Summary:

Most of us have the choice to allocate our Time more effectively. To let you know, I said most.  I know bette,r but still fall victim to the same time misallocation as other. For instance, spending too much Time on unproductive meetings or getting caught up in non-urgent tasks, such as responding to every email immediately, can be a common pitfall.  However, one key to mastering this is prioritizing our daily activities. This ensures we are always in control and organized, and reduces the feeling of being overwhelmed by many tasks.

EffecTime uses lies alarmingly whether we organize our daily tasks, manage family activities, plan social events, plan special occasions, shop for a date or someone to marry, or engage in a profit-generating activity is a precious, limited, and non-renewable resource; once it is gone or wasted, it is gone forever.  Resources are designed to magnify Time through others or technology, including hardware and software programs.  There are more brilliant programs than anyone could ever dream possibl,e but the same applies to training.

Article:

Planning time has been used for thousands of years, and the relative importance of each daily activity has been recognized. Organizing daily actions and choices, whether personal planning or technology-driven, allows us to accomplish more.  More importantly, it empowers us to utilize our Time and resources, instilling a profound sense of capability and empowerment.

A platform for change:

A written plan is not just a suggestion; it’s a necessity, especially for a loan agent.  This plan, which should contain a daily list of activities and a schedule to accomplish each personal and professional goal, is crucial for success. It provides a roadmap for your day, ensuring you are prepared and confident in your actions.

The loan agent or other salesperson has multiple tasks:

• Identifying a qualified lead.
• Pursuing the possibility of getting an appointment.
• Making the presentation.
• Could you explain the benefits?
• Answering questions.
• Handling the objections.
• Asking for the order (closing)
• Close the transaction.  Repeat steps 2 through 6.

Motivation to produce many closed loan transactions to satisfy customers, employers, and oneself is necessary to earn commissions and sustain a decent standard of living for one’s family.

I have some suggestions for creating an action plan.

• Have I defined my universe of possibilities?  That number is the total number of potential leads interested in my products, goods, or services at some point.
• Have I included my relationships with their extensive networks of other professionals for possible referrals in my defined universe of possibilities? Leveraging these relationships can make you feel more connected and supported, thereby enhancing your professional network and increasing your potential for success.
• How many prospects can I manage to contact daily and weekly?
• How frequently should I follow up with prospects?  Is the answer 30, 60, 90, or more days?
• Do I have a written script for verbal conversations and email marketing? (The language script may be formal or informal, depending on your product, personality, and past relationship with the person?.
• Asking questions and allowing people to talk about themselves, their feelings, and their families go a long way toward establishing a lasting relationship.   The answers also help build a history.

Do I have a formalized written marketing plan?

• What action habits should be expected daily, weekly, and monthly?  For instance, daily habits include reviewing active leads, weekly habits involve setting new goals, and monthly habits focus on evaluating overall performance.  Start organizing my day each morning by reviewing my active leads and concentrating on transactions nearing completion.  Am I prioritizing the follow-up of my daily active leads?  These are the highest-quality leads that should be a priority in your daily actions, as they are more likely to result in successful transactions.
• Will I practice great tenacity in daily follow-ups of active leads (this concept is critical)?
• Am I giving it my all, including energy, focus, and a determined pursuit?  Are my efforts being executed to the best of my abilities?
• My responsibility is to assist customers in making informed decisions that meet their financial needs.
• Professionally, completing transactions is our responsibility.  Fiduciary duty is ever-present.
• How many (real estate, loans, or other completed tasks) are my goals to be closed monthly?
• A clearly defined and quantified amount of gross revenue anticipated to be gained over a specified period, such as a month or a quarter, could prove extremely helpful.  Am I working effectively with coworkers, superiors, subordinates, and independent contractor vendors, maintaining mutual respect, dignity, and an understanding of objectives to close transactions?  Mutual respect in professional relationships is not only crucial, but it is also a cornerstone that fosters a positive work environment and encourages open communication, ultimately leading to more successful transactions.  It’s about treating others as you would like to be treated, and it’s a key factor in building trust and rapport in the workplace.
• Do I have the best office technology, phone technology, email marketing systems, customer relations management system (CRM), network marketing, and industry-specific software to do the most professional job?
• Do the people around me, including support staff and other like-minded individuals, share my values regarding business, loyalty, relationships, and customer follow-up?  Kindred values in a professional context include honesty, integrity, and a strong work ethic. Surrounding yourself with people who share these values fosters a positive work environment—itfosters open communicationn,resultingg inmore successfull transactions.
• Do I associate with others who share my values and strive for success, self-motivation, and tenacity? By ‘kindred folks,’ I mean those who share your values about business, loyalty, relationships, and customer follow-up.  These could be your support staff, coworkers, superiors, subordinates, and independent contractor vendors.  Surrounding yourself with people who share these values fosters a positive work environment and encourages open communication, leading to more successful transactions.

