Creating a Work Environment for Success – Part 2

Setting up your environment so that it is conducive to producing at high levels is critical if you want to succeed in the business of real estate.  In part one of this blog post on creating your work environment, we covered the pros and cons of a home office and the equipment necessary to function as a real estate agent in an ever evolving business.  In this post, we are going to talk about scheduling and routines, organization and the most important aspect of your surroundings – the attitudes of the people that surround you.

Organization 

One of the most important aspects of your work environment is your personal organization and one of the key items to organization in real estate sales is your contact management system.  There are many quality products such as Goldmine, ACT for Real Estate and Top Producer.  These cutting edge programs do much more than simply store the names and phone numbers of your contacts – when used correctly they become the organizational hub of your real estate business. 

In addition to storing and organizing your contacts and keeping your schedule, good programs like ACT and Top Producer can help coordinate your listings and escrows, manage drip campaigns to your sphere and pipeline, incubate your prospects, generate letters and emails for use in advertising, and greatly help reduce the amount of time used in lead follow up.  Lead follow up in real estate  is one of the leading causes of lost business for most agents – programs like these can help streamline the process and create more time for you to generate new leads and new business.

A clean and orderly work space is mandatory for maximum efficiency.  One of the keys to maintaining focus and working on a schedule is not having any distractions.  A messy desk with the clutter of different projects, listings or escrows can distract you with “urgent” things that need to be done and take you away from the “important” items.  Working efficiently means eliminating those potential distractions from your line of sight so you can get done what you are working on in the shortest amount of time and then move on to the next task. 

The Importance of a Schedule in Real Estate

I feel that having a daily schedule and developing the discipline that it takes to stick to that schedule is one of the first things that you need to learn as a real estate agent.  It is the one thing that makes what you are doing an actual business instead of a glorified hobby.  It’s also the only way that you can ever do a high volume of transactions.  If you only have one deal in escrow and a listing or two, it’s easy to wander through your day with no real direction and still make it happen.  On the other hand, if you have forty listings and 8 escrows, a team to manage, a website and blog to maintain, and all the things that go along with being busy and productive – you will fail without a schedule.  Things will fall through the cracks and your clients will not get the service that they deserve.

All of those things become manageable if you have a time to complete each task (and a good assistant!).  The other thing that becomes available to you if you follow a schedule is free time.  Without a schedule, you are at the mercy of whatever comes along.  I know agents with two deals going who are pulling their hair out and working over 60 hours a week.  I also know agents who routinely do 100 deals per year and work four days per week. 

Since everybody has the exact same amount of hours in the week, how is it that top producing agents seem to have more free time and enjoy themselves more than agents who are only doing a deal a month?  The answer is that the top producing agents make better use of the time that they have.  They are more productive when they are working and accomplish more in each hour than most agents do in a day.  One of the reasons that they are able to do that is their schedule.  They know exactly what needs to be accomplished each day and get it done quickly and efficiently.

Surrounding Yourself With the Right People

Surrounding yourself with positive, enthusiastic and successful people is one of best ways that you can fast track your way to the top.  The benefits of this one thing can not be overstated.  When you make an effort to associate with top producers in your chosen field, you can emulate what they do and shorten your learning curve tremendously.  If you associate with the agents who hang out in the break room all day complaining about one thing or another, you will pick up their work habits, mannerisms and negative attitudes.  Those are the agents that are generally doing just enough deals each year to scrape by and love to justify their lack of production by blaming the market, or their company or whatever.  I am not implying that they are bad people – far from it – but they will kill your attitude and your mindset.

When you associate with positive, enthusiastic agents who are producing at high levels, you will learn what it takes to become successful.  You will carry that energy and positive outlook with you everywhere you go – on listing appointments, on showings, and while calling your leads.  You will enjoy going to work every day and the results of your efforts will amaze you.  People will be attracted to your energy and naturally want to do business with you and fall over themselves to give you referrals.

You can only sustain this kind of energy and mindset if you are constantly feeding your brain with positive input.  This applies not only to your work environment, but to your personal life as well.  It’s an unfortunate fact that many people are very negative and will try to drag you down or even try and make you feel guilty about becoming successful.  Certain people will try and fill you with doubt and uncertainty, and whether consciously or unconsciously, try and undermine you in your efforts to succeed.  It can be hard, but you need to stay away from that kind of negative input.  It can be especially hard if some of those people are friends that you have known for a long time, but it is a choice that you have to make and a part of creating an environment that allows you to thrive.

One of the best things that you can do to ensure that you are constantly feeding your mind with positive material is to listen to educational and other personal development CD's whenever you can.  A great place to do this is in your car while you are driving around.  Instead of listening to the radio, pop in your CD's and use that time on the road to better yourself and keep yourself in a positive state of mind.  One of the absolute best places to get that material is Nighingale Conent.  They have one of the biggest selctions of personal and professional development material available anywhere.

 Hard Numbers

Remember that the environment in which you work is in a large part completely up to you and one of the things that you can control.  It is also the foundation from which you will grow as a real estate agent.  Without right environment, you may not last in this business.  Real estate has one of the highest attrition rates of any industry with almost 60% of all new agents out of the business in two years or less.  The US Department of Labor reports that the median income of a real estate agent was $39,760 in 2006 and the National Association of Realtors® reports that the median income of an agent in the business for two years or less was $15,300.

Real estate is not an easy business.  If you want to have a shot at making it or if you are looking to make more than the average agent, you have to give yourself a fighting chance.  Having an environment that helps you rather than hurts your chances is a key component to your success.

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