Do you suffer from a “no one can do it better than I can” complex?

It’s a common affliction among real estate agents. Maybe it’s a side effect of toxic hustle culture. Maybe you just have a hard time relinquishing control.

Whatever your reasons, if the thought of delegating your work makes you feel anxious, this blog post is for you!

How To Overcome The “No One Can Do It Better Than Me” Complex

First, know what tasks to delegate—and what NOT to delegate.

Kendyl Young, broker/owner of DIGGS, says agents should be delegating everything except these three things: relationship-building work; contract negotiations; and those important face-to-face, one-on-one “client care” conversations as you guide them through a transaction.

So. what should you be delegating? To give you an idea, here are just a few real estate tasks you could be delegating to another person:

  • Answering the phone
  • Updating contact information in your database
  • Segmenting leads in your database
  • Scheduling appointments
  • Managing listings & uploading photos
  • Sharing listings to social media
  • Creating graphics for social media
  • Sending prewritten emails
  • Scheduling home inspections
  • Bookkeeping
  • Managing paperwork

And there is so much more that can be delegated! Once you’ve begun to take this type of work off your plate, you’ll have more time to spend on the important relationship-building, negotiating, and client-care activities that you—and only you—can do.

Use your real estate CRM to maintain quality control.

Your fear—that no one can do it as well as you—is valid. You have more years of experience than your admin assistant. You know your clients better. You know this business better.

But there’s a way to make sure your expertise shines through, even in the work you’re delegating. You just need to enlist the help of a robust real estate CRM—one that doubles as an automation platform.

With a CRM like Realvolve, you can create automated workflows that will guide a team member in implementing every step of your process. Once you assign your assistant to a workflow, they’ll receive reminders and prompts every time an action needs to occur.

As part of your listing workflow, for example, your admin might be prompted to upload listing photos, share the listing on social media, and call the client to confirm everything looks correct. And within each prompt or task, they’ll also be provided with your detailed instructions.

You can also create email templates that are prewritten by you and designed to pull in data fields (client name, property address, etc.). The message still feels like it’s coming from you, but someone else is clicking the send button.

Boom. Delegated. And still top notch.

Related: A CRM Story: “Help Wanted, No Real Estate Experience Required”
Learn how broker Christian Nossum built out his entire process through workflows in a real estate CRM…and hired a 22-year-old with zero real estate experience to manage it all.

How To Get Started With Delegating

Once you’ve overcome your anxieties related to delegating, it’s time to start letting go!

Set aside some time to plan.

“You have to take some time to work on your business,” says Kendyl. “You have to shut down the social media and silence your phone and stick the kids in another room and close the door—at least for a couple of hours—to really be able to focus.”

Next, she says, think of your least favorite task. The most boring, tedious, time-consuming task that you absolutely hate to do. Pick it apart, write down every step that has to happen to complete that task—and every person involved—and look for steps that can be delegated to someone else. 

Start small

There is power in small changes. Start with just one tiny delegation. Even if it’s a 5-minute task, every instance in which you don’t have to spend time on it, you’ll get 5 minutes added back to your day.

And once you get this first small taste of delegating, you’ll want even more. So start small and see where it takes you!

No assistant? Delegate to your CRM instead.

If you’re not quite ready to hire an assistant, you can delegate many of your tasks to your real estate CRM (as long as it’s a robust CRM like Realvolve that includes workflows and automation). A powerful CRM can send a text message to new leads right when them come in, email weekly Seller Reports, schedule and confirm appointments, and so much more.

[VIDEO] Automate, Delegate, Organize: How To Save An Hour A Day

In this on-demand webinar, Kendyl Young shares how real estate agents can get better at delegating and using their automation platform. Watch the full webinar now!

 

This blog post was originally published on March 4, 2022. It has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.