A suggested action-filled daily work schedule.

Start time:9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday.  Maximum performance may require additional hours, some evenings, and weekends.  Prolonged physical and mental effort requires breaks for physical and psychological sustainability. One should take occasional breaks away from all the everyday stress. Ten daily walks in the sunshine will work wonders for energy, focus, and stamina.  Walk a dog, pick up his stuff, or call a friend while frolicking in the forest.

Many folks believe that the input of effort and the output of results will correspond.

Many people assume the same results from each hour of active work.  Suppose you are an hourly wage earner at a fast-food establishment. That’s how it used to work—but technology has changed that.  But that is not how success works in most profit-making enterprises.

Input and output rarely correspond.  However, input results may be leveraged with knowledge and proper technical tools to increase output and production geometrically. Could you identify those tools?

Wow, this worked; I bet I can do better. We cannot motivate individuals to achieve their goals. They must develop and internalize their own desire and motivation.  Sometimes, learning to improve becomes a passion through modification. Repeated successes always bring confidence.

Thousands of brilliant individuals could achieve more if they were both motivated and changed their time use and daily action habits.

The success of one’s action plan varies depending on one’s circumstances and stated goals.  The preacher, teacher, psychologist, company Manager, supervisor, clerk, bookkeeper, accountant, prisoner in a confined environment, or salesperson relying on commissions have different success priorities.  What is most valuable in a time segment for these folks will differ. Each person should construct a platform and assess the Time received per minute.

Historical references are provided each minute to explain the concept of focusing on the essential items in time utilization:

Economists and philosophers have written about the concept known as the 80/20 rule for centuries.

Jean-Baptiste Say (1767-1832) was a French economist who first coined the term “entrepreneur.”

The entrepreneur reallocates economic resources from lower-productivity areas to higher-productivity areas with greater yields.

In 1896, Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist and sociologist, developed the concept of the 80/20 rule.

In any series of elements to be controlled, a selected small fraction of the number of elements always accounts for a significant fraction in terms of effect.  Thus, the Pareto Principle was born.

In 1949, George Zipf, a Philosophy professor at Harvard University, stated:

The input of resources, people, Time, and skills tends to arrange themselves so that a small portion of resources (20% to 30%) accounts for a larger corresponding output (70% to 80%) of results.

In 1951, Joseph Moses Juran, a management consultant and significant contributor to the quality control revolution, wrote the Quality Control Handbook.  He renamed the Pareto Principle,

Rule of the Vital Few and the Rule of the Trivial Many.

In 1957, C. Northcote Parkinson wrote two books, Parkinson’s Law and The Law and the Profits.  His first law was:

Work will expand the Time available for its completion.

His message is that Time is wasted and that unnecessary bureaucracies are expanding in business organizations and governments.  When people and institutions spend other people’s money, they have a natural incentive to be inefficient, time-consuming, or incomplete.  Consuming assets rather than getting results is generally their motive.

An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals.  Officials do work for each other.  The number of employees will expand by 5-7% per year, irrespective of any variation in the amount of work (if any) to be done.

To sum up, most people need to allocate their daily activities better. Eighty percent of our activities produce only 20 percent of the intended results.

• 20% of salespeople produce 80% of the income.

• Conversely, 80% of salespeople make 20% of the available income.

Most companies and bureaucracies allocate 80% of their available resources to the least effective 20% of their activities.   Bureaucracies in the government are motivated by performance results in the budget being equal to or greater than the previous year’s. They strive for more funding and subordinates, regardless of how trivial the jobs may be. Make-work jobs, or otherwise, constantly grow.

• 20% of companies and 20% of salespeople control 80% of the market share.
• Conversely, 80% of companies and 80% of salespeople hold 20% of the market share.
• 80% of the profits in your organization will result from 20% of your customer base.
• Twenty % of the profits in your organization will result from eighty % of your customer base.

Satisfaction and dissatisfaction are consistent with the 80%-20 % rule.

• Eighty % of our satisfaction will come from twenty % of our relationships, both in business and personal.
• Eighty % of our dissatisfaction will stem from 20% of our relationships, both in business and personal life.

