THE ROOM

I close deals in bunches.
Then panic.

Most of your closings come in a few busy stretches. In between are long, quiet weeks.

Your business has worked this way for as long as you've been doing this.

Three Closings in Eleven Days

When a busy stretch comes, you know it.

Three closings in eleven days. A new listing that came from one of them. Two buyers who want to see houses on Saturday, back to back. Your phone ringing all day with real deals instead of maybes.

You were good during that stretch, sharper than usual. You told a seller what you thought of her price, and she took your advice. You weren't worried about losing her.

You also didn't prospect. Not once in eleven days. It didn't occur to you to feel bad about it. You were as busy as you've ever been, and every hour went to a live deal.

Then Six Quiet Weeks

The last of the three closed, and your calendar emptied out.

It didn't happen all at once. There was a week of loose ends. Then a week you told yourself you earned a slower pace. By the third week, you noticed the phone wasn't ringing with anything real.

By the fourth week, you were at your desk at eight in the morning with a knot in your stomach, calling everybody. Old leads. The couple from the spring open house. Past clients, with a reason to call that you made up on the drive in.

You made more calls that week than in the two months before it.

By the third call, you could hear it in your own voice. A little too warm. A little too fast.

Two of those calls turned into deals. About seven weeks later, the phone got busy again, and the next busy stretch began.

Then you stopped prospecting again. The deals were here, and they needed you.

What the Industry Tells You to Do

The industry's answer is consistency. That's the right answer. Block a prospecting hour and treat it like a listing appointment. Prospect on your busiest day and your slowest one. Time-block, batch your calls, use a dialer, and protect the hour.

You know this advice works. You've blocked the hour more than once.

Each time, it lasted about three weeks. That's about how long it takes for the next busy stretch to arrive. The hour survives the quiet weeks. It disappears in the busy ones.

The schedule is fine. Something else keeps pulling you off it.

A Feeling Decides When You Prospect

Think about what really happened during those eleven days.

Being busy wasn't the whole story. For eleven days, you didn't feel the worry that usually makes you pick up the phone.

In week four, the calls weren't a decision either. You weren't following a plan. You were trying to make the worry go away.

That's the whole cycle. It runs on a feeling, not on anything in your CRM. When the worry goes away, you stop. When it comes back, you start. Both happen before you think about it.

So the shape of your year follows that worry. Busy when it's gone. Frantic when it's back.

What the Worried Calls Cost You

The quiet weeks aren't the most expensive part. The calls you make in week four are.

They're the worst calls you make all year. Your words are fine. But the person on the other end can hear how much you need the deal within the first ten seconds, and it feels like pressure to them.

So you make the most calls when you feel the least steady. The thirty calls you make when you're worried turn into fewer deals than three calls would in a good week. And you make them at the moment you can least afford a bad conversation.

The deals that do come through all arrive at once. The next busy stretch begins, and the prospecting stops again. Nobody plans the cycle. It repeats on its own.

It also gets more expensive as you get better. A skilled agent who is worried still gets appointments. You'll fill your calendar in week five, with conversations you would have handled better in a calm week.

Why It Keeps Happening

You've only ever prospected to make the worry go away.

When the pipeline is full, there's no worry, so nothing pushes you to make the calls. When it's empty, there's too much worry, and the hour turns into an emergency. You've never made calls from a calm place, so it doesn't feel like an option.

It also hides behind a real fact. The busy weeks really are busy. Eleven days of live deals doesn't seem like the time to block two hours for calls, and most people would agree.

For an agent who chases leads, this stays hidden for years. Every part of it feels like responding to the business, not to your own worry.

It's the same pattern behind the leads you keep buying while the pipeline still feels empty. Buying leads is the fastest way to make the worry stop. It also explains how twenty closings can produce not one referral. The busy stretch takes all your time, and the clients from the last one don't hear from you.

Two Numbers and a Two-Minute Habit

First, look back at this year. Mark the weeks you prospected. Then mark the weeks you closed something. Count the weeks between them. That's your lag. It tells you how long your quiet weeks will last.

Six quiet weeks usually means you stopped calling six weeks before that.

Then, before your next prospecting hour, whatever kind of week it is, take two minutes at your desk. Answer one question in writing.

What do I need from these calls today?

If the answer is a deal this month, you already know how the calls will sound. Take a minute and decide what the calls are really for. Today they're for finding out where a few people are in their plans. Then start dialing.

And in your next busy stretch, when you're three deals deep and the last thing you want is to call anyone, make three calls. Not thirty. Three, on a Tuesday, when you feel as steady as you will all year.

Three calls when you don't need them are worth more than thirty when you do. They take fifteen minutes in a week that's already going well.

The Name for This Pattern

This pattern has a name. It's the first of the Six Mind Shifts™, Needs, and the shift is from desperation to protection.

Desperation isn't only the knot in your stomach in week four. It's the whole cycle running on need, including the eleven days when you didn't feel it. Protection means your prospecting stays steady, whatever you feel that morning. The person on the phone gets the same agent every time.

I wrote about it in The Unforgettable Agent. This busy-then-quiet pattern is what a business looks like when worry sets the schedule.

Every agent loses deals

Most never put a number to it.

Takes about 2 to 3 minutes to find yours.

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Larry Heathcote is an identity coach for real estate agents, creator of the Six Mind Shifts™ and the Six Decision Drivers™, and author of The Unforgettable Agent. He works on the one thing in every room an agent can actually control: who you are when you sit across from a client.