When real estate principals tell me their biggest challenge is time management, I immediately ask them one question: “What’s your average days on market?”

Because here’s what most business leaders don’t realise—your days on market isn’t just a metric. It’s a direct reflection of how well your business operates, how happy your team is, and ultimately, how much money you’re leaving on the table.

Let’s talk about what really happens when properties sit on the market too long.

First, there’s the obvious problem: the longer a property sits, the less it sells for. This isn’t theory—it’s proven across the industry. Buyers see extended time on market as a weakness. They smell blood in the water and push for discounts.

But the bigger issue? The one that’s quietly draining your business?

Every extra day a property sits on the market is another day your team is managing that campaign. Another round of calls, another vendor update, another marketing adjustment. Multiply that across your entire portfolio, and you’ve got a team drowning in campaign management instead of winning new business.

Most principals approach time management like it’s a scheduling problem. They reorganise meetings, implement new CRM systems, or hire more admin support.

But if you want real time back in your business, you need to reduce days on market.

When you shift from running campaigns for extended periods to closing them efficiently, you’re not just making faster sales. You’re giving your entire team breathing room. Your agents aren’t juggling endless open campaigns. They’re focused, they’re effective, and they’re actually available to list and sell more properties.

Here’s what actually works when you need to bring down days on market: a systematic seven-day game plan for every single listing in your business.

Not a vague “check in when you remember” approach. A structured framework that breaks down the four critical functions that create a sale, then maps out exactly what happens on each listing, every week.

This means your team walks in on Monday knowing precisely what needs to happen across your entire portfolio. No guessing. No hoping someone remembers to follow up. Just consistent, predictable execution.

The beauty of this approach? Results compound quickly.

When your team sees campaigns closing faster, when vendors are getting better prices in shorter timeframes, when everyone’s working less frantically—that’s when the culture shifts. Your agents start believing in the system because they’re living the results.

Reducing days on market isn’t just about the numbers on a spreadsheet. It’s about building a business that actually functions without you having to be the hero every single day.

When campaigns close efficiently:

• Your team has capacity to focus on high-value activities instead of firefighting extended campaigns
• Your clients get better results in less time, which means more referrals and repeat business
• Your cash flow becomes predictable because you can forecast sales with confidence
• Your agents are happier because they’re winning, not grinding through endless open listings

This is how you move from being a selling principal to actually leading a business. You implement systems that work whether you’re in the office or not.

If your days on market are higher than you’d like, start here: look at your current average and set a realistic reduction target.

Then build the seven-day game plan. Map out the four functions that create a sale in your business and assign clear weekly actions for every listing. Make it simple enough that every team member knows exactly what’s expected, and specific enough that there’s no room for interpretation.

The difference between a reactive real estate business and one that runs like a machine comes down to this kind of systematic thinking. You can’t improve what you don’t measure, and you can’t scale what isn’t systematic.

If you’re running a real estate business with inconsistent performance, high staff turnover, or too much reliance on market conditions, you don’t need to keep grinding through the same problems.

You need a real estate mentor who understands the systems that separate average agencies from high-performing ones.

Book a Real Estate Business Assessment Brainstorm Call and we’ll map out exactly what’s holding your business back—and the implementation strategy to fix it.

Because reducing days on market is just one piece. When you get serious about systems for real estate, everything changes.