Real Estate Technology, Starbucks and Your Email
Today, as I often do, I spent a few hours writing in my local coffee shop. Today it was Starbucks, but after my experience there, tomorrow I will be somewhere different.
My cell phone wasn’t working for some reason and there was a call I really needed to make. I walked to the front counter and asked if I could use the phone to make a local call. Seeing as though there are no public phone booths in sight anymore, I was sure that it wouldn’t be a problem.
Heck, I even worked at Starbucks in college. We had people using the phone left and right.
So I asked the question and guess what the response was?
“Sorry, we can’t do that.”
I responded, “Is it illegal?”
It was politely explained that using the Starbucks phone wasn’t illegal, it was just against the “policy.”
There is no phrase I detest more than hearing that one. “It’s the policy,” doesn’t really help anyone. Of course it makes the poor employee feel like he is protecting his job… until the next round of layoffs come by of course.
I always try to learn something from the experiences in my life that rub me the wrong way. And there is an important lesson here for us who use technology in the real estate world. It involves us getting so caught up in things that we can’t see the forest for the trees… just like my experience in Starbucks with their “policy.”
Technology is great, unless it keeps us from reaching our business goals, then it is just plain worthless.
Take email for example…
How many times a day do you check your email? Do you carry a Blackberry or some other device that lets you be constantly “connected?”
If you do, I have one question for you:
Does it make you more productive or does it just make you busier?
I would guess that it is more often the latter.
Email was designed to make us more productive, but I work with a lot of real estate professionals who feel completely overwhelmed by the amount of email they get dumped in their inbox everyday.
My advice? Forget about it and focus on your real goals (answering email probably isn’t one of them) – like doubling your income or maximizing the results of your upcoming mailing. Email is not going to make or break your business.
If you are really worried that waiting till tomorrow to respond to your emails will send your client off looking for someone else to take your place, then you’ve got a much bigger problem than having too much email.
You are a commodity. And in business, that is a deadly thing to be.
So set a schedule and stick with it. Check your email once, twice a day and get back to the business of marketing yourself and promoting what really makes you a valuable asset to your clients.
“Does it make you more productive or does it just make you busier?” good call
— chris Mar 10, 03:31 AM #