Michelle Pettway is a Realtor with The Beneficial Team of Keller Williams Realty, Atlanta Partners in Snellville.
Every week, we ask a real estate professional for their Short List, a collection of tips and recommendations on an essential topic in real estate. This week, we talked with Michelle Pettway, a Realtor with The Beneficial Team of Keller Williams Realty, Atlanta Partners in Snellville, about the ways that agents can save time in their business.
6. You can’t save time if you don’t know who much time you are wasting. My first tip is to use a calendar daily. Whether paper or electronic the first key to time management is to have a calendar. Your calendar should have both business and personal time blocks. You know what they say “if its not on your calendar it doesn’t exist.”
5. Let your buyer clients know what to expect as far as the time you have blocked for them. Here is a great script “Mr. and Mrs. Buyer I just want to confirm our appointment time for viewing homes, we will start at 10am and I will be showing you 5 homes today, we should be done by noon.”
4. Preparation is key! Whether working with a buyer or a seller, do your homework! Make sure on all listing appointment you go prepared with a listing package (including your CMA, Marketing Plan and all the necessary documents to leave with the listing), sign and lock box. When working with a buyer, remind them to bring there checkbook in case they decide to make an offer. Send listings prior to scheduled appointment so that buyers can eliminate listings they do not wish to see.
3. Prospecting. I recently learned a great tip I will share with you on saving time when calling expired and FSBOs. Use a stop watch. You want to track two things,first the amount of time you spend on a call. If your calls are taking to much time you may need to adjust your scripts. Secondly how much time in between calls. The idea is to make as many calls as you can during your time blocked for prospecting.
2. Thank you notes are a great way to follow up with contacts you made during prospecting. Make sure you wait until after you are done prospecting to hand write your thank you notes.
1. Finally, avoid distractions. Whether prospecting for negotiating contracts give it your undivided attention. Put your phone cell phone on Do Not Disturb and make calls from a land line that prospects can call you back on. Avoid checking emails and social media. Hope this helps, now go out and sell more homes!
Michelle Pettway is a Realtor with The Beneficial Team of Keller Williams Realty, Atlanta Partners in Snellville. Licensed since 2001, Michelle is a member of the DeKalb Association of Realtors and the secretary for the DeKalb Chapter of WCR; she is the owner/director/instructor of her own real estate school, Real Estate Systems Training Institute (which specializes in pre-license/post-license courses), and she specializes in short sales, REO, traditional sales and luxury homes in Gwinnett and DeKalb County.