Building Work-Life Balance as an Agent in 2020

You sit down for dinner and your phone rings. What if this call results in a deal? If I don’t answer, will they call the next agent?

Sorry, I need to get this.

Work-life balance seems like an impossible achievement for an agent. The only thing certain in the industry is uncertainty - that’s why you want to make sure you capture every opportunity.

Having spent years struggling with work-life balance as an agent, and now finding myself talking to agents every day about their goals, I’d like to share a few things I’ve learned from agents who manage work-life balance well.

The Problem with Shallow Goals

Goal setting in sales is most often characterised by volume, with targets such as sales per year, appraisals per week, or Gross Commission Income.

The challenge is; these targets reflect only a narrow set of personal goals. While revenue-centric goals have a role (I’m not taking away from wanting to put food on the table!) they often completely ignore the many other reasons for becoming an agent. So - why did you become an agent?

Exercise

Think back to why you started real estate in the first place; your “true purpose as an agent”

• What were you expecting real estate would offer you?

• Does your daily reality meet those expectations?

• Knowing what you know now about real estate, what does success look like for you?

• Do the choices you’re making to achieve success ultimately align with the vision you have for your life?

Agents I’ve met who tie their income goals back to their personal goals seem to be more empowered to build boundaries with clients and routinely rest.

The Balancing Act

This is the point at which agents often say work-life balance is a luxury they can’t afford;

“That’s just how real estate is”

It’s true; there’s inherent competition in being an agent. When you pair competition with income uncertainty, this builds a habit of constantly being ‘switched on’.

This mindset is helpful when you’re running offers and doing deals. It’s also the same mindset that turns into “FOMO” and has you answering buyer enquiries on a Saturday night. So - how real is that fear?

When I was an agent it took me a few years to feel comfortable to put in boundaries with vendors and buyers. I gained confidence from understanding what the impact would have been if I deferred afterhour emails and calls until the morning. While the outcome might be different for you, I found it gave me the confidence to assert better boundaries with my time.

Exercise

• For the next couple weeks, keep a tally of each time you get a call outside of business hours

• Note down any call that results in a real opportunity for a deal

• Which of these opportunities would you have lost if you’d delayed the conversation until working hours?

• Which of these ‘replies’ could you have automated?

Efficiencies

“I have a duty to my vendor - I can’t let buyers slip away”

True. And that’s where you can use technology to minimise the effort spent responding to enquiries. Here are a couple of free tools I used:

• For each listing I’d build a templated email with all property documents and answers to frequently asked questions (including price). I would set these up at the beginning of the campaign and evolve them over the course of the campaign. For instructions on how to set these up, search Canned Responses (Gmail) or Email Templates (Outlook)

For calls when I was busy with clients (or family), I had 3-4 messages which I could choose from when rejecting a call. For instructions on how to set these up and customise them, search Respond with Txt (iPhone) or Quick Responses (Android).

(If you’re an iPhone user and you’re feeling tech-confident, you can set up auto-texts for outside of hours)

So to summarise my learnings, there are three basic habits of agents who I’ve noticed who have excellent work-life balance (and great businesses):

1. Find a dedicated space in your goal setting to include personal and family goals alongside your professional goals, and treat all with equal importance

2. Be fully present with your current activity. Give the work-day your all, and then turn your phone off during dinner and fully connect with friends and family

3. Delegate or streamline as much of your “firefighter” tasks to technology as possible.

Sarah Codling, Chief Customer Officer, Woork

Sarah Codling is a co-founder at Woork - an app-based “followup assistant”, helping agents to build better long-term client relationships. To learn how Woork could help you, head to woork.co.nz or email sarah@woork.io