By Mike Pallin, Floyd Wickman Master Trainer  

My upfront disclaimer. I do not claim to have the only answer to time management. Or the best answer. Or the perfect answer for you. I can only offer you this answer, one that has worked miracles for thousands and thousands of people. Fair enough? I offer it in the spirit of knowing that time management is the #1 issue for salespeople, managers and brokers today. 

What is the opposite of a smart week? A dumb week? Maybe. But how about the opposite of a smart week is a week that is out of control. A week that gets away from you. A week that seems like it’s over before you’ve been able to get around to accomplishing anything important. In other words, a lost week.  

What’s the cure for a week like that? Floyd has the answer, and we make our students follow this process for 42 days until it becomes a habit. The habit is called SMART Week, and it’s based on understanding that life can get in the way of doing what we plan to do. Like the old saying goes, “Man plans. God laughs.” 

SMART Week is based on understanding that trying to control every minute of your life and business for a year, or a quarter, or even a month at at a time is next to impossible. But we can control our activity one week at a time. And we can control our weekly activity one day at a time. A bunch of good productive days in a row turns into a good week. Be happy with that. It's as good as it gets. 

Planning (and being able to stick to) a SMART Week starts before the week begins. A word of advice. If your week starts before you plan it, chalk that one up to experience and keep your expectations low. Really low. An unplanned week is lost and out of control and becomes productive only by accident. 

SMART Week begins with a bird’s eye view. A week-at-a-glance. An overview look. All 168 hours laid out in front of you in a format that lets you plug in blocks of time. A block of time has a beginning and an end. Plug in your appointments first. BTW, treat anything you don’t want to miss as if it were an appointment. Listings. Closings. Showings. Date night. Working out. Time off. Prospecting. 

We plug these things into our SMART Week first to see if we can fit them all in without killing ourselves or becoming overwhelmed. The alternative is dropping the ball, disappointing people who are important to us, showing up late or not at all, doing less than we promised to do. A lost and out of control week. 

Automation is a wonderful tool that makes it easy to move things around, and try different ‘what if’ scenarios. Hey, what if I moved prospecting to Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday? That would leave Monday open for servicing and follow up, and Friday for Date Night. Looks good! Click Save! 

If you’re doing SMART Week on paper, try blocking in pencil. Erasers are a great invention. 

Blocking a beginning and an end time for most appointments is pretty much self-explanatory. Give yourself about two hours for a listing appointment, for instance. (You might want to leave Date Night open-ended.) But how do you know how much time to block for prospecting? 

SMART Week’s first cousin is SMART Numbers. Numbers take the guesswork out of planning a week’s worth of activity, because SMART Numbers guide your blocking. Here’s what I mean. 

My income goal determines my closings goal. My closings goal determines my sales and sold listings goals. My sold listings goal determines my listings goal. My listings goal determines my listing appointments goal. My listing appointments goal determines my conversations goal. My conversations goal determines my prospecting time. But only if I know how long it takes to have the conversations I need. That’s where SMART Numbers come in. 

Without numbers informing your activity plan, your plan is just a guess. Guesswork is not believable. It’s way too easy to get talked out of something you don’t believe in. It’s way too easy to be distracted from a task. It’s way too easy to rationalize and blow it off. 

Want to stick to your SMART Week? Believe in it. Belief creates persistence. Belief creates focus. Belief creates determination. Persistence, focus and determination create predictable results. 

And vice versa. Lack of belief also creates predictable results, just not the results you want. 

So let’s connect the shoulder bone to the ankle bone. Keep track of your activity and results over time to learn how many conversations you need to get an appointment. Those are your SMART Numbers. Plug conversations-time into your SMART Week every week. In advance, before the week begins. One week at a time. 

That’s a smarter week!