2016 BUSINESS MANAGEMENT
Make an Appointment with Yourself
Most of us would agree the most difficult part of our business is finding the time for rainmaking activities. (That’s a fancy way of saying “prospecting”). You have every intention of calling or canvassing, but before you know it, the day is over and you never quite had the chance to make those calls. Why does this happen? The answer lies in psychology. Human beings are creatures of habit and most of us like to focus on activities that guarantee a successful outcome. It’s easier to complete easy tasks and just check them off your list, but with prospecting, we’re never guaranteed success.
So, what’s the solution? Modify your strategy to include a habit you’ve embraced. In other words, make an appointment with yourself for an hour or two every day, and keep it. Think about it. When you have an appointment with a client, most interruptions are considered offensive to the person you are with. We’ve all heard or experienced an agent that is on an appointment and doesn’t have the common decency to wait to answer a call because they’re impressed with themselves.
Treat the appointment with yourself with the same courtesy and respect you give your clients. For example, if you block out 9:00-10:00 in the morning on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the meetings with yourself should be treated with the same importance as a listing appointment or appointment to show homes to a buyer. It’s important you avoid taking calls, answering e-mails, being late, leaving early, or welcoming with open arms someone who stops by to “chat” about minutia. If a salesman or other professional did that to you, you would probably end up finding another person to represent you.
A good approach to avoiding interruptions is to prospect some place other than where all of your 80% projects are located. Don’t sit at a messy desk. Don’t have your e-mails open in front of you. Any distraction will just give an excuse to get side-tracked, with the result being failure in your effort to prospect.
It’s true, you may not end up getting everything done that needs to be done, but with a little practice and some delegation, you will only miss out on getting far less important tasks done.