Giving your assistant the tools they need to work efficiently.

In my year of experience dealing with top producing agents. I have seen a lot of things that work well for agents and a lot of things that don't. It seems every real estate agent and every team of realtors has their own ways and means of making things work.

One thing I have consistently seen is agents essentially throwing money away by providing outdated computers for their assistants. Upgrading your system's memory can be one of the biggest returns on investment you make this year. Lets do the math:

Increased multi-tasking, heavier reliance on computer based communication, and the new versions of standard programs assistants use daily (Word 2007, Excel 2007, Outlook 2007, Windows Vista, Internet Explorer 7, and more complicated web applications) require more system resources and many office systems can hardly keep up.

Let us assume a slow system decreases an assistant's efficiency by 15%. (In many cases, this is a modest estimate). Also let us assume the average real estate assistant working in Chicago makes $30-40k. That translates to $4.5 - 6k of inefficiency per year. Generally a system RAM upgrade can be purchased for between $65-150. An onsite installation and system upgrade usually takes between 1-2 hours. So the total would generally run $160-$340. According to the math from above it should take only 13 to 28 calendar days to recover your investment.

Don't take my word for it. You can see for yourself:

1. Go to your office/assistant's computer.
2. Open up Internet Explorer
3. Open Word
4. Open Excel
5. Open Outlook

Now perform the same tasks on your computer at home.

Do you see the delay with your assistance computer?

To check your computer's memory directly you can [in Windows XP and Vista]:

1. Right click on the "My Computer" icon from your start menu, desktop, or file explorer.
2. Click "Properties"
3. Under the "System" heading on the following page you will see a number for memory or RAM. This generally ranges from 384 MB- 4Gig. (4 Gigabytes of data is approximately 10 times as much as memory as 384 MB)

If your office computer is running anything less than 1Gig I would seriously consider getting a ram upgrade to save both you and your assistant time, and you ALOT of money.