You know, when you do a lot of volume in REO, you spend a lot of time looking at the big picture and you sometimes forget about the small improvements that could greatly impact the efficiency and morale of your team. Sit here for just a moment now and imagine that you are sitting in your office chair trying to get a little work done. As you stare at the words on your computer screen, words that look a lot like the ones you see on your screen now, black on a white background, you begin to feel yourself tuning in. The more you stare at these words and the the tasks they represent, the more you settle into your place and get so focused that you can almost feel your chest rise and fall with each breath you take. You are in your zone, to the point that you are feeling super energized and ready to accomplish the work of two or maybe even three people. Then all of a sudden...
RING! The stinking phone rings, and blows your concentration completely! It's an agent on the line asking you for a lock box code! You think to yourself "I have so much important work to do and I can't believe that I have to answer these kind of calls." You hang up and feel a little frustrated from being pulled unwillingly out of your focused "super accomplisher" mode, but you clear your head and dive right back in. Then RING RING RING...there it goes again. Another "lock box" call.It happens over and over again all day long as you try to work until finally you're totally flustered. Unfocused. Day blown. Kaput! I am sure that by now you really get the gist of what it is that I am trying to point out here. There are things in your business that screw it up every day almost unconsciously. And the more of these things you permit to invade your business, the more money you LOSE! Hey, do you look around enough every day to see these things happening. WOULD YOU EVEN NOTICE? Honestly? As the boss, it's sometimes easy to forget the little "nags" that seem to infiltrate your business every day. These little VAMPIRES suck the life right out of your employees and absolutely kill productivity. Well, if you're like me, you will NOT have this happening in YOUR business! In the business of selling bank owned homes,, with constant pressure on the prices of foreclosures and on commissions, and with the multitude of tasks that need to be accomplished each day, it is CRITICAL that you squash these little "time suckers" as soon as their ugly little heads pop up. You simply MUST run an extremely tight ship to stay ahead of the game. To me, the phone is a vital part of my business. And it is absolutely crucial for an Asset Manager, Buyer or an Agent to be able to get through to a live staff member very quickly when they need to. You ALWAYS want to strive to provide the highest level of service and part of giving great service is being readily available to colleagues, clients and customers (if you don't "get" this already then you need to seriously rethink ANY sales career my friend đ But what if you could head off some of those calls that could be easily handled "automatically" without your participation, so that you and your staff could stay totally focused on productivity. Heck, how about if these little things could be handled without you even knowing that they were done? Well,the phone thing is very simple. In my business, we have implemented an online password protected spreadsheet, that only agents can reference, to obtain current property status information and lock box codes. We simply provide the private web address and pass code for them to access the list and we avoid any distracting calls. On our end we simply keep the spreadsheet updated with current information and then when agents need the information, they simply view the document online and they never have to call you. Hey, it may seem silly but I find that seemingly "small" tricks like this can end up saving me a couple hours of lost productivity per employee on a weekly basis. When you annualize that number it equates to HUNDREDS of man hours. Think about that. What could you accomplish in a hundred hours? TONS! It's little things like this that allow me to continually outproduce my competitors while keeping a smaller staff. Hey, it's not brain surgery here. Smaller Staff=Less Overhead=HIGHER PROFIT! I'm no math genius but I like the answer to that equation! I'll teach you this and other tricks on REO Rockstars calls and I'll show you exactly how to get these things set up in your own business and to learn how to sell foreclosures in the most cost-effective manner possible. Until then, take a good hard look at your business and see how many little fixes you can come up with. Look around. Ask the staff. I think you'll be surprised at how many you'll find.
