Login
ISCOVER
It’s not just the time you have (or don’t have), it’s what you do with it that will determine whether you are working as efficiently as possible
BUSINESS AUTHORS have written reams about time management. Most brokers would already be familiar with the key principles: allocate set times for doing email, differentiate between ‘urgent’ and ‘important’ and so on.
To continue reading the rest of this article, please log in.
Looking for more benefits? Become a Premium Member.
Create free account to get unlimited news articles and more!
Looking for more benefits? Become a Premium Member.
Certainly, you need to plan your day to accommodate client visits, computer time and essential admin jobs so as to avoid becoming swamped. But if you’re short on time, you also need to ensure you’re efficient and productive within those allocated time slots.
You want to have ‘quality time’. If your schedule has you doing email from 11:15am to 11:45am and no longer, then that’s all well and good.
However, if you don’t squeeze the maximum value out of that half hour then your time management virtually become a wasted exercise.
If you knuckle down from the word go, however, you might find you knock over your email in less than half an hour. Do it in 15 minutes and you’ve not only been productive but you’ve effectively ‘created’ an extra 15 minutes which can be added to one of your other time slots (including your essential down time/relaxation slot).
Three basic principles will help you remain productive when the clock is ticking and they can be applied – to a greater or lesser extent – when talking to clients, BDMs or referral partners as well as when communicating by phone or email.
STAY ON THE TOPIC
First, to make the most of your available time, you absolutely have to stick to the topic at hand. Avoid getting sidetracked.
For example, the initial client fact find is designed to ensure you have the information you need to identify the best possible loan for your client.
However, that initial meeting will probably raise issues that need to be addressed subsequently as well as your list of ‘must know’ items that need to be addressed now. Fortunately, most brokers are adept at knowing the difference, but it’s important to keep it in the back of your mind.
OFFER SOMETHING
Second, in most – if not all – meetings and communications it’s important to offer something, and here you make the most of your time by having a clear idea of what that something is.
With a client phone call requesting the answer to a query, what you offer is very specific – an answer to the query. Job done, and hopefully a very grateful client puts down the phone.
Other situations aren’t as clear cut. With a referral partner you might see the opportunity to offer assurances you will refer a client their way whenever you are able – and of course you hope that will be reciprocated. What you ‘offer’ here is trust.
Fortunately, once you have made your ‘contribution’ you can wrap up the meeting fairly quickly, safe in the knowledge that the other party won’t feel rushed or short changed.
TAKE SOMETHING AWAY
Good business is about give and take, and if you’re pushed for time you really need to ensure you take what you need from the meeting or interaction.
That doesn’t mean you’re purely driven by self-interest; it means you have a business goal. Your required ‘take-away’ might be some information, an approval or even the knowledge that an important business relationship is on track.
As a rule of thumb, meetings, conversations and other interactions should nearly always be used to move you closer to one of your business goals – in one way or another.
Keeping that in the back of your mind when time is short will help you focus on being as productive and efficient as possible.
