Real Estate Organization Tips: How to Stay Organized While Out of Office

Staying organized while you’re in your office is one thing. However, real estate agents are rarely ever in one place for very long. Between listing appointments, showings, and closings, the average real estate agent is on the go more than they are at a home base. With that in mind, here are four real estate organization tips to help you stay organized while you’re out and about. Read on to learn more.

Use these real estate organization tips to help you stay organized while on the go

1. Live by your calendar.

The first key to staying organized is learning how to manage your time properly. In this case, you’re going to want to learn to make efficient use of a calendar application on your phone. It can be the application that your phone comes with or another one that you downloaded. However, in either case, It’s important to make sure that the application allows for color-coding, and setting alert notifications.

Real estate agents are often tasked with managing multiple transactions and clients at the exact same time. To that end, color-coding can be an efficient system to help you keep everything straight. Think about assigning each client you’re working with at the moment a different color. That way, you’ll easily be able to tell who you’re dealing with at a glance.

Then, once you have your color-coding system figured out, the next step is to become diligent about blocking out time in your calendar. In addition to appointments, you should be blocking out time for administrative tasks, such as marketing and lead generation. Be sure to set an alert notification for any time-sensitive events that may fill up your schedule.

2. Invest in a mobile-optimized CRM system.

In addition to an organized calendar, every real estate agent needs a CRM system. At its core, a CRM system is meant for helping you manage client relationships. Typically, a CRM system will help you organize where any leads fit in your pipeline, which transactions belong to which clients, and what happened during each individual client interaction.

While, these days, most software should be mobile-optimized, this functionality is especially important when it comes to your CRM. For example, if you take a lead phone call while you are in the car, you are going to want to be able to easily input the results of the call into your CRM system when you reach your destination. Likewise, you may want to pull up information on your last interaction with a client before you meet them for a showing.

3. Find a transaction management system that works for you.

While a working calendar and a CRM system are two of the basic organizational tools that a real estate agent needs to be productive on the go, if you want to take things to the next level, you can also consider investing in a transaction management system that works with your phone. Put simply, transaction management systems are meant to organize all the paperwork for various transactions. This is where you will store all of your paperwork.

Some people may feel more comfortable doing their paperwork on their computers once they get back to their office. However, for those who are constantly on their mobile phones, it can be helpful to just be able to email a form to your clients directly from your transaction management system — meaning, there’s no need to wait in a red-hot market.

4. Diligently use the systems you have in place.

Once you’ve put all of these different digital systems and programs into place, the key is to actually use them consistently. A calendar is only as good as the events it shows and a CRM system only works if you fill in information about each client interaction. It may take a little bit of time and practice to get right, but challenge yourself to use these programs as much as possible. After a little while, it should become second nature.

If you find that you’re having trouble utilizing your systems, consider attending a tutorial for each program. Odds are that the program is unfamiliar to you and the learning curve is keeping you from using it to its full potential. However, once you get used to the system, you’re going to be more likely to use it while going about your day-to-day tasks.

The bottom line on these real estate organization tips

Truthfully, being organized as a real estate agent is not an all-or-nothing scenario. No one is perfect and everyone will have an off day where they forget to log a call or schedule a meeting in their calendar. Still, with a little bit of practice, incorporating these real estate organization tips into your life should help you feel more organized when you’re out of the office.