Whether it’s about maximizing time or organizing files and ideas, almost everyone has a few go-to productivity tools they can’t live without. When it comes to real estate sales, where clients expect you to be available 24/7, there’s a certain level of hustle required to hit that sales quota. Depending on your work routine as a realtor, a smart productivity tool that will enable you to multitask throughout the day will come a long way — after all, you need all the time in your hands to make more out of your sales life.

This article is a round-up of simple, easy, and mostly free productivity tools that you can integrate into the different aspects of your business and life. We also included smart hacks and tips that will supercharge your time management and sales performance.

1. Collaborate with your team - Slack

Slack is a perfect platform for real estate marketing teams who mostly work offsite. In a Slack workspace, you can communicate and share files with your teams in chat rooms or “channels” dedicated to a particular topic, project, or territory (Example: #3rdQrt-Quota, #TeamNorth, #Projects-Horizontal, #Schedules-Manning). It can also integrate various apps such as Google Drive to make your collaboration more efficient. Through Slack, you can also grow your team’s collective knowledge on the project or property you’re selling, such as sales data, turnover dates, availability of units, and marketing campaigns. This is a smarter and more engaging way of organizing, tracking, and disseminating valuable information as a team instead of getting buried in long email threads.

Tip: Slack can also be a good motivating tool as it gives you a virtual space to celebrate closed deals together as a company or a team. Create a #Seller-Of-the-Month or a #Weekly-Wins channel where brokers and salespersons can share their success updates.

2. Work on the Go - Google Drive

This might seem like a no-brainer. But do you know that Google Drive can offer you multitude of ways to integrate your work life? Apart from file sharing and cloud storage, this Google staple has all the potential waiting to be unlocked.

• Work Seamlessly Online and Offline

With its offline mode, you don’t need to put off a task even if you’ve already rushed out the door. From your desktop, you can continue working on your Google docs, sheets or slides offline on your phone while on transit or while wait ing for your meeting to start. By simply ticking off the offline mode in Settings, you can create or edit files directly in your browser and sync all the changes once you’re back online.

• Voice Typing

Typing multiple documents from scratch can be time consuming. If you’re driving or doing something else, the Voice Typing feature of Google Docs can do this task for you. Simply open the tools menu and enable the voice typing and micro phone feature and you’re set to go. Editing typos can be done on your keyboard even if the dictate tool is running.

• Share Presentations Online

Elaborate property presentations with vicinity maps and photos may take up a huge amount of storage. It can be a burden for your client if they need to download it to their device just so they can view it. You can save them the hassle by embedding your Slides directly on your webpage and sending a short URL link instead.

• Send Property Kits in a Jiffy

In sales, answering a client’s query real-time is the golden rule. If the client re quests for a presentation or a document and you’re out on field or simply do not have access to your desktop right away, this can be a hurdle. One of the best ways to handle this is to have your property kits (presentation, availability charts and computation, etc.) organized per listing in your Google Drive so you can simply attach and send them in a click using any laptop or smartphone.

3. Create Branded Content - Canva

Up your online property selling game by creating stunning visuals using this easy and genius platform. Canva has pre-sized templates from social media posts, brochures and ads that you can easily manipulate using drag and drop functions. This is a lifesaver for those with zero background in design or lack the time and resources to come up with original and consistent content. Once done, you can readily upload or publish your work without a fuss. If you're with a team, Canva also has a collaboration feature so it can allow others to edit and use the templates you’re working on.

Tip: If the property you’re selling is not exclusive, it's a must to stand out from the rest. Start with a content strategy for your own professional brand so you can streamline all your design templates. You can use similar font, design and colors consistently to increase your brand recall.

4. Engage your clients and leads - Mailchimp

Mailchimp is a goldmine for real estate email marketing. You can use this amazing tool to design and send out monthly or weekly newsletters featuring your listings update, property market news, latest deals and even holiday greetings. This is a strategic way to engage and nurture relationship with clients and leads without being overly intrusive. To create a campaign, you can either design from scratch or select a template you can fill using drag and drop functions. The best feature of Mailchimp is it allows you to automate your email campaigns and segment your email recipients so you can customize your content for the ideal audience.

Tip: Don’t just sell. Be a top of mind broker by sending out informative and useful newsletters. Take time to prepare your newsletter every start of the month and just automate the sending once a week or every two weeks. Developing your content ahead will not just save you time but also help you be more consistent.

5. Organize your notes and tasks - Google Keep

We know that there are far more fancier apps for note taking and task organization you can amuse yourself with. But we also know that as a salesman, you'd rather get to action than tinker with a fancy app.

Google Keep is Google’s pre-installed note taking tool that organizes your to-do list and notes based on categories. Using color code, you can visually navigate your notes and lists in a glance. This is perfect for organizing tasks based on work or personal categories. Google Keep also allows you to collaborate with your team, set alarms that notify you in all active device you're using and type text using voice dictation.

Tip: It's a useful tool to use on oculars or recording property listings. Just simply take a photo and save it along with the property information. The best part? You can access your notes in any device’s browser as long as your Google account is logged in.