Real estate transactions, customer relationships and teamwork are most productive when using systems to organize, manage and track what’s expected and what’s happening.
Let’s talk about how Real Estate Agents and Assistants can stay organized, manage getting tasks done while staying organized and keeping things on track with your team.
We’re not necessarily talking about a computer system to help you do things. We’re talking about setting up systematic ways of doing your work that creates a level of transparency so you aren’t all over the board with your responsibilities. This post is both for Agents and Assistants.
Agents need to make decisions about the priorities in their business, while Assistants can help design the systems for how to get there. This way, Assistants can take care of their job and help to keep the Agent on track as well.
There are many, many systems we can go over to provide insights about what you can set up in your office so today, we’re going to start at the beginning with a calendar system.
I’ve included the wisdom and experience of the very talented Wendi Molina. She has been a Transaction Coordinator for the past 20 years in California and she teaches and trains both REALTORS® and Transaction Coordinators the transaction management process for the California Association of REALTORS®. She is also one of the instructors of our Real Estate Assistant training program, REA 101: The Essential Guide for Real Estate Assistants.
We’re not the Agents, so we are NOT the ones to tell you which system you need to use or how you need to set it up. What we can do is offer you advice on how to do things and then you can figure out the system that works best for your office together.
WHAT CAN YOU ORGANIZE USING A TEAM CALENDAR SYSTEM?
There are a variety of things you can organize utilizing a calendar system and ideally a shared calendar system on the team:
- Listing appointments for your Agent
- Following up with clients
- Showings of the Listings or with Buyers for your Agent(s)
- Meeting photographers, stagers, etc. to prepare listings for marketing
- Inspections, appraisals, repairs, etc. during the contingency process before closing
- Open houses, brokers’ tour schedules for listings
- Vacations, holidays, other events that impact your team
- Promotional calendar: blog posts, social media posts, postcards and mailers to past clients, marketing for listings, holiday/birthday cards to SOI/COI/PC and more…
There might be some trial and error to figure it out, but the Assistant, the administrative support professional, is the one that helps hold everything together, right?!
So you need to make sure that you are utilizing a calendar system to the best of your ability to make sure everybody on the team is staying on track for everything that is due.
NOW, HOW DO YOU USE A SHARED CALENDAR?
With a shared online calendar, the Assistant can set up the appointment or event and ‘invite’ their Agent, or team members, so when they accept, this shows up on their calendar. This way they can manage what is going on.
When an Assistant can see the calendar for others, they can make appointments with inspectors, etc. knowing which dates and times are available. No back and forth to set up the appointments; you can see it the person is able to work that into their schedule – boom, done!
You can create one through Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, and some transaction management software.
You can also use a wall calendar that is paper or a whiteboard and visible to the Agent or Team, when they are in the office.
This is the start of things for transparency in working relationships. Two of the pillars of effective teamwork are transparency and accountability. Shared calendars can be the first step to create a system to have clear, effective and efficient communication about appointments, events and the precious use of time.
Are you using a calendar system? What calendaring system works best for your team?
We’ll cover more systems in our future blog posts. To stay tuned and get updates on future blogs, click here to join our email list – choose exactly what you want to receive from us in your inbox.