Golden Hours for Prospecting
I read a book recently titled “Fanatical Prospecting” by Jeb Blount. I recommend you add it to your reading list. It is not specific to real estate, but it is a salesperson’s guide to uncovering opportunities in any industry. Whenever I read a book on sales, I look at it through the filters of real estate and how we can take an activity and apply it to our business.
One of the nuggets I got from the book was about prospecting and time management. If you want to get more done, you want to get better results, and you want to have more time off, you need to time block your calendar:
GOLDEN HOURS: hours that are best for prospecting.
PLATINUM HOURS: hours that are best for meeting with clients face to face.
SILVER HOURS: hours that are best used for administration, marketing and business planning.
Often salespeople get confused between marketing and prospecting. For example, most agents think sending out just listed cards or posting on social media is prospecting. These activities are important, but they are not prospecting. They are passive marketing. When it comes to prioritizing your time, these marketing activities should be done during hours when you can’t contact clients. Passive marketing is a long-term approach to attracting clients. It can often take up to 12 touchpoints before a prospect is open to talking to you. Prospecting on the other hand is about finding NOW business.
When you prospect, don’t confuse activities with results. Your job isn’t to prospect, it’s to get booked. Prospecting is just a necessary activity to achieve your job. It is not about the number of calls you make or the number of doors you knock on. It’s about the number of appointments you book.
TIME-BLOCK YOUR CALENDAR:
Start by booking your SILVER hours – these are the hours that would NOT be good for meeting with clients or prospecting because people aren’t available (early in the morning or later in the evening). These hours are when you do your administration, paperwork, marketing, social media, bookkeeping, scheduling appointments, returning emails, handwriting thank you cards, etc. They are not high-priority activities, but they are very important.
Next, book your PLATINUM hours – these are the hours that are best for meeting with clients. Most sellers want to meet with you weekdays after dinner (6-9 pm). Most buyers want to meet with you on weekends during daylight hours. I suggest booking two 4-hour time slots on Saturday for taking clients out, and keep Sundays open for open houses. You can easily shift your time blocks around. On any given evening if you don’t have a listing appointment, you can turn that time into prospecting time.
Last, book your GOLDEN hours – these are critical hours for prospecting. Choose time slots when most people will be home and when it would be the best time to reach them. If you don’t book prospecting on your calendar every day you will quickly run out of clients. When agents go into a slump, it is because they stopped prospecting weeks ago. They uncovered opportunities, got busy with those clients and it gave them an excuse to stop prospecting. As a result their pipeline dried up and it is difficult to refill the pipeline once it is empty.
When you are prioritizing your activities throughout the day, don’t confuse busy activities with dollar-producing activities.
If you get a new listing today there are a hundred things that need to be done to get the property on the market and make sure the world knows about it, but these SILVER activities should not take over your calendar for the next week. Even when you are busy, if you don’t prospect during your golden hours you won’t fill your platinum hours.
Chris Leader
President
Leader’s Edge Training