Superficial relationships and unwanted opinions from people who do not matter:

Mutual respect and dignity are necessary ingredients for long-term relationships.  That includes respecting the time value of others.

I love critical opinions from people who have no skin in the game and don’t care.  They believe that they are innately intelligent and informed.  In their minds, they must be, because they watch mainstream news nightly as the source of all knowledge and wisdom for earthly beings.  Therefore, they are superior to those around them." Follow the science” is a catch-all. Their opinions are often expressed without forethought or consideration for the views of others. No other opinions matter: they are the messiahs, the anointed ones who possess it all.  Self-righteousness is their claim to moral superiority.

Acquaintances who do not share our positive attitude about life and our value system are usually negative pains in our necks (a s) and should become ex-friends.  The same goes for online (superficias) parasites we have never met but always express their unintelligent, emotional, and irrelevant opinions. These parasites tend to express their ideological views and attempt to sway others to their way of thinking, which is always a 10Timeaste Timeime.   Of course, their knowledge is science-based, spoon-fed information, according to the propaganda on mainstream media news, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, BBC, and FO.  This applies to obnoxious and opinionated coworkers and employees.  Does anyone care about their superficial opinions outside their self-subscribed microcosm?  Who cares?   Not m!  It’s tiring to deal with stupid people.

Conversations may be of interactive interest to the participants (like a friend kibitzing with another).  ConverTimeons aTimeime may be about meeting company objectives, developing more business, improving systems, increasing cash flow, and achieving stated goals. Time should be saved for family, friends, and Time off.

Eliminating cluttered relationships from both your personal and professional spheres will bring tranquility, dignity, and positive results.

Here is a suggested time-value schedule of daily activities, with variable importance assigned to each activity.

LeveTimeng yoTimeime will creatTimere frTimeime.   You can eliminate, consolidate, or delegate a portion of your daily activities. You leverage your Time, talents, and skills through others, which may be associates, employees, or independent contractors.

A, B, C, D, and Time Off are subsets of the time management systems.

Time effectiveness may vary depending on your motivation, regimen, objectives, tenacity, and the use of strategic leverage.  Leverage comes from delegating to others.

A- Time is the most valuable resource.

The key is face-to-face or one-on-one communication with your target buyer or seller. Heecontact may be in person, by phone, or by email, but it does not expressly reflect a request that the party or prospective buyer/seller work with you to purchase your products, goods, or services.  I suggest that average salespersons do not apply 10% of their workday in an A-Time mode.  They should spend more than 60% to 80% of their Time in an A-Time mode.

B-Time is the Time spent preparing (preparation time) to move into A Time.

• A phone call, a letter, or an email request is probably involved.  B Time may constitute 30% of one’s daily schedule.  Time it into A and delegate to another, B, for 20%.

Examples:

• Draft a letter, email, text, or phone call to request an appointment for a face-to-face meeting with the prospect.  A time does not start until the client is in front of you or directly on the phone.
• Once you consummate the transaction, all other follow-up activities to drive the process forward fall under C Time.

C-Time is an administrative activity with no specific defined result.

• C-Time does have value in driving your business forward. It most likely consumes 50% to 80% of our workday. The key is to delegate C-Time to support staff employees or independent contractors, allowing you to shift your resources to the most effective Time.

Examples:

• Record keeping and regulatory compliance activities are C Time.
• I develop and maintain marketing systems and materials, including database management and web-based lead generation.
• Office organization and administrative duties activities are C-Time.
• Interactions with stand coworkers.
• Interface with third-party vendors such as escrow, title, appraisal, environmental engineers, and property-related insurance companies.
• All general activities required to maintain your business enterprise, but not directly attached to closing a transaction, are C-Time.
• Industry educational events.

D-Time is the catch-all term for activities that produce no results and have little value; in other words, iTime wastTimeime.

These activities may consume a large portion of our day.  D Tim:e dTimers for Time off or away from your business or money-making activities.

Examples:

• Read the news and engage in conversations with friends and family.  (Some may argue that discussions with friends and family are time-wasting. )
• Maintain social media such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter.
• Have casual conversations with employees and staff unrelated to business.
• The industry meets and greets with cocktails, accompanied by the boys or girls.

Summary of Tools available to get the intended results for a self-starter:

Effective time utilization:

• Focus on the most essential elements at any given time that yield the most outstanding results every minute of each day.  Self-starters understand that 20% of our activities generate 80% of their intended outcomes. Self-starters also understand that 20% of their customer base is responsible for 80% of their sales and, therefore, their income.

