Jacqueline Kyo Thomas
Real estate client management can be a tough task. Not only do you need to perform your regular real estate-related tasks, but you also need to do so while juggling multiple real estate clients at the same time. As you expand your business and take on more clients, your time becomes an even more precious commodity.
Since you can't clone yourself (yet), you need to find a way to effectively manage your time so that you can be the best agent you can be for each of your clients. In this post, we'll explore how you can do that successfully without burning out along the way.
Let's get started.
Set a Daily Routine
One of the secrets to effectively managing multiple real estate clients by yourself is to set a daily routine.
You may have heard that in real estate, you have no boss. But in reality, you have two bosses: Your schedule and your client. If you truly want to find success, you have to be disciplined with every minute of your work time.
The top-performing real estate agents obey their schedules, which are typically divided into three main tasks: lead generation, business servicing, and client work. To grow your business while also attending to your clients, you must do all three.
Lead generation can include everything you do to attract new leads for yourself and for your clients, which is crucial if you're representing a seller.
Business servicing, on the other hand, will include all of the repetitive tasks you do on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly basis to ensure that your business runs. This means paying bills and expanding your real estate knowledge — both of these are never-ending tasks that must be done.
Finally, there is client work. This includes creating listing presentations, showing houses, negotiating prices, and preparing contracts, just for starters.
Multiply everything you do for client work times the number of clients you have. Without having a set plan in place for each client (which we'll discuss later in this post), you'll quickly get overwhelmed by all of your client-related responsibilities.
This is why it’s crucial to create a daily rhythm. Having a set schedule in place creates the structure you need to be able to effectively handle all of the tasks on your agenda, and also lets you know when you’re at maximum capacity.
Click here to learn how to schedule your day as a real estate agent.
Use a Calendar
Going hand-in-hand with a daily routine is maintaining a calendar of to-do tasks. There are two main types of calendars: Paper calendars and their digital counterparts. While we’re all familiar with paper calendars, you may get more use out of a digital calendar. Here’s why:
- Easy access on the go You can set up your calendar on your desktop or laptop and then access it on your phone. Since you're not always in front of your office computer, being able to pull up your calendar while you're at a listing is a huge plus. Your digital calendar will automatically sync so that you’ll always get the most up-to-date version wherever you access it.
- Schedule meetings automatically If you use a meeting scheduler like Calendly, your clients can schedule their meetings and it will automatically block off the time on your calendar. You can also schedule your own meetings. The easiest app to do so with is Google Calendar. You probably already have a Google account, so using the Google Calendar will be an easy transition. If your client also uses Google Calendar, you can use this tool to suggest the best meeting time for you and your clients.
- The ability to set reminders After setting up your events in your digital calendar, you can set up reminders to notify you of the upcoming event. Notifiers can be set for a day ahead or even five minutes ahead and can be sent to your desktop or your email.
As you can see, all of these benefits would be impossible with a standard paper-and-pen calendar.
Plan Your Day Ahead
Your calendar will help you the most when you use it regularly. If you don’t use it on a daily basis, you won’t fully take advantage of its power.
One of the best things you can do is review your calendar at the end of the day for the day ahead. Mentally prepare yourself for the tasks that are coming your way. Look for last-minute opportunities to rearrange your schedule in a way that may be more effective. You may see that some of your tasks can be better grouped together.
For example, if you have a showing close to your dry cleaners, it makes better use of your time to do both of those tasks at the same time instead of going to the dry cleaners in the morning and returning back to that same spot in the afternoon.
Prioritize Your Tasks
Not all tasks are of equal importance. Some have quickly approaching deadlines. Others can wait. It’s crucial to prioritize your tasks when you work with clients because, to the average client, every task is urgent and must be done right now. Following along with the whims of your clients is the quickest way to burn out.
Instead of letting your clients set the pace, you must prioritize what needs to be done and stick to those priorities even if they are challenged.
Also, some clients are more time-consuming and demanding than others. In addition to prioritizing tasks, consider prioritizing who you work with and when. Try not to schedule working with too many demanding clients in the same morning because that can be exhausting. If necessary, stagger meetings with breaks or business-related tasks so that you can mentally unwind before dealing with another strong personality.
Set Up a Plan for Each Client
Every client comes to you with a goal in mind, whether to buy, sell, or lease a property. While their personalities and specific needs may change, their goals are set in stone. This is great news because it gives you the opportunity to create a set workflow for each client. If their goal is to buy a home, you can lay out the exact steps that they’ll need to take to go from shopper to owner. And then you can do it all over again for the next client.
Standardizing this process will make scaling your business a lot easier. Since you already know what steps go into the process, you can create a workflow to ensure you’re doing everything you’re supposed to do for the client on the right schedule. This workflow can be as simple as a checklist that you complete for each client. Or you can create a standardized workflow with a project management tool like Trello, which we’ll discuss more below.
Use a Project Management Tool
Allow me to introduce you to your next best friend: Your project management tool. Apps like Trello, Asana, Notion, and others are used to create, monitor, and actively manage your projects.
Now, you may be thinking, I’m a real estate agent. Do I really need a project management tool?
And the answer is yes if you meet any of the following conditions:
- You're a visual thinker and like to visualize timelines and deadlines
- You want to stay organized
- You want a tool to keep track of where your clients are in their process
- You need to see upcoming deadlines in one place
- You'd like to standardize your workflow
- You're working with others (whether a team or an assistant) and you need a central hub for collaboration and task delegation
Check out this example of how you can use the project management tool Trello to organize your business and handle multiple real estate agents.
A project management tool doesn’t only help you see what needs to be done, but it can also send out notifications to keep you on track. While it may take an afternoon to get comfortable with using a project management tool, you won’t regret doing it. It will empower you to do a ton more for your business than relying on sticky notes and your memory.
Final Thoughts
Juggling multiple clients isn’t easy, but it’s part of the job when you’re a real estate agent. Use the above tips to keep yourself organized.