JULIAN SAYS:

If you and your staff never have enough time to finish your tasks, better time management will help you regain control of your day.

Effective time management may require that you focus on the tasks that matter and ultimately become more productive. Learning how to manage time effectively will help you feel more relaxed, focused and in control.

It worries me that so many agents seem to be at the beck and call of ‘to do lists’. I recently
asked a young negotiator in an agent’s office what the day ahead involved. “I want to get
as much of my To Do list done as I can,” he replied. At the risk of sounding like a boring
old wotsit, at his age I would have replied “I want to hit my viewings target, get two
instructions and tie up three sales!”

The aforementioned scenario may be due to the misunderstanding nowadays within estate agency about what ‘priorities’ actually are. In truth, genuine priorities are tasks which pass the ‘urgent’ and ‘important’ test.

‘Urgent’ tasks may carry a short-term deadline, while an ‘Important’ task is likely to have an influence or impact on your bottom line by making or saving money.

Once you grasp the fundamentals of the ‘urgent’ and ‘important’ test, tasks can be grouped into one of four categories: 
● urgent and important
● not urgent but important
● urgent but not important
● neither urgent nor important
So what does each heading actually mean?

Urgent and Important:

This is often called the ‘Crises’ category. A buyer threatening to pull out of their purchase
would fall into this category. It’s ‘urgent’ as it needs to be dealt with immediately and
‘important’ as your fee is dependent on the transaction reaching exchange.

Getting to Friday afternoon and realising the weekend rota is going to leave the office short on staff is another issue that would fall into this category as it passes the ‘urgent’ and ‘important’ tests. However, there is one key difference between these two examples. The former could not have been foreseen – the latter could have.

Last minute activities like this can be avoided by planning ahead and avoiding procrastination. Issues and crises, on the other hand, cannot always be foreseen or avoided. Here, the best approach is to leave some time in your schedule to handle unexpected issues and unplanned important activities. In the current climate, a potential vendor calling to say they wish to put their property on the market by the weekend would almost certainly mean some instant rescheduling of other tasks to accommodate.

Many agents are at the mercy of ‘To do’ lists

If you have a lot of urgent and important activities, identify which of these could have been foreseen, and think about how you could schedule similar activities ahead of time, so that they don’t become a crisis.

Urgent and Not Important:

This category is best described as ‘Quick and Simple’ – in other words, things that have
to be done quickly but which should take as little time as possible – after all, they are not
impacting on the bottom line of the business.

Responding to emails, essential personal phone calls and even interruptions from other people in your office are examples.

With that last issue, sometimes it’s appropriate to politely say “No”, or to encourage them to solve the problem themselves.

Alternatively, try scheduling time for these issues, such as in your morning meetings.

Not Urgent, but Important:

This essentially covers tasks that fall under the ‘Planning’ category.

Examples would include marketing, ongoing client contact, canvassing and so on. Allow for plenty of time to do these things properly, so that they don’t become urgent.

One of my client firms relaxed their canvassing activities at the back end of last year and is now regretting the lack of stock on their books.

Failure to canvas has created a crisis which is now firmly under the ‘urgent and important’
heading!

For you as a manager of people, ‘planning’ staff appraisals through the year is essential.
Failure to do so will potentially create ‘crises’ around staff morale or even departures.

Not Urgent and Not Important:

These activities are just a distraction, and should be avoided if possible. Some can simply be ignored or cancelled. They are regarded as ‘waste of time’ activities.

The Urgent/Important concept will help you assess your task list, and to quickly identify the activities you should focus on.

As Michael Altshuler said, “The bad news is time flies. The good news is that you’re
the pilot.”