A client was telling me about a conversation he had with his company's national sales manager. The sales manager was talking about things that loan officers struggle with. In this case, it was call reluctance, but it could have been almost anything.
And my client was thinking to himself that he really doesn't struggle with that. Then he went on to say to me, "But if you judge me by my actions and my numbers, it would lead people to think that I do have a problem with it. "
So I asked, "Well, what else are they going to judge you by?"
The question you ask yourself is, what is it that not only others but what are you going to judge yourself by in the end, if not by the results that you produce?
I've known originators who felt like they were the best loan officer in their market -- truly, they felt like they knew more than other loan officers, they were smarter, sharper, better, more experienced, more reliable, and so on. But it never showed in their production. There is this aspect of denial sometimes: when you compare what people claim to think about themselves compared to what they're actually producing, you see this gap. If you are letting yourself down, if you're disappointed in your results -- or if other people are expressing disappointment in your results -- then it is human nature for you to want to come up with an explanation or a justification for the gap between expectations and results.
That's one little piece of it. Another part of your problem may be that you're not proactively scheduling specific tasks that you plan to do at specific times in your calendar. You're way too busy to keep all that stuff in your head, or on post-it notes, or on a to-do list.
You want to plan every day -- let's say Monday is a really busy day, where you've got a lot of stuff that you're already committed to like your coaching session and your mandatory sales meeting, and a couple of loan applications and submissions. All those things go in your calendar and you don't schedule anything else for those times. Whatever remaining time is available Monday, make sure you schedule the things that are important to get done that day.
Things that can wait until Tuesday, you schedule for Tuesday -- but you schedule specific tasks -- like specific Realtors that you plan to call on Tuesday morning at 10 o'clock, and you've got a list of realtors that you're going to call between 10:00 and 11:00, and they are right there in your calendar, because you consciously & deliberately put them there.
Bear in mind that it's one thing to put things in your calendar and it's another thing to run your day by the plan that you made for your day.
It doesn't do any good to make a plan and not follow it, so you open up the calendar, and you start at the beginning of the day, and you to make it like a game you're playing, to try to do everything that you have scheduled for yourself to do on that calendar.
And so, it's 10:00, and it's time to make the Realtor calls, and then the idea pops in your head, "Well you know, maybe I should do that prequal first, or maybe I should work on this other file first, right, instead of making these calls."
At that point, in real time, you are making a decision -- you're making a choice between doing what you told yourself -- promised yourself that you were going to do at 10:00, and what some other part of you (let's call it your Slacker Self) is telling you that you should be doing instead. And that's when it's time to have a conversation with yourself. If your Slacker Self is telling you to do something other than the calls, the question to ask your Slacker Self is, "Why?"
We human beings, we're just not introspective enough, and so we go through our lives kind of half-awake. We end up doing things that later look like they were kind of dumb things to do, and then we say, "Well, I don't know why I did that."
The reason you don't know why you did it is because you weren't paying attention when you made the decision!
So if you find that you consistently fail to do high-priority things that you believe you really want to do, I suggest you focus on those moments when you have to make the choice about whether to do one of those high-priority things: just pay attention and that if your Slacker Self wants you to do something other than the high-priority thing you planned & scheduled, then pay attention to the reasons it gives for blowing odd the high-priority task.
Then make your choice, but make it consciously & deliberately, so that later, when you or someone else (like your coach) asks you why you made the choice you made, you'll have a better answer than "I don't know."
At least then, you (we) will have something to work with.
And my client was thinking to himself that he really doesn't struggle with that. Then he went on to say to me, "But if you judge me by my actions and my numbers, it would lead people to think that I do have a problem with it. "
So I asked, "Well, what else are they going to judge you by?"
The question you ask yourself is, what is it that not only others but what are you going to judge yourself by in the end, if not by the results that you produce?
I've known originators who felt like they were the best loan officer in their market -- truly, they felt like they knew more than other loan officers, they were smarter, sharper, better, more experienced, more reliable, and so on. But it never showed in their production. There is this aspect of denial sometimes: when you compare what people claim to think about themselves compared to what they're actually producing, you see this gap. If you are letting yourself down, if you're disappointed in your results -- or if other people are expressing disappointment in your results -- then it is human nature for you to want to come up with an explanation or a justification for the gap between expectations and results.
That's one little piece of it. Another part of your problem may be that you're not proactively scheduling specific tasks that you plan to do at specific times in your calendar. You're way too busy to keep all that stuff in your head, or on post-it notes, or on a to-do list.
You want to plan every day -- let's say Monday is a really busy day, where you've got a lot of stuff that you're already committed to like your coaching session and your mandatory sales meeting, and a couple of loan applications and submissions. All those things go in your calendar and you don't schedule anything else for those times. Whatever remaining time is available Monday, make sure you schedule the things that are important to get done that day.
Things that can wait until Tuesday, you schedule for Tuesday -- but you schedule specific tasks -- like specific Realtors that you plan to call on Tuesday morning at 10 o'clock, and you've got a list of realtors that you're going to call between 10:00 and 11:00, and they are right there in your calendar, because you consciously & deliberately put them there.
Bear in mind that it's one thing to put things in your calendar and it's another thing to run your day by the plan that you made for your day.
It doesn't do any good to make a plan and not follow it, so you open up the calendar, and you start at the beginning of the day, and you to make it like a game you're playing, to try to do everything that you have scheduled for yourself to do on that calendar.
And so, it's 10:00, and it's time to make the Realtor calls, and then the idea pops in your head, "Well you know, maybe I should do that prequal first, or maybe I should work on this other file first, right, instead of making these calls."
At that point, in real time, you are making a decision -- you're making a choice between doing what you told yourself -- promised yourself that you were going to do at 10:00, and what some other part of you (let's call it your Slacker Self) is telling you that you should be doing instead. And that's when it's time to have a conversation with yourself. If your Slacker Self is telling you to do something other than the calls, the question to ask your Slacker Self is, "Why?"
We human beings, we're just not introspective enough, and so we go through our lives kind of half-awake. We end up doing things that later look like they were kind of dumb things to do, and then we say, "Well, I don't know why I did that."
The reason you don't know why you did it is because you weren't paying attention when you made the decision!
So if you find that you consistently fail to do high-priority things that you believe you really want to do, I suggest you focus on those moments when you have to make the choice about whether to do one of those high-priority things: just pay attention and that if your Slacker Self wants you to do something other than the high-priority thing you planned & scheduled, then pay attention to the reasons it gives for blowing odd the high-priority task.
Then make your choice, but make it consciously & deliberately, so that later, when you or someone else (like your coach) asks you why you made the choice you made, you'll have a better answer than "I don't know."
At least then, you (we) will have something to work with.
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