What have you accomplished so far today?

If you’re like most people, there’s a good chance that your morning is off to a slow start.

Maybe you took some extra time to grab a coffee from that place you really like.

Maybe you took a little too much time browsing your inbox for emails—and then when you didn’t find much, returned to the inbox once or twice more than was really needed.

Maybe you got a little work done—but deep down, you know you could have done more.

If that sounds familiar to you, you’re not alone. Productivity is always an issue, whether you’re a CEO of a mortgage company or a loan officer who wants to get more out of their day than they’ve been getting.

If that sounds like you, read on.

Tip #1: Find What Can Be Automated

Let’s be honest: there are many tasks in your daily work that can be automated.

No, I don’t mean to say that you have to surrender your job to a robot anytime soon.

But there’s likely some aspect of your business that shouldn’t require your physical presence. And it’s that part of your business that you need to get to work automating.

For example, let’s say you have a mortgage website.

When someone is interested in your mortgage services, they contact you. They do the work themselves: they find the contact form and reach out to you.

Your physical presence? Not required.

There’s a lot more you can do to automate your lead generation than simply put up a contact form, however.

With leadPops, for example, you’ll be able to implement sales funnels powerful enough to handle much of the work of lead generation—and follow up via text and email—all while you’re busy working on things that can’t be automated (or spending more time with loved ones).

Tip #2: …and Then Automate It

After this initial process of discovery, you’re likely to find a few things in your life that can be automated.

It might be lead generation, for example. It might be partial automation, such as scheduling Tweets in advance. Or using an online scheduling tool to help automate appointment setting and confirmation—check out ScheduleOnce or Calendly.

But whatever you find, here’s the hard part:

It’s time to automate it.

Yes, the actual work of implementing a new system is just that—it’s work. It takes time and effort—and as any person in the mortgage industry knows, time is money.

But the fun part here is that automation pays off big-time…

Don’t believe me? Here are a few examples:

• Sales funnel. What’s the difference between making daily cold calls and receiving new leads in your inbox before you can even say the phrase “morning coffee”? A quality sales funnel makes all the difference here.
• Let’s say you have an active PPC campaign that you’ve already split-tested. You know it’s going to bring in a certain amount of conversions in the form of genuine leads for your business. The best part? Your PPC accounts will do most of the work for you—just as you don’t need to actually be present for every radio ad you take out.
• No, seriously, marketing. More on that last point: most marketing efforts require work up-front, and then sweet coasting through the rest of it. It takes initial effort to record a video to promote your business, for example. After that, the clicks will keep coming for as long as the video keeps attracting new visitors.
• The act of networking might seem exhausting to you, but finding great agencies that can send you referrals isn’t just automating—it’s playing the game on easy mode. But it’s also “easier said than done.” Networking is more of an art than a science, and it can take a long time before you make the connections that make your life in the mortgage business easier.

What do all of these have in common? They take initial effort, but eventually pay off in the degree to which your business life is handled before you even arrive to the office in the morning.

Tip #3: Start Changing Your Habits with Incremental Improvements

Does this sound like a lot so far?

That’s fine.

You don’t have to go out and do it all at once.

One of the most powerful ways to invest in your productivity is to make progressive changes over time.

For example, let’s say that this is your first month thinking about your productivity. Maybe you take one of the items from the list above and focus just on that.

This won’t add a tremendous amount to your workload, but it will add up over time.

As you add other items to your to-do list and change your habits, you’ll start to find over the months and even years that your life has changed.

In mortgage marketing, this can be applied several ways.

You can tackle the checklist of issues to automate, for example.

You might also start out with just a free trial of leadPops, rather than sign up for a full website and marketing-done-for-you right away.

You might change your morning habits from checking email to doing something productive with your marketing, whether it’s tweaking a PPC campaign or posting and engaging with others on social media.

Whatever it is, there is always room for improvement. And you can start that today, even if you only take ten minutes out of your schedule to implement one small change.

Over time, these are the changes that add up to big results.

Tip #4: Stop Chasing the Small Wins

It’s great if you can change your habits over time and become more productive.

But beware of busy-work.

You know what busy-work means. It’s that type of work in which you’re fully occupied—but you’re not really accomplishing all that much.

In my book, “The Mortgage Marketing Manifesto,” I write about going “whale” hunting, so to speak.

That means finding those people that can really make a big difference for your business.

In fact, it’s kind of the entire point of all that time you spend networking.

But here’s the kicker: all of that time won’t really pay off if you’re too busy chasing the small wins.

This applies in networking—and it applies just about anywhere in your mortgage business.

Every so often, you should ask yourself if what you’re doing is really paying off—or of it’s just the sort of thing that fills your day until it’s time to clock out.

This one question—whether what you’re doing right now is productive—can be a monumental game-changer in the way your daily life in mortgage marketing goes.

According to the Pareto principle, about 20% of your actions may end up being responsible for some 80% of your results.

If you’re ever going to grow, your productivity should be about more than getting yourself to work.

It should be about getting yourself to work on the right things.

How do you do that?

You start with an evaluation of what’s working for you—and what isn’t.

You start thinking about your productivity on a basis of results, not on “time clocked.”

Do that, and you’ll be more productive—sometimes, you can achieve that even by spending less time than you thought.