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Some of the greatest enemies to your productivity are fear, procrastination, and distractions. There are more disruptions in your life than you realize, and they limit the amount of work you are able to get done. You can put yourself in control of all that, though, and the first step is to identify what those disruptions are.
Some agents—especially when they are just starting out—hold self-limiting beliefs that keep them from performing at their highest level of ability. It’s a kind of self-talk running in their heads, telling them they are not ready yet, or things will get better later, or maybe they should go easy until they gain a little more experience. Some rationalize procrastination by telling themselves that no one wants them to call too early in the morning, or that later in the day might be a better time to phone people. The truth is, procrastination for whatever the reasons is still procrastination, and it is usually driven by fear.
Some people are actually afraid of the telephone and how a call with a customer may place you in a situation you don’t know how to handle. The overriding fear, however, may well be a fear of success as a real estate agent. After all, your primary goal is to connect with clients and build relationships. Your business depends on it. You may also think that phone calls take too much time, but that is not the case if you’re conducting them properly.
Each phone call with a client should take no more than 2 minutes. Any more time than that and you are opening yourself to irrelevant chat. All you need to resolve is making an appointment to discuss matters in depth, in person. Don’t discuss anything in detail on the phone. Ask good, closed-end questions to connect and gather information, book the appointment, and go to the next call.
Most of your distractions will be from the same technology you use as part of your business, which seems to present a dilemma. You need your smartphone, your SMS and MMS, email, calendar alerts, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. However, you can—and should—turn off the endless flow of information when it’s time to focus on getting a specific task done. Just unplug for 45 minutes and get your prospecting calls made. Have your call list, know your dialog and stick to it. There is no way to procrastinate if you allow no distractions and know who you are calling. Plus, having the dialog to follow removes the fear of rejection and stumbling over your words.
During a concentrated call session, you can expect to increase your call success to around 53% connections, with 33% of those booking appointments. But you cannot achieve those results if you are allowing interruptions every few minutes to sidetrack you. Take your time for prospecting calls seriously. Do it first thing in the morning. Set a timer for 45 minutes, turn off all the alerts, and focus on doing absolutely nothing else besides making those calls. Do this every day. This represents the core of your business, and you will not have a business if you don’t have those appointments with prospects every single day.
It all comes down to you making the decision to build the business you want.
A powerful quote to remember is, “When the goal is clear, there are no distractions.” If you allow yourself to give in to fear, to be distracted, or to procrastinate, then perhaps you need to set a clear vision around what you really want to accomplish. If you don’t have a vision to drive you forward and keep you on track, then you won’t do the work that must get done.
I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s Coaching Tip, and I look forward to seeing you here again next week.
I am struggling to make phone calls. I know its what I need to do to be great and to do better, but I just stop dead in my tracks and this huge fear comes across me and I freeze. I have done cold calling before and struggled a bit but not as much as I am now. When I first started selling a year ago, one of my collegues said it was a waiste of time that everyone does it and it doesnt work. I told him it did and made some more calls to now avail. I also had the grumpiest women one day who yelled down the phone at me. Since those two insidence I am now frozen up with calling at all. Any suggestions.
Great question Sandra – all agents have this fear. Instead of thinking about the negatives try to focus on what you have to do to achieve these goals. Focus on prospecting sessions in database groups (OFI call backs, just listed/sold etc) then focus on the scripts and the key questions to get answers back from the customer to help progress them. Mastering the scripts can help provide you with the leading questions to help build a relationship with the customer.
We have some great scripts and dialogues in the manual and CD’s on our membership program – https://joshphegan.com.au/products/josh-phegan-membership/