As a sales consultant, it is important to know when to say “when”, and to maintain a balance that ensures you sustain your health and personal life,  as well as your passion for real estate!Being a sales consultant in the real estate industry can be challenging and demanding.  Between juggling clients and family, friends and a social life, you can easily wind up in a position where your life feels overrun by the demands of your career.

Here are five quick things you can start to embrace to help you achieve a healthy work-life balance:

1) Schedule Your Personal Time
Holidays, school runs, health appointments, date nights with your spouse, and children’s sporting events should all be assigned into your schedule.  Ensure they are as non-negotiable as realistically possible.  A good rule of thumb is to never reschedule the same appointment twice.

2) Control Your Time
Communicate to your clients a realistic time you will be able to make an appointment or return their call or email.  Consider altering your voicemail and email greetings, letting people know how and when you will make contact.

3) Team Up To Reduce Your Workload
If you find yourself running out of time at the end of the day or you are constantly chasing your tail, consider taking on a partner, or a personal assistant.   Having a partner enables you to share weekends, evenings, and holiday periods.  Hiring an assistant will alleviate some of the more time-consuming tasks such as marketing administration and social media, freeing up more of your time for bigger tasks.

4) Make The Most Of Our Tools Provided
Harcourts agents have many tools and support services available to them to help keep in touch with clients.  Harcourts Email Subscriptions allow you to subscribe your database to automatically receive any of our newsletters and publications as soon as they are published; The new iPad and iPhone App (eOne) is a low-stress way to manage your contacts, providing reminders for your tasks (such as birthdays and anniversaries), and allows you to track any conversations ensuring you recall all client interactions.  Make life easier for yourself by utilising these valuable tools.

5) Find Time To Disconnect And Unwind
Track your time over the next few weeks and take note of which time periods are the slowest.  If there is a particular day where there is little activity, consider taking this day off each week.  If a day off is too much at this stage in your career, break it into smaller slices of time that are manageable and fit in with your commitments.  Disconnect yourself from your phone, the Internet, and anything else that is work related and build “me” time into your schedule.