Now that the year is coming to a close, things have started to slow down and you are likely feeling less overwhelmed. Use this time to begin planning out your priorities for the upcoming year and start building habits that will help you manage your time.
You should know what the main goal or objective your builder is working towards next year. Are they aiming for a specific number of sales? Is there a push to improve customer satisfaction? Are they expanding into new markets? If you don’t know, ask. If your goals are not aligned with the goals of your leadership, you will be constantly fighting to prioritize your objectives.
Now, keeping the company’s objectives in mind, set yourself 1-3 goals that will help move the needle on the main objective(s). Your goals need to be measurable with an end date, plus you need to make sure you can directly affect the outcome with your actions.
For example, your builder wants to sell 500 homes in 2022. One of your goals could be centered around web traffic or leads. To determine your goal, look at your current lead-to-sale conversion rates.
I also prefer to break this down by quarter. It’s much easier to stay focused on shorter-term goals.
This is the most important habit to start for yourself. Block out time every week, or every day, to work on tasks that directly impact your goals. Put it on your calendar, and stick to it.
At the beginning of every week, I list out three things I need to get done to achieve my goals, then I schedule a time to work on them.
It is all too easy to put off a project to the last minute when you are busy. If you wait until the last minute to work on those Grand Opening materials, then an urgent issue arises the week it’s due, you will either be putting in long hours or miss your deadline.
By working on your projects earlier you can identify problems with enough time to solve them, plus you have more time to get creative and will have a better final product.
In the case of a Community Launch, I know it is not unusual to not have pricing or floor plans until the last minute. But, there are still things you can do. Have all of your materials designed and approved. Then when the plans and pricing come in at the last minute, you only need to drop in the few missing pieces.
As you find yourself with some downtime through the end of the year, take some time to honestly look through how you spend your time. There are likely some tasks you could delegate, automate, or cut completely.
Are you creating a weekly report that no one ever looks at? Cut it. Does it take you two hours to fill in your monthly marketing report? Automate it. Are there any tasks that you could easily train someone else to do? Delegate it.
There is a lot of urgency in the homebuilding industry, and we marketers are not immune to the stress that comes from it. Try these habits for a few months and see if you begin to feel more like you are driving your projects, rather than running after them just to keep up.
