Winter is the ideal time for you to reassess your career and improve it.
Winter has arrived and many people are feeling a bit lethargic at the thought of the cold months ahead. As an estate agent, this time of year can provide a good opportunity to “take stock,” find new ways to manage your time and achieve better balance in your life.
“This is notoriously difficult for estate agents to do,” says Shaun Rademeyer, CEO of SA’s biggest mortgage originator, BetterLife Home Loans, “but if you don’t want to run the risk of burnout it is very necessary, especially if you’ve found yourself working harder and enjoying it less lately, or if living at the beck and call of clients is seriously cutting into your family and social life.”
Five top tips from real estate trainers and coaches that will help you regain control:
Get fired up. Real motivation, along with energy, creativity and stamina, come from having clear objectives. So if you feel “stuck”, you need to spend some time working out what you really want your life to look like. Take a few days away from the office if necessary to quietly reassess your goals and make a plan to achieve them.
Value your own time. If you need to attend your son’s soccer game, or to have coffee with a good friend you haven’t seen for months, schedule the time to do so in your diary, and treat it with the same respect as a business appointment.
Learn to delegate more. This is always difficult for highly driven and entrepreneurial people to do, but it will make you more productive. Decide what aspects of your workload can be outsourced, and do so without delay. Even if you start by having a part-time assistant, you can buy back hours of your time for much less than you could earn in that time.
Learn. Be it new skills or invest in new technology that will enable you to use your time more effectively. The initial cost in time or money will soon be recouped and surpassed as you find yourself working smarter, not harder.
Politely ‘drop’ those people who don’t respect your time and talents. Once again, this is very difficult for estate agents to do, especially in a slow market. But your training and expertise is valuable (see above) and it is just not worth hanging on to sellers who really aren’t serious, buyers who really don’t know what they want and anyone else who is just using you and draining your energy. Rather spend your time learning something new or canvassing for new business.