By Mike Pallin, President of The Floyd Wickman Team Problem: Spring market is upon us and my inventory of listings is too low.

My #1 goal is to get more listings. My #1 challenge is finding the time to prospect for more appointments. Advice, please?

Is the problem that you are sitting at your desk five mornings a week and just staring at your phone for two to three hours because you have run out of people to call?

Are you perhaps waiting for it to ring? For them to call you?

Or is the problem that you are not at your desk every morning prepared to prospect with a list of names and numbers to dial?

If you need more appointments, you have to make more calls. If you want things to change, you have to change things. First, you have change your thinking. Then, you have to change your routine. And you also have to change your skill-set. Let’s take them one at a time.

Change your thinking.

Change your thinking about what has to be your #1 priority, your #1 job, your #1 focus. If you’ve been thinking anything but lead generation is your #1 priority, your thinking is what’s holding you back.

Lots of things are important. Servicing. Follow up. Training. Marketing. Showings. Offers. Meetings. Networking. Mailings. Time off. Exercise. Diet. Social media. But when everything is important, NOTHING is important.

Buy in to this way of thinking – when I take care of lead generation, everything else will take care of itself. Because the opposite is also true – without leads, I have only crumbs. Without leads, I am at the mercy of chance. Without leads, I am dependent on the kindness of strangers.

How do you change your thinking? There are lots of history-proven techniques. Affirmations. Reminders. Goals. Rewards and penalties. Accountability. Visualization. Repetition. Reframing. Did I mention repetition? Logical arguments for. Emotional drawbacks against. Change your posture. Transformational vocabulary. Seek the company of people who think the right way, and avoid the company of those who don’t. And repetition.

Change your routine.

Second, change your routine. Lead generators make calls in the morning and take calls in the afternoon. If you are in the habit of answering your phone/text/email whenever it rings or dings or buzzes or beeps, change that by sending incoming calls to voice mail in the morning. Use a separate phone for lead generating if you have to, and lock your other one out of sight and out of mind.

A lot of successful agents built great businesses by following Floyd’s original routine: Go to office. 9AM. Three mornings a week. Sit at desk. Make calls until you get one.

Today you get to the office by 8:30AM. Compile your list of people and numbers to dial. Make notes about your approach, or reason for calling. Set a goal for the number of dials you will complete. Call your 5-90-10 partner, or partners, and compare notes. And by 9AM set out your Do Not Disturb signs, seal yourself off from distractions and start “smilin’ and dialin’.”

Keep track of dials, conversations, leads, appointments and hesitations. Share them with your partners at the end of your prospecting session. When you build a database of SMART Numbers it’s easier to learn from your ratios over time.

The two most important AHA!’s we have heard from our students about this approach to lead generation are: 1. It’s a numbers game. Sometimes you reach people the first time you dial them, sometimes the fifteenth. Each dial is separate from the one before, and the one after. Just put the blinders on and keep dialing. 2. It’s not the calls you make, it’s that you make the calls. Making the calls makes you feel better, and when you feel better, you make better calls. You also get results that appear to have no connection to the people you actually called. That’s the Law of Attraction at work.

Change your skill-set.

If your real #1 goal is to build a bigger listing inventory, you have to get better at presenting on the appointment.

That means getting better at pre-qualifying the appointment and creating gettability.

That means getting better at taking control up front and delivering a powerful POCA, or Safe Island.

That means getting better at problem stacking, and inspecting with showmanship, presenting your marketing plan, pricing and closing.

That means getting better at handling hesitations, stalls, conditions and objections because you have internalized all 11 HOT BUTTONS.

That means leaving the house the first time with a signed contract so that you don’t have to go back again and again before you get a decision.

Quick review. My #1 goal is to get more listings by going on more appointments. So, I have to make more calls. I make more calls by changing my thinking about lead generation. I make more calls by changing my prospecting routine. And I get more listings by improving my presentation skills.

Any questions? Ready. Set. Change.