This was the first question asked by one of the top brokers in my industry during a recent business lunch.
It’s a great question that he frequently asks himself and others. He is constantly working to improve his productivity and getting input from others on how they do the same. Answering the question was the start of one of the most productive, creative and thought-provoking business lunches I’ve ever had. He and I shared a lot of our strategies for creating new business and serving existing clients.
The more we talked the more it became apparent to me why this individual is so successful. He is obsessed with improving how he uses his time to become more efficient for his clients every second of the day. My discussion with him underscored the importance of constantly being aware of how I use my time and where I focus my own efforts.
In the past I tended to focus on aggressively pursuing new business without stopping to consider which sales and marketing techniques were the most productive and which gave me the best bang for my buck. I also rarely put much effort into qualifying the new clients I was targeting, figuring any potential client was better than none. I would pound out calls every day to people who had never heard of me and whom I had not qualified as potential clients and then wonder why I got so few responses and even fewer deals for all that effort.
I believe that I developed these habits because I had the belief – shared by many sales departments in many industries – that numbers were the key: number of calls, number of properties, dollar amounts, etc. I didn’t take the time to actually learn to qualify my efforts and time.
I’m not saying numbers aren’t important, but you have to analyze the numbers and learn how to make wise moves based on what they tell you. Making 200 calls in a week looks like an impressive number on paper, but if you only connected with 2 potential clients out of those 200 calls it isn’t as impressive as the person who made 50 calls but connected with 5 potential clients.
How did the second person get more connections with fewer calls? They might have gotten lucky, but more likely they took the time to qualify their clients and used other strategies aside from calling every number in the phone book to try to connect with these potential clients. I’ve learned that to maintain my efficiency it’s important that I regularly review how I am spending my time and what results I’m getting from it in terms of sales, marketing strategies and qualifying new clients.
If I’m not seeing very good results I start considering new ways to use my time, rather than continuing the same thing over and over and hoping it will get better. I may call other brokers to look for qualified leads, go to a new networking event to get my name out to people I may not have met, or contact former clients to ask for referrals. No matter what other strategies I try I will make sure to review them after a little while to see if they are actually working for me. If not, it’s on to the next idea.
I have seen great results and would encourage you to do the same in the new year. Make it a point to always be aware of what you are doing with your time and evaluate whether it is producing results.
Have a great weekend,
Ro
