So I am just starting this blogging. I remember my college English professor telling us that the ‘beginning is the hardest when writing.’ She was right! How do you start, what do you start with, and is it anything other than just ranting and raving jibberish for my own sanity when it comes to blogging.
It is amazing to many people outside of the industry at all the ‘things’ that could go wrong and do go wrong in a transaction. A great agent is able to address the opportunities that arise because of either a checklist that allows them know what should be around the next corner or experience has given the agent some insight into how to handle the situation.
Checklists are another great tool for an agent to have. Closing checklists, listing checklists, buyers checklists, phone call checklists. Walter Sandford once said that he has taken every situation he has had and made a checklist for the most common ones. How brilliantly simple. That is something that could be used in any industry, career, or life no matter what you do. If you do something over and over, why not write or type it somewhere so that the next time you can say yep all done or whoops I missed that. I think how my wife is when we go for a trip. Never fails she checks the bag 3 or 4 times before we can leave because she thinks she left something, and unfortunately she usually does.
Simplified and streamlined. Every thing that an agent needs for a situation should be in one convenient place. I create PDFs for the most common things like Buyer Agency Forms, Listing Packets, and Pre-Listing Packets are just a few, but Word documents could be the same way. I have all the forms I need in one spot. I don’t have to go running around the office looking for each sheet, I have them electronically saved so I only print the ones I need, but they are all there when ever I need them. I also have them saved in one folder-yeah that seems logical and simple. The problem is that the computer will give you what it thinks to be the logical place to save. Why would I save a buyers faxed purchase agreement in with my personal pictures? Save it in a file labeled Janey Citizen or whatever the clients name is. All tucked into a single spot and easily found.
Well I will be back with more later. I hope this breaks ‘the beginning is hardest’ since I have now begun to blog! Now so i don’t get behind on my daily todos for real estate I better get back to them. I guess the beginning was the hardest, but it didn’t last long.
