Take a look at your calendar for the weekend. Down time can be difficult to come by as a bustling real estate agent, but if you’ve got a slot open, take advantage and perform a business check-in.
While it’s great to get some relaxation time in, as an agent, you don’t want to hit a dry spell just when you need new leads the most. This is the perfect opportunity to take advantage of the lag time by putting a plan in place to ramp up your business.
Sure, yearly business meetings are where you get the brunt of your planning done, but it doesn’t hurt to review your action plan every couple of months to make sure everything is going smoothly, especially if you’re at the start of your career. You don’t want to miss out on any opportunities you just weren’t aware of when you first sat down and formulated a plan.
So, what can you do this weekend to tighten up your business strategies?
Step 1: Go over your existing business plan. Notice any action items you’ve let go by the wayside in the past few weeks? Implement a new strategy to put these back into play and ensure they don’t go forgotten again. This could mean that you take care of the items in question yourself, or, if you didn’t get to them the first time around, this may be a good time to look into an organizational system that can help you more easily achieve your goals.
Some foundational marketing strategies should be able to get you started fairly quickly. For example, performing a SWOT analysis (which stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats), will allow you to outline your business’ immediate needs, and then you can see if they line up with your original business plans. Investopedia has a great resource for getting started on this.
Step 2: Tweak any strategies that just don’t make sense anymore because of market shifts, changes within the business or innovations that have introduced a simpler method of getting your desired end result. You don’t want to get stuck in a rut—it’s the age of innovation and there are great tech solutions out there! And if we’ve learned anything in the last year and a half, it’s that the business can change very quickly, and you have to be prepared to adapt.
A great way to do this? Check in with your fellow REALTORS®. What systems do they have in place that help them achieve what you’re looking to achieve? Some quick online research may reveal tech systems that could really benefit your business.
Keep in mind, it’s okay to pivot. As long as you’re not starting completely from scratch, experimenting and switching things up should be built into your business strategy.
Step 3: Get it all in writing. With everything else going on during the weekend, besides the usual listing appointments or showings, this free time could prove unproductive if you don’t take the time to write these new action items in either an email, a reminder to fellow members if you are on a team, or in your business planner.
According to Zapier, several tools are available to help you with note-taking depending on if you’re an on-the-go person, need something handy on your desktop or need a program you can collaborate with others on. Some of them include:
– Evernote
– Microsoft OneNote
– Apple Notes
– Notion
Errands and brunch aside, you can use your rare free weekend time to truly transform your business. It just takes a little dedication and a lot of focus, especially if beautiful weather and enticing events are calling your name.
Remember, the more you can plan ahead, the less superfluous work you’ll have to do in the long run, freeing up your future weekends so you can enjoy a more balanced life.
Liz Dominguez is RISMedia’s senior online editor. Email her your real estate news ideas to lizd@rismedia.com.
