Being a Property Manager is not easy and there are always going to be things that pull you away from sticking to a plan. However, the more disciplined you are in keeping to your plan the better off you will be. Something always pops up that needs urgent attention and will take precedence over your other tasks or that unexpected client has dropped into the office and keeps you busy for an hour. The important thing is not to stress.
TOOLS FOR EFFICIENCY
Be proactive rather than re-active. Anticipate what may happen or a question which may be asked and address it before it becomes an issue.
Don't procrastinate on the hard stuff - do it and get it out the way.
Keep a to do list and update it regularly.
Prioritize your tasks and do the important ones first.
Roll over your non important tasks to the next day’s list but do this only once as the more it gets pushed back the louder it becomes.
Don’t procrastinate – make that call that you are avoiding. Most the time, it won’t be as bad as you imagined. But it will get worse, the longer you leave it. Having hard conversations is difficult but delaying hard conversations will make it worse.
Block your time out to focus on tasks each day/week and try not to be distracted with incoming calls/emails during these times.
Return all your missed calls at one time.
Utilize your calendar and keep to the time frames. It won't matter if you don't finish everything that day - you can start again tomorrow.
Tag your emails into categories so when you are working on a particular day, you can go back to your emails and work through them as well. e.g. emails regarding maintenance - tag them with maintenance and when you are in maintenance mode, attend to the emails.
Maintenance - make sure you are referring your tenants to Bricks and Agent on all occasions to cut back on email traffic.
Plan to do your out of office appointments all at once, avoid leaving the office for quick trips multiple times a day (if you can)
Take your time and complete the task on hand correctly to avoid double handling - nothing worse than having to go back over something because you have made a silly mistake.
Ask for help!
Don’t be afraid to speak up, teamwork makes the dream work
KEEP YOUR HEAD IN THE RIGHT SPACE
OWN UP TO YOUR MISTAKES – we all make mistakes, and high-pressure environments are a hot bed for oversights and errors. If you make a mistake, own up to it quickly and never hide it. Almost every issue that occurs is fixable and often at no financial cost if dealt with fast. The longer you leave it, the more complex, harder to fix and costly the problem becomes. This causes stress and unnecessary time wasting.
TAKE A LUNCH BREAK- Sometimes you just need to leave and go for a walk or go to the coffee shop and just have a break. You’ll come back recharged and able to give more energy to the tasks ahead.
FOCUS ON ONE TASK—Who said you should be able to do five things at once? The key is single focus on one task until it’s 100% completed before moving onto the next. Sure, you might be managing five different issues in the same ten minutes, but only do one task at a time!
GET SUPPORT- Talk honestly to your manager about workload and if there are any resources available to assist you.
USE TEMPLATES – Email templates are created to save you time instead of typing the same thing over & over. Utilise your Property Tree templates.
AVOID PHONE TAG- If you & your client keep missing one another, let them know a time you will be available or vice versa. When you do this, 95% of the time you will manage to catch up.
UNDERSTAND THAT OVERWHELM IS RELATIVE– What overwhelms one person, another can handle with no problems. It just means that you’re facing issues that you’ve probably never faced before. It’s all about getting experience dealing with these issues and realising what is on the other side of them.
WRITE DOWN / REFLECT ON THE LEARNINGS– If you evaluate the situation after feeling over-whelmed by writing down the issues and how they were handled, or could better be handled, this will relieve your stress by 50%. Self-evaluation and asking for feedback is a massive tool for learning and personal growth. This will build your confidence to better handle situations going forward.
USE YOUR CALENDAR
1. Use your calendar to enter in task reminders
2. Allocate the correct time for appointments
4. Block tasks into an “ideal week” with reoccurring appointments and try as best you can to stick to completing your tasks at the allocated time.
5. Have a routine for your ideal week tasks such as renewals, maintenance, arrears, closing routines at the same time each day/week. That way you build up a routine and habit to attend to that task.
6. For safety reasons, always have all appointments entered into your calendar so that we know where to find you in the event of an emergency.
MANAGING EMAILS
EMAIL MANAGEMENT- Deal with the spam first, unsubscribe to what you don’t need, tag your emails with labels so you can attend to them at a later date.
AVOID EMAIL PING-PONG – If an email is going back and forth more than a couple of times, it may be quicker to get on the phone and have a conversation. A phone call will save a thousand words in an email, save time, and eliminate any misunderstanding or undertones. After the phone call it is best practice to email confirmation of the main points agreed to in the phone call.
DON'T GET LOST IN YOUR EMAILS– Attend to your emails in batches of three of four blocks a day. When you’re in email mode, you are most productive and can power through them faster. Getting lost in your inbox all day will prevent you from attending to other tasks like bonds, maintenance or lease renewals.
REMOVE ANY EXPECTATION OF AN INSTANT REPLY- Replying to emails instantly can be good when you have a quick answer and it’s a simple reply, but if you do this all the time, you are setting the expectation to your clients they will always receive an instant reply from you.
If the email relates to something for which you don't have a quick answer, acknowledge receipt of the email by responding with "Thank you for your email. I am unable to respond at the moment and will be back in touch within 24 hours"
If you are still unable to respond to the query, make sure you follow up with the client to let them know you have been further delayed.
OTHER TIPS & TRICKS
When you are not scheduled to be working on emails turn your notifications off or change to offline. You will still be able to access the emails and respond to emails however no new emails will come in to distract you and pull you aware from the task at hand. Any emails that you sent when in offline mode won’t be sent until you next turn offline mode off.
Don’t be afraid to put your phone on silent and not answer when you are working on a particular task. People will leave you a message or send you an email which you can review and respond to when you are next working on communication. Just make sure that you respond to them even if it is to let them know that you received the message and are looking into it.
Work-life balance is important and having a good balance can mean you are more efficient and less stressed at work. Being a Property Manager, you may think of things out of hours that you want to deal with. Instead of dealing with these items during your off time, text or email yourself a reminder. This will help put it out of mind for the time being but ensure you remember the task for tomorrow.