How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
How do you close one real estate deal? One task at a time.
As we look at our real estate closing goals, we have to keep in mind that we can only reach our monthly goals by closing one deal at a time. However, if we’re in a good groove we could actually reach our monthly goal in one transaction (package deal closing).
The point is that in order to close a package deal or an individual deal, we can not become immersed in all of the things that are continuously going on around us. We can not try to rush through one task in order to hurry up and get to the next.
When we rush through our tasks, we tend miss details, miscommunicate, and miss out on a closings. But when we take our time to ensure that all the i’s are dotted and all the t’s are crossed, we’ll get to the closing table….maybe a little slower than we’d like but at least we’ll get there. The key then is to improve our skills so that we can become faster without sacrificing the quality of our work.
Here are some tips that helped me close deals faster in the past…
Start the day early
Start the day reviewing the pending deals; confirm what’s needed and then proceed to step 3.
Send out updates / Request updates from all necessary parties before 8am (Monday-Friday)
Follow up by phone/text after 9am if you don’t receive any responses.
The easiest and most fun real estate professionals to work with usually start their days early as well, and they will usually respond to your request fast, usually within minutes if it’s regarding a pending deal.
Check off task / Review upcoming task
Update all parties
Spend no more than 10-15 minutes TOTAL (per deal) on steps 2-6
This means get to the point in the emails and on the phones. If we can’t make decisions quickly then we’re going to hurt our numbers. It’s also not good to stay on the phone with our clients after we’ve received our answers. We have other clients to service, so get to the point so that you can move on to the next deal. Your clients will thank you for this :)
Here’s an online timer that I use from time to time: Click Here. How much time do you plan on spending on each file per day? Meaning that after you read this, you’re going to work on something right? How much time do you plan to spend on that particular thing? Once you determine the amount of time that you want to spend, set the time for 5 minutes less than the total time.
When the alarm goes off, set it for another 5 minutes. This way you know that you have to WRAP IT UP. I’ll be using this because I can sometimes get deeply immersed into my task as well and I’ll look up and so much time would have gone past.
~Matthew