Stop putting out daily fires.
What would it feel like it if you could fix ONE THING at work? The thing that bugs you the most.
What happens if you don’t do anything different and just keep plowing?
Fatigue. Disengagement. Boredom.
As a fee or bank appraiser, we face strengthening headwinds, growing appraisal volume, under-staffed and juggling a surprising number of manual tasks.
Deliver on your Promises
“The answer is they make getting to the heart of things the heart of their approach. They go small. Going small is ignoring all the things you could do and doing what you should do. It’s recognizing that not all things matter equally and finding the things that matter most.” Wise words by Garry Keller, author of The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results.
“If everyone has the same number of hours in the day, why do some people seem to get so much more done than others? How do they do more, achieve more, earn more, have more? If time is the currency of achievement, then why are some able to cash in their allotment for more chips than others?”
Purpose, Priority and Productivity
The author highlights appraisers’ Achilles heel, we work a lot and don’t often focus ON our business. We love to work IN the business. This is a no-no. This leads to chronically being swamped. Never a good time to slow down to evaluate your processes. No time to see if your tech stack supports those processes.
Are the processes memorialized in playbooks to create repeatable processes? Onboarding new appraisers, reviewers or support staff could accelerated 10x with appropriate “how-to” playbooks. Create onboarding videos of how to do manual tasks. Document the mundane to allow time for the harder to learn valuation art.
Narrow your focus
Mr. Keller suggests, “It’s a tighter way to connect what you do with what you want. It’s realizing that extraordinary results are directly determined by how narrow you can make your focus.” Seemingly counterintuitively, he mentions that “the majority of what you want will come from the minority of what you do.”
Part of the solution is to determine what things you’re not going to do, more than what you will do.
Priority with Action
Fee appraisers:
- Stop typing over old Word docs for new appraisal assignments.
- Stop searching old reports for comps.
- Stop managing bids, work in progress, invoicing and jog log with Excel.
- Stop making paper job folders.
- Stop putting up with old subject bleed-through errors.
Bank appraisers:
- Stop guessing at your service level agreement turnaround times.
- Stop trying to handle appraisal volume with Microsoft Office.
- Stop the manual process of updating vendor licensing and E&O.
- Stop bidding without control of vendor property type and geographical competency.
- Stop putting up with less than awesome support of your appraisal management platform.
Slow Down to Speed Up
As a fee or bank appraiser, your manual tasks are multiplied by each person in your firm or appraisal department. Manually explain how to do X over and over and over again. It feels easier just to do it yourself or just explain how to do something versus documenting things that you do all the time.
Give your team a simplified iterative process creating awesome playbooks with documents and checklists. What are the steps your appraisers take to create an appraisal from bid to close? What are the steps from LM/RO request to job close?
Are you the person that wants to do everything? Does it makes you feel valued? Documenting your knowledge feels like you’re giving away your special power. In fact , it’s the opposite. It unloads the tedious and creates time for you to be more creative and accelerate.
“This allows your customers to receive
the promise that you made that gets delivered on.”
Consider implementing DataComp Suite at your appraisal firm or YouConnect in your bank appraisal department to give you back your time.
Ask yourself, “What’s the ONE process we can fix to make your day better?” What if you could eliminate that one thing that bugs you the most?
How would that feel?
One thing.
