Happy New Year and welcome to Mike Ferry TV. I’m Ron Cronin. 2020’s upon us … we have the whole year in front of us … and at this point, meaning the first week of January, I know that you have important goals that you’ve set … I know that you have a solid business plan … and I know that you’re committed at a high level.

So, how do you take all of that and put it into activities?

The way to do it is through your daily schedule. You may not have used one last year like you should have, but you’ve got another year in front of you … and I know that you can do this.

Consider that the schedule is a daily breakdown of your business plan. Remember, your plan has income goal … production goal … it also has how many days you plan to work. So, your daily schedule is what you have to do today in order to stay on track with your plan. Just take it one day at a time … make it easy on yourself.

Now, the daily schedule should be written the night before or the morning of … just as long as you’re not writing it as you go … or trying to keep it in your head … literally write it out by hand or type it out … print out a few copies.

Writing it out each day means that you’re committed to it daily. Trying to use a generic schedule … it doesn’t seem to have the same impact on your mindset and it makes it easy to disregard it. Once you’ve written your schedule, post it in a few places to help you stay on track. Remember that the more people that know about your schedule, the more likely you’ll follow it … it’s accountability.

There are six components to include each day in your schedule. Let’s write these down …

A) Preparation

Next to preparation … just simply put “30 minutes.” You know, maybe allow yourself 30 minutes to prepare … to clear your desk … make sure your headset’s charged up … make sure you have all the numbers that you plan to prospect. Allow yourself 30 minutes right off the bat as soon as you show up to work.

B) Practice

Every great professional practices before they start their day, so you want to practice … and put next to that “30 minutes” as well … 30 minutes of role-playing with other people … chanting your scripts … looking in the mirror going through your presentation … whatever you’re practicing that particular day or that week … 30 minutes for practice.

C) Prospecting

Of course as a great Mike Ferry trained agent you’re a prospector … hopefully you do that on a daily basis. You’re going to have to decide based on your goals and based on your business plan how much prospecting daily you have to do … and that might vary a little from day to day … or you may choose to just make it the same amount every single day.

We have preparation … practice … and prospecting …

D) Lead Follow-Up

Because when you prospect and practice, you generate leads. Next to lead follow-up … also write “30 minutes.” For most of you, that’s going to be more than enough time … because if you’re really following the Mike Ferry System and you’re following leads that are only 7 to 10 days old … well, there’s not a lot of them generally … so you’ll have 3 or 4 leads maybe … 30 minutes should be more than enough.

E) Administrative Time

You have paperwork to do … file work to do … computer work to do … MLS … CRM work … answering emails. I mean there’s all kinds of things administrative-wise that you’ve got to do … and so you have to decide each day, based on your workload, how much administrative time you’re going to need.

F) Appointments

Appointments that you have with the public … appointments with Buyers … appointments with Sellers … appointments with maybe even other people.

Preparation, practice, prospecting, lead follow-up, administrative work and appointments. Most everything you do is going to fall under one of those six categories.

You should decide on a start time and an end time each day. When are you starting? 7:00 AM? 7:30? 8:00 AM? And when are you going to go home and turn off the lights and lock up? Remember, these are your store hours. When are you open? Decide that in advance.

Now the goal should be that 80% of your day is spent on income-producing activities, so decide how much time is going to be spent in each category … with that 80% in mind.

Now a common reason that agents fall short of their goals every year is they can’t seem to follow their plan … they can’t seem to do it. Maybe they’ll do it for the first 2 or 3 weeks … maybe the first month or so … but then it becomes difficult. So, the schedule each day makes it a simple step-by-step process.

I know you like things step by step … go have some fun.

Mike Ferry is the global leader in real estate coaching and training. Watch Mike each week as he discusses a variety of topics to help real estate agents and brokers. Grow your real estate business by improving your mindset, developing your skills and creating a plan of action to increase your production!