Spring Cleaning for Your Real Estate Business
Spring is upon us and it’s time to open up the windows, get the fresh air in- and get down to some spring cleaning! While it’s important to get your own home looking and feeling fresh for Spring, it’s just as important as a real estate professional to start thinking about giving your business a good Spring cleaning.
Reducing Email Clutter
In a perfect world, your business would run like a well-oiled machine entirely on its own. But the reality is, clutter has a way of creeping into our professional lives that can derail our productivity. One thing that plagues many real estate businesses, or any business, is the abundance of emails and trying to keep up with them. Don’t be a slave to your inbox; instead have it work for you.
Utilize labels and folders, organize emails with stars and flags, unsubscribe from unwanted emails, and delete, unpin, or unarchive emails that are no longer needed. While you can’t stop all incoming emails, you can use rules, or sometimes known as filters, to identify emails by the sender, subject line, or recipient to automatically place them in the correct folder, assign labels to them, or even delete them en masse.
Database Clean Up
The main reason it’s so important to have a clean database is because you want to be able to segment your audience. The better you segment, the more your marketing efforts will resonate. For some real estate professionals, they put this off because it can be intimidating and time consuming. But the truth is, cleaning up your database is like house chores, it’s never really done. So rather than making it a major project that feels impossible and requires a lot of time, we recommend breaking it down into smaller tasks:
- How many contacts are in your database right now?
- How many of them have a full name, email, phone number, and full address in their record?
- If need to know other important criteria for your business, include that as well
- How many only have a name and email address?
- How many only have a name and phone number?
Not every record needs to be perfect to get started, but it helps to know how many records have gaps and what those gaps are so you can figure out a plan to correct that for your current records and new records going forward. If you’re experienced with excel, export your database into a spreadsheet so you can quickly filter and see where the missing data is and how many records need updating.
Office Space Clean Up
Whether you are still working from home or back at the office, cleaning up your office space will help keep your mind clear and ready for busy season. It’s easiest to tackle when you work by sections. Is your desk messy? Do you have files stacking up? Are the shelves overloaded? Start with one area and work in small sections at a time. Find a designated area for office supplies such as post-it notes, staples, and paper clips. Decorative containers, drawers or bins can help keep your office supplies in a neat and accessible place. If you want to go the extra mile, clean the furniture in your office as well as the floor and anything else that may be collecting dust and dirt. Regardless of how paperless you are, it’s inevitable for paper clutter to pile up. Make room on a shelf or cabinet for file boxes or paper trays. Start separating papers by type such as “to file”, “to do”, and “trash”. As a rule of thumb, only items that you use on a regular basis should be kept at an arm’s length.
