Implementation is often the difference between success and failure.

As a busy real estate professional and small business owner, you are expected to perform hundreds of tasks throughout a normal transaction. Search for the perfect home, schedule showings, show properties, communicate with clients, communicate with agents, write offers, negotiate, sit open houses, and more. And this is just a small fraction of what keeps an agent busy throughout the day.

At the beginning of each week, if you are like me, I’m sure you have the best intentions when it comes to completing your marketing tasks. Finish the “Just Listed” postcard, craft a blog post, organize your sphere of influence, work on your customer relationship management (CRM) input, post on your Facebook Business page, etc. And that is just the short list. You probably also have dozens of other “should” tasks on your mind.

Often these important marketing tasks get pushed aside, but when your mortgage or title partner gives you a shout to meet for coffee or lunch to “talk business” or your manager wants you to attend a great contracts class, you usually always find time to do it. The fact of the matter is, as human beings, we gravitate towards the path of least resistance. In short, we find time to do the easy, fun stuff and put off the hard stuff.

Focused marketing tasks usually take a back seat because, frankly, they may not be as fun, interesting, or fulfilling as the other tasks on your list. To many agents, it is no fun to organize your sphere, it is time consuming to write a valuable blog post, and it’s so daunting to learn how to sponsor a post to your interested audience to foster engagement on social media. Thinking about having to complete tasks may shut your brain down!

In one of my favorite essays, famous insurance salesman E.N. Grey says, “The common denominator of success—the secret of success of every man who has ever been successful—lies in the fact that he formed the habit of doing things that failures don't like to do.”

Read that statement five times. It is true! If you take a look around you, you’ll see the top producers in your company and in your city all do what it takes to market themselves and their business. They finish their CRM input. They complete the “Just Listed” postcards, create a post for that same house, and boost it to thousands of people on Facebook. They prioritize and focus on their “should” tasks just as much as other tasks they may find more enjoyable because they know the potential benefit to their businesses.

Becoming an implementer (in short, getting things done) will be the difference between your business growing to stagnate or exponential growth.

1. Identify your highest income-producing task. This is something on your “should” task list that, if completed, will earn you the most money.
2. Create a plan and checklist to help you complete that task.
3. Make completing this task your priority for the day. Tell yourself the day is not over until you have the last item on the checklist done and you’re able to go to bed knowing that you have accomplished something that will bring in revenue.
4. Move on to the next highest income-producing activity.

As I travel throughout the country speaking to real estate agents, one thing is undeniably clear: We all have the desire to succeed and sell more homes this year than we did last year. As I was leaving a recent class in San Diego, California. I had an agent walk up to me, shake my hand, and thank me for the presentation. He follows this by saying, “Everything I heard today was great. I would love to go back to the office and work on what I learned, but you know how it goes. I am going to get super busy and probably won’t have time to implement any of this. Do you guys have anyone to help me?” I knew right away that if he was not going to find the time to do it himself, he probably wouldn’t spend the money to hire someone to help him, and if I see him next year, I would bet he will not have achieved his goals.

Become an implementer, make it part of your work life, and get the things done that will bring you more clients and help you grow an amazing business.

After a successful career as a top producing real estate agent and building a mid-sized real estate company in Colorado, Broker/Owner Eric Sachs and his business partner sold their company and followed their passion of helping real estate agents build their business by founding Breakthrough Broker. Eric is a recognized national speaker and is dedicated to helping real estate agents, title and mortgage companies in building their business.