I thrive on systems, but of course, I’m human and have tried to cut corners a time or two; however, I’ve learned that it’s never a good idea. I’ll tell you a story of a time I chose to deviate from my own proven systems and how it came back to bite me.
I had a number of new listings coming online at the time, 7 or 8 actually. For each listing, there are many moving parts before they’re able to go live: drone footage, video photography, professional staging and photos, 3D virtual tours, etc. I’d gotten everything queued up and ready to go for this particular listing. Now at this time during my process, I’ll typically send the draft out to the seller for review before the listing goes live.
Here’s where the listing takes a bad turn…
This client happened to be a fellow member of our local country club. I knew they might be playing golf right then and was able to check their tee time online to confirm I was right. I thought to myself, you know they’re not going to be done for 4 or 5 more hours. I had some other commitments to do later that day so I concluded that it would be more efficient if I just hit “Enter” to make the listing live on the MLS and then launch the email distribution of the new home in my newsletter. Here’s where you can cringe… By deviating from my system, I later realized that there were things on this listing that I had missed that would have been caught if I’d only sent out the draft email to the seller.
The email I send out typically goes something like this,
Subject: DRAFT Listing in the MLS
Hey ____,
Below is a DRAFT listing in the MLS. Please check the details of the listing including the description and photography and provide any additional feedback and input on changes that you’d like to see.
I look forward to your feedback.
Chris
It’s very valuable to get input from the seller and I usually don’t get everything right in my draft. So, it’s a good part of my system and checklist for listing a property and in this case, would have saved my butt. For one thing, I had forgotten that I wasn’t planning to launch this listing on the MLS for another 10 or so days. And I also excluded multiple details of the listing by mistake. Obviously, this listing wasn’t up to the professional standards that I pride myself on and detail orientation is very important to me.
Morral of the story: when you cut corners bad things happen.
Repeatable systems not only save me time, but they save me the energy and stress that it causes me to have to clean up my mess. Over the years I’ve learned what works and when I stick to my repeatable systems, my listings go off without a hitch and I’m able to maintain my reputation as a top real estate agent in the luxury/ affluent community of buyers and sellers in my market.
If you’re feeling stressed out and feel like you don’t have enough time to get it all done, I recommend taking another look at your systems and your checklists. Are they dialed in? Once you have the day-to-day tasks under control that’s when the growth truly begins. You’ll have more time to market yourself and nurture your leads with incredibly valuable tools like monthly market reports, newsletters, blog posts, and other premium content to make you shine and stand out from your competition.
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