Leverage time through delegation:

• Certain activities maximize their value, while others are important but may be delegated to support staff or a third-party independent vendor. Delegated job responsibilities may be integral to overall success, but can be handled by knowledgeable and well-trained others.  The Self-starter knows that each hour of delegated activities can double productivity and save Time.

Technology:

• The self-starter recognizes that unlimited opportunities exist to utilize software packages to manage data, market, network, and process their jobs and daily activities.
• Self-starters recognize that technology enhances their effectiveness and often multiplies their results.

Symmetrical vs. asymmetrical growth:

Personal and business growth is not accomplished on a constant upward trajectory.  We do not automatically achieve improved results by a certain amount per minute, hour, month, or year. Variables that affect results change constantly.  For example, the real estate loan salesperson may need to catch up around holidays, whereas the retail stores do their best during the busy season. Socioeconomic or political upheavals may cause businesses to decline dramatically, while news that the economy is performing well may accelerate new business activity.  Attitudes and actions may modify results.

Balance of symmetrical growth requires constant modification of activities, action habits, and growth patterns.  A person’s activities differ during high-production months compared to low-production months.  A Self-starter recognizes that the high volume of inbound calls with potential new business may be followed by stagnant periods, during which outbound solicitations are necessary to bridge the gap.

Exponential growth:

Growth or success will increase in quantity over Time at an accelerating rate.  If the plan is executed efficiently, success will double or triple. Eighty percent of the results are completed in the last 20 percent of the Time.  Focus, execution, constant readjusting of the plan, and tenacity are the keys.

Momentum is accomplished by sticking to a plan and modifying it when necessary. The opposite of exponential growth is exponential decay, where the plans are wasted if this is not executed.  Loyalties, referrals, momentum, and results quickly cease when someone ceases to execute their plan. Catching infectious diseases, such as lousy attitudes, bad habits, or procrastination, can easily cause a downward trajectory in success.

All plans and their execution must be constantly evaluated and modified.   Tagnation will cause a downward trajectory.

Organizational bureaucracy:

A bureaucracy is a work organization that refers to a body of personnel executing the organization’s directives.  The term bureaucracy means rule by desks. As staff members multiply, inefficiencies diminish the intended result. Each staff Member's agenda may be different from the organizational intention.  The more each staff Member deviates, the more inefficiency sets in.  Inefficiencies drag on goals and profits.

If a job is directed to particular staff members due in two weeks, procrastination, spending time on trivial matters, and delegating to subordinate support staff may be counterproductive and a drag on profits.  Many staff only care if they go through the motions and get paid.   This is an example of a process-driven approach rather than a results-driven one.

Many companies tolerate inefficiencies and hire more staff, which can drag down production and, consequently, bottom-line profits.  Governments actively encourage population growth, regardless of how inefficient it becomes.  Multiplying personnel and consuming public tax receipts become the primary goals rather than getting results.   Entrenched bureaucracies can become cancer.

Time Off:

Time off is not Time away from work; it’s Time to relax, unwind, and escape from work-related emotional pressure and clutter.

Everyone needs to recharge their (mental, emotional, and physical) batteries.  Avoid any semblance of work pressures, including turning off your phone and computer. Avoid burnout by scheduling focused Time for anything related to work.  Hopefully, these will be full days, unencumbered, away from the business environment altogether.

Most people have developed a place to escape from their business life or activity that helps them transition from a frantic hustle and bustle into peacefulness, tranquility, serenity, and resolve.  A personal tune-up comes to mind.

The escapee can take a break from work and, no matter how temporary, figure out how to manage Time away from societal pressures.  And there are many. If you would like a copy of my article, Escape from the Jungle, please email me, and I will forward it to you.  I refer to this location as my Mental Hobby Shop.

Why do people misallocate Time and resources?

One prominent reason is the fear of rejection!   Fear of rejection is the unconscious reason people move into B-C-D time’s safe space or comfort zone.  When we request that someone work with us, they may respond with ‘No’, ‘Yes’, ‘Not now’, or ‘Maybe later’.  They could also totally disregard us.

The most challenging learning curve in a salesperson’s career is understanding that a prospective buyer is not rejecting you personally, but merely your request.  The salesperson must locate someone who needs their products, goods, or services. Training on how to handle rejection then comes into question.  That is for another article.

This time management system and becoming a self-starter are learned processes, not events, and their use should become a lifelong habit.  However, everyone needs a tune-up or reminder.