How to Get Your Clients to Work on Your Schedule

Setting boundaries with clients is one of the hardest things for agents to do.  It is a topic that always seems to come up whenever I am teaching a class or coaching with an agent.

How do you manage to get it all done so that you are not working endless nights and weekends? 

Here are the 3 biggest issues I see agents having:

• Their evenings and personal time are constantly interrupted with phone calls, meetings and negotiations
• They are working 7 days a week and always on the verge of burnout
• They can’t get anything done in the day because they are inundated with phone calls and emails.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Here are my 3 favorite ways to set boundaries and reclaim my time:

• If you need to leave the office at 5pm and your clients want to do something today, tell them that you are available until 3pm.  Trust me, they will work with your schedule.  In fact, they are happy to do so; they just need to know what it is.  Telling them you are available until 3pm builds in a buffer of time for you in case things run long.
• Mid-day Thursday, assess where you are for the week, what needs to be done and how you can fit it in on Friday. Most agents work weekends because they are not effective with their time during the week. Give yourself a day and a half to regroup and get it done.
• Turn off your phone and leave it in another room.  Being constantly interrupted means that it takes 10 times longer to get anything done.  We are not required to be available instantly.  In fact, it can work against you as your clients start to think you don’t have anything else going on.

Give these three things a try and see how they help with reclaiming your schedule. We are our own worst enemies when it comes to this so know that, once you start putting it out there, it will be easier than you think.