Do your results fluctuate? Are they persistently low? Have you ever found yourself blaming outside forces, such as the market or difficult clients, for a run of bad luck? The good news is that this can be fixed.
In my book, Why Winners Win, I name four Success Ingredients: Attitude, Knowledge, Skill and Competent Action.
With the right attitude, you will study. You will practise what you learn in the field. Through this practice you will develop skill and your actions will become more competent.
But you can still be competent and not do enough competent actions, so your results will still be low. This is why self-management is so important.
Some call this time management, but we really don’t manage time; we manage ourselves within the time we have available.
Many salespeople drift through their day without purpose because they don’t have a plan. Those with goals and plans get more done. They manage themselves and their time because they know where they are going, and why.
So… do you have a plan?
The key to skilful self-management is to know what needs to be done and to be willing to do it.
Winners treat their time as a valuable asset. They guard it and give it to the right people. They don’t allow the wrong people to steal their time.
Winners…
- Set goals – they decide what they want
- Determine the cost of their goals – both in money and in trade-offs in other areas of their lives
- Calculate sales and listing targets
- Crunch the numbers – calculate how many people they need to speak to in order to achieve their targets
- Determine the listing sources they will work on
- Want their goals sufficiently to focus on them.
With these foundations, self-management is much simpler. No time is lost thinking about what needs to be done next – just open the plan and follow the next step. And by constantly studying and improving, little successes fuel motivation to do more. Gradually, inconsistent performance begins to turn into consistent, climbing results.
You might not be doing enough of the right actions right now, but you can fix it.
With a plan designed to lead you to goals you really want, you will find self-management easier than you first thought.
Give it a go.
Gary Pittard