There are 168 hours in a week. This is true for every human on the planet, and it means that you and your team and your competitors and everyone you know all have the same access to the same time, all the time. So how can you leverage that time to maximize your business’ potential?
Too often, business owners overlook the planning stage of work that is required to execute business tasks successfully, and planning can be especially difficult as a real estate professional. The reason is pretty obvious: every day in real estate looks different from the others, and an agent’s schedule is largely dependent on the time of other people. Many agents feel like they have no control at all over their schedules, with client needs dictating every action.
While it is laudable that agents put the needs of their clients first, often this results in an agent’s lack of control over their work schedule and therefore, their lives. This is why many agent’s struggle to find work-life balance, which ultimately hurts their productivity.
While real estate teams deal with the challenge of ebb and flow in the business, there tend to be seasons of plenty, when everyone is working with active clients and making deals, and seasons of famine, when there is nothing in the pipeline. Peaks and valleys like this happen because agents often neglect prospecting activities while working with active clients.
Many time-management tools for business don’t cut it in real estate because they aren’t designed to help you prioritize and balance the real estate-specific activities that will maximize the earning potential of your time. This is why we developed the My Perfect Week Scheduler. Real estate agents who effectively manage their time can maximize their profitability by both acting more efficiently and gaining consistency in their pipeline. This step-by-step guide will show you how you can plan the perfect week, every week.
(Don’t worry it’s free.)
The My Perfect Week Scheduler is a real estate time management tool designed to help you stay accountable to your business to-dos every week. WIth time-blocking, you can maximize productivity and profitability without the feeling of being too busy.
Every real estate agent and team should have goals for their business, including annual production goals and the milestones that will get them there. For example, if your main goal is a certain GCI figure for the year, your milestones might be something like:
- Weekly or monthly transactions needed
- New weekly leads needed
- Weekly lead conversion needed
Now that you have pinned down your goals and milestones, you need to identify the actions you need to take in order to achieve them. These should be specific, quantifiable, and most likely repeatable. For example, how much time every week should be spent prospecting?
You will notice that your scheduler is already mostly filled. This does not mean that you have to work from 5:00 AM to 9:00 PM every day. What it does mean is that your active time should be intentionally blocked out with something, even openness. The whole point of the My Perfect Week is to prevent unstructured “urgent” tasks stealing time from essential ones and undermining your goals.
In the “options” column of the scheduler you will find a list of all the various activities you can select, including things like “Office Work” and “Open House.” The “Instructions” tab at the bottom outlines each of these in turn, and offers recommendations for how much time each task should be allotted. However, your goals should ultimately determine the choices you make.
Now, block out the ideal time for the non-negotiable, goal-oriented tasks you identified in Step 3. And do this in whatever way works best for you. This is your perfect week, not anyone else’s.
Now that you’ve got your non-negotiables blocked out, fill in everything else currently on your schedule: meetings, lunches, etc.
You probably have a few conflicts between what you have blocked out for non-negotiables and current commitments. This is fine! If you can reschedule these commitments, great; if not, follow through with them. But remember, that time is now sacred, and going forward, your time is simply not available for just any “urgent” or “important” thing that comes up.
You might not believe it, but there are no emergencies in real estate. This doesn’t mean no time-sensitive or actually-urgent matters arise now and again. It means that these urgencies, more often than not, result from poor planning. By creating and (over time) conforming to a schedule that prioritizes essentials, you can eliminate many, if not most, of the “emergencies” that eat into your pipeline-building time and create needless dry spells down the road.
There are 168 hours in a week. What are you going to do to make them the most profitable they can be?
