It Is So Hard to Decide
I can personally guarantee that someone who read this, if not a lot of people who read it will totally disagree with this statement, “You can have anything you want if you want it bad enough.” Even if you disagree, the statement is accurate 99% of the time. We pretty much do what we want to do all the time. Some will say, “I don’t want to go to work but I have too.” No, we don’t have to go to work if we don’t want to. We do, however, have to accept the consequences that come from not working. If we elect not to work, then we won’t receive a pay check. It’s just that simple. Which do we want more? We are a people of choice in that we decide for ourselves our wants, our desires, and our needs. Life is filled with choices we have to make and each decision results in a consequence; whether good or bad. We simply must evaluate each situation prior to making a decision and determine which consequence is best, or most desirable to us.
One of the most common complaints that arises in my sales training classes are, “I didn’t do my assignment because I ran out of time.” My reply to them is, “Whose fault is that?” It certainly isn’t mine. Time management is a problem that every sales person has to work on every day. It’s like a cancer. If we don’t manage our time very closely, our time will be eaten up and we won’t accomplish the things that might be most important to us.
When one has a productivity coach, the coach holds the person accountable for their actions. For example; I might ask the person I’m coaching if they accomplished their goals for a certain period of time and they might reply, “No I ran out of time.” My response to them might be, “What did you allow to interfere with you accomplishing the things you said you wanted to accomplish?” A typical response I have heard many times is, “I got to the office and different ones began asking me about my new listing and time just slipped away.” As a coach I see that as an excuse. They made the decision that it was more important or more enjoyable for them to visit with other agents than it would be to do the important things that might generate additional income. You see, it’s all about the choices me make.
A true sales professional, top ten percent in their respective industry understands that everyone has the same number of hours in a day. They deem it necessary to spend every moment of the working day, as wisely as humanly possible. They allocate so much time for performing certain tasks and then they block that allotted time to insure they have sufficient time to accomplish the task at hand. When they have a scheduled appointment, they keep it; at all cost. For some strange reason real estate sales people think it’s appropriate to make an appointment with someone and then cancel at the last minute because they suddenly got a showing appointment. Hog wash! An appointment is an appointment and they should be kept by both parties. When you cancel an appointment with someone, you are saying to them that they are not as important to you as someone else is. Besides being hurtful, it can also be very damaging to you but we don’t always realize the damage because the damage comes later and we don’t associate it with the cancellation.
The average person never considers how many decisions they have to make in a normal day. The determinate factor in most decisions is based on which benefits us the most. If not a benefit, then the decision comes down to our personal likes, wants and desires. In reality we have become so self-centered that we unconsciously make decisions without giving them much thought at all. Time isn’t considered that precious until we realize that when time has been spent, it is gone forever. I don’t remember who said it but it goes like this; “Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.” The older I get and the more health problems I have, the more I realize just how precious time is. Life itself is so short and we need to make every day count. The working span of our life is much shorter than we realize. We need to manage every precious moment of time to accomplish the things that are most important to us while refusing to allow insignificant things to hinder us. How we spend our time is up to us, but always being aware of the consequences that will follow.
Should you have specific questions concerning various issues, please let me know and I’ll research the answer for you. I also want to encourage you to subscribe to our “News & Updates” weekly report so you can stay abreast of issues that might affect you when buying or selling real estate. If you haven’t visited my website, please go to www.AlabamaRealEstateInstitute.com and view previous articles.