Stay the line with Purpose

You're on the right track, or so it seems, you have defined your career purpose, set up goals in line with your purpose and you have even established a daily priority plan. Now effective time management should just take care of itself, right?

Wrong! Because as you become more productive you may find that inevitably you will be forced to make choices. Choices that when made properly will lead you to even greater heights, or when made poorly will lead you to a career crash.

Jane for instance is a good example. Jane is a composite character made up of thousands of real estate agents from around the country. Let's look at Jane's career:

Jane has recently made some huge changes in her career, these changes have supercharged her prospecting skills and her presentation skills - so now several things are happening to her that have never happened before. First she has too many clients, so she feels pulled into many directions at once. Second she can feel herself slipping on service with her clients. She is not returning phone calls promptly, not following up on showings and basically dropping the ball. Third she is beginning to spend more time away from home, her children are beginning to become distant, and her husband is becoming resentful of the business!

Sound familiar? Does this describe challenges that you have faced? Join the crowd! Unfortunately when faced with these dilemmas many agents resort to something we have all done at some point in our careers. They take steps to sabotage their own success.

Consider this quote from Dr. Joyce Brothers - "We cannot consistently perform at a level inconsistent with our own self image." Is this true of you? Many agents view their new found success with suspicion. Why? Because they have rarely experienced it and may have a difficult time adjusting to a new self image. So instead of embracing success many agents will reverse course and begin to swim back to their old lives. How do they do this?

Most agents don't wake up one morning and say "Well, today I'm going to start failing!" Instead most agents just begin making bad decisions. These poor decisions can lead to a bad case of self sabotage and a career crash.

So you may ask yourself how can I succeed in my business but also not feel overwhelmed? How can I continue giving great service to my clients? And most important how can I stop working 80 hour weeks and still be productive?

Let's look at Five Ways to Stay on Purpose:

1. Relegate/Delegate/Terminate -

When studying your daily to do list (you have one right) you may find that you just have way too many items on the list to possibly accomplish. So what can you do? Apply the simple but effective RDT method.

Relegate - First decide which of the items on the list must be done to accomplish your long term goals. These of course, are your priorities. You must relegate yourself to the fact that these items must be done and most importantly done first.

Delegate - Next when reviewing your to do list ask yourself is there anyone that could be doing these items instead of me? Can you out source it, hire it done, or could the other agent in the transaction be doing this work? Wise agents attempt to delegate as much as possible.

Terminate - What is on your to do list that does not have to be done? Are there items that are nothing more than busy work? If you can't terminate them, at least, put them on the very bottom of the list.

2. Cut the Dead Wood

As your career begins to pick up steam you may find that you cannot simply work with every client. You may need to begin choosing your clients. How? Qualify them harder. This may seem harsh at first, after all you want to work with everyone, but in the end you will unable to work with everyone. This is one of the toughest aspects of time management: Knowing which priority takes priority. All clients are good, but the fact is some are better than others. Here is a quick way to qualify your clients:

Motivation Level - Do they really want to buy or sell?

Timing - Are they ready to act now! Or are they stalling?

Ability - Can they close the deal?

3. Deal with Paper Once

How many times do you move one piece of paper around on your desk? Come on, it's more than just once! We all know we should do something about the piece of paper, but we decide that for now, it will look good in a new corner until next week (or the week after). So we keep shuffling, and shuffling, and shuffling. Sometimes one piece of paper becomes two pieces of paper or even three.

So what can we do about it? Use the one touch rule. Only touch paper once before you do something with it. There are three uses for every piece of paper you have on your desk - Here they are:

File It - Put it where it needs to go - Which is off your desk!

Toss it - 90% of what comes across your desk is garbage!

Deal With it - If it requires your attention do something with it!

Now when it comes to item number three let me give you a tip: Deal with paper once a day! Set aside just one time during the day to deal with paper, deal with it and move on!

4. Automate Yourself

How long does it take to make ten phone calls? Believe me it takes some time. You have to look up the phone number, dial it, wait for it to ring, and then worst of all you have to talk to someone on the other end (actually that's not so bad). But what is bad is the fact that you have to beat around the bush awhile until you get to the topic you really called about.

So what is the solution? Email is the simple solution. How long does it take to email those same ten people? Not long, especially if your message is the same to each one.

Superstars learn to condition their clients to the fact that they will be communicating with them primarily by email, with a few sporadic calls mixed in. The truth is most of them will be relieved. Why? Because they don't have the time to talk to you either!

5. Time Log

Can you remember what you did five days ago? Hey, I can't remember what I did five minutes ago! But when you are trying to improve your time management skills you must have the ability to measure your actions against your results. Within the investment world we call this the ROI or return on investment.

What is your return on investment for your time? The only way to measure this key aspect of your business, is to take periodic pictures of your business. Not with a Polaroid but with a time log. A time log is a simple notebook, in which you record all of your business activities for a week and then compare your success with your actions. If you find that your actions did not equal success then it may be time to reevaluate your time investments.