you have five items that are extremely important which must be accomplished today. Write them down and prioritize them. Every manager can choose to be distracted from the priorities, but you can just as easily stick to your schedule of getting the first item on your list done first, and so on. Turning someone down in a nice way from one of their "got a minute?’s" and getting to them later is acceptable in any office. The key is to get back to the agent. Write it down that they want to see you and then go seek them out when you have a minute. It’s amazing how many things get solved between the time when the agent asked and when you got back to him.

Many managers that I know, write in their daytimers items that they wish to do during any given day. What is important, is writing down items that are significant and not just busy work. If a manager will write down five items every day that are important for him to accomplish in order for his office to grow and prosper and take care of those five items around everything else that is to be done in a day; greatness happens!

All of us know about prioritizing, but are we all doing it? Are we making those recruiting calls early in the day so that we feel good about what we accomplished and can do much more throughout the day? Are we working on a training module that will help the entire office do better? Are we working on a marketing campaign that will bring more money into the office? You know what the priorities are for your office, so don’t let "things" distract you from your priorities.

Delegate

There is no question, but that a manager in any office can be extremely busy from sunup to sundown. One way to clear your desk so that you work on the priorities is to delegate. Let a staff person check on the systems in the office and make sure they are working properly. Do you have an agent who is thinking about management someday? Talk to that agent about being an Assistant Manager and pay him with a higher commission split; let him do some of the paperwork and review.

Let your staff and assistant manager be your eyes and ears in the office so you know what is going on and if you need to do more "walking around." Have successful agents do mini training modules for you on whatever it is that they do well. Have your secretary send notes to people everyday from you—simple two-liners (be careful here that the agents do not see this or it loses its effectiveness if they get one). These notes can be sent to agents you are recruiting, and encouraging notes to agents within the office.

You can delegate some of your work. The trick, of course, is to not delegate so much that you are away from the office all the time. That will have a devastating affect on an office in the long run. The manager must be seen in the office. It is comfortable to the agents to know that he is there, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t delegate.

Communicate

Another way to keep everything going is to let the staff and agents know what time restraints you are under from time to time. They will understand if you are trying to get your year-end budget together; or if you have a marketing deadline.

Let the people who are wanting your time know that you are working on items that will benefit the entire office. Could they leave you a message on your voice mail or in your mailbox as to what they need. Let them know that you will get back to them as quickly as possible. That will save the manager time in knowing what is on the agent’s mind.

Every agent in a real estate office wants the office to be successful. They will be patient and understanding if you are setting an example of what needs to be done and do it; as long as you get back to them in a reasonable period of time.

The successful manager does everything in his power to keep those balls in the air because he knows that all of it is important. The importance changes from day to day depending on what is happening in the office. If you just had five agents walk in your office from another firm, you can work on the recruiting calls tomorrow; make sure the systems are in place today to handle the arrival of five new agents. It is a juggling game, but oh so exciting!

Published: June 9, 2000

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