Making sure everyone on your team (including yourself) spends their time in the highest and best use for increased productivity is a focus that needs to be at the front of your daily leadership dashboard, especially during a busy season. Being a flexible industry is great because there are many benefits to having a flexible schedule; however, the downside it that the flexibility of your schedule can turn into non-dollar-producing activities fast and a false sense of working with no income. You have to have face-to-face appointments in your calendar, or you will not be writing contacts to list or buy homes—and let’s face it: That is when we as REALTORS® are actually making an income.
So, we must manage our time and be disciplined, or we will go through days and weeks with no or little income. Making it happen on purpose will ensure a full pipeline of leads and a hyper focus on sales actives versus “busy work,” or admin work that is not dollar-producing. During a busy season, it is really tough to delegate admin work and stay focused to truly maximize the selling hours with the servicing hours. Offloading the admin work is a must, and will help you leverage your time to go on more appointments and still deliver stellar service to your clients.
Practice and follow these habits and show your team members how to maximize their days and weeks for the highest income-producing activities, and they will increase production and start adding to their income and be producing for your team. Some team leaders need to follow these suggestions, too, to ensure they’re maximizing their time for the highest and best use: sales calls and appointments that convert into actual commissions earned.
Track your time. Look at your last month of appointments on your work calendar. How many hours a week were you on face-to-face appointments? How many of the 40 hours that work week did you spend on sales calls or appointments versus administrative, busy work? Want to double your income? Double the amount of appointments you go on?Â
Time-block your schedule. Plan your work and then work your plan. Pre-plan your calls and fill your calendar with appointments that will generate a listing or a sale. Schedule yourself time with your mobile phone (money maker) and plan to make outgoing calls to people to generate or convert leads. You will be proactively scheduling yourself for the highest and best use of your time: sales functions!
Put all your appointments on this time-blocking sheet, including business and personal. This way, what you are doing during that time is exactly what you are doing. You are dedicated and disciplined to doing what you scheduled to do during that time. Schedule your time to call FSBOs or expired leads, follow-up calls to prospective buyers and sellers on your pipeline sheet, your sphere to thank them for referrals this past year, your existing clients, and even for your personal workout or family time. When you plan this time, you are in control of your schedule and your time. You are dictating what and when you are doing it, not being reactive and responding to every crisis of the day or week—a much better and more productive use of your time, for sure! You will love this!
No distractions—nothing interrupts the dollar-producing time. Turn off the notifications for social media or your email. Do not answer incoming calls unless an emergency or new business. Make sure you give yourself that full hour or two hours to kill it doing that one task you said you wanted to get done. You will love the results—I guarantee it!
Your mobile phone is your best friend. Make the new prospecting calls every day. The most important task you do every single day is making new business for yourself. Your team members and you must make daily outgoing calls to your sphere, FSBOs, expireds, open house leads, leads on your pipeline, online lead follow-up, follow-up with leads from your listings, and so on. Making this a daily habit will result in more opportunities for yourself to attract new clients and have more appointments on your schedule. Remember, every time you pick up your phone to call someone on purpose, you have a chance to earn between $3,000-$30,000 for that one deal—and, that one person who says yes probably has a home to sell as well, and you will get two sales from that one proactive call you made. Be out in front of your competitors and make the calls before they do. You will close more business and make more income—it’s that simple.
Delegate admin work. Make sure if it’s not over $100-an-hour work that you are delegating it to someone on your team who is support staff and their job is to help and support you. You cannot control everything. Let go of the admin work and focus only on the dollar-producing activities that are going to help you list or sell a house. Take the time to show someone how to do what admin work you are doing so that you can leverage your time to be on more appointments or making more sales calls.Â
Accountability tracking for results. Whatever is tracked and measured improves. What is tracked, measured and reported to another person exponentially improves. So, reporting your results to another person will help to exponentially improve your results and performance.
Making sure team members who are in a listing and sales function are maximizing their days and focusing their hours on dollar-producing activities that will bring about new listings and sales is so important. Being on-purpose with a strategy and plan for making the best and highest use of your time will pay huge dividends to you and your team members’ monthly results! Everyone will be focused on sales functions instead of busy work. It is a great habit to get everyone on your team following a system of success that will ensure their calendar is full of appointments every week. When this happens, you are a listing and selling machine, and your team is operating at high level of success for everyone!
For a free copy of my exclusive Time-Blocking Sheet and Prospecting 101: Who to Call and What to Say outline, please click here.
Sherri Johnson is CEO and founder of Sherri Johnson Coaching & Consulting. With 20 years of experience in real estate, Johnson offers coaching, consulting and keynotes, and is a national speaker for the Homes.com Secrets of Top Selling Agents tour. For more information, please contact coaching@sherrijohnson.com or 844-989-2600 (toll-free) or visit www.sherrijohnson.com.
