Procrastination is the ultimate silent killer of real estate careers. According to sales mindset expert Pancho Mehrotra, the average agent loses up to two months of active productivity every year simply by avoiding prospect calls. That isn’t just a minor delay; it is a full sixth of your year vanishing into thin air, leaving a massive hole in your pipeline and directly slashing your commission potential.
If you’ve ever wondered why your results don’t match your hustle, the problem usually isn’t your strategy, your CRM, or market conditions. It’s what happens in your head right before you pick up the phone.
Call reluctance rarely stems from laziness. More often, it’s a protective mechanism driven by an unconscious fear of rejection and failure. To avoid the discomfort of a potential “no,” agents disguise their hesitation as productive work – organising databases, endlessly checking market stats, or grabbing that third cup of coffee. But this invisible tax compounds quickly. Beyond the immediate financial loss, putting off high-value tasks fuels daily frustration, damages self-worth, and stalls long-term professional growth.
Breaking free from this 60-day drain requires shifting how you perceive the risk of making the call. Here is how Pancho Mehrotra breaks down the true cost of call reluctance, and the actionable cognitive shifts needed to reclaim your time, rebuild your pipeline, and turn avoidance into consistent action.
Have you ever decided to work on your fitness and then thought, ‘I’ll start next week’, and then next week turns to next month, or even next year?
Or, you know you need to make calls to prospects and delay it with endless cups of coffee, social media, and anything else that comes along to distract you from picking up the phone.
How can procrastination affect all aspects of your sales performance, leading to increased frustration with yourself?
What are the behavioural signs of procrastination leading to call reluctance, either in yourself or in the team you manage?
According to authors Steven J. Scher and Nicole M. Osterman, the technical definition of procrastination is: “To voluntarily delay an intended course of action despite expecting to be worse off for the delay”.
Procrastination is a common behavioural issue that salespeople experience. It is also quite commonly found among those with a list of tasks to perform, whether leaders, parents or even students.
Students often avoid writing an essay or studying for an exam until the last minute, and because of time pressure, they finally relent and do what must be done.
You will often see students making multiple visits to the fridge to see what to eat or check their socials, anything but what they need to do to get the job done.
The common result is substandard output or worse, failure.
In my work coaching hundreds of salespeople and business leaders, I’ve found procrastination is not so much about avoidance of the task as it is about feeling you will fail to do the task and your peers, parents, partners and others will see you as a failure.
You may even worry you will see yourself as a failure.
The shame attached to this is enough for most people to avoid the task.
Because you avoid failure, you won’t be seen as a failure.
This impacts your self-worth. Why do a task where your self-worth and self-esteem will be at risk?
Isn’t it strange that we know making calls will lead to opportunities, but we avoid the thing that will lead to success?
For salespeople and agents, there is a big cost attached to procrastination and avoidance.
A realised cost in opportunities and commissions.
According to my own coaching data, the cost of procrastination is significant in financial terms, equivalent to nearly two months of the year in lost productivity due to the avoidance of tasks.
But the worst impact is that people who procrastinate also fail to learn new skills.
This keeps salespeople and leaders stuck in a holding patters for weeks and sometimes years.
There is a domino effect of procrastination – a long-lasting domino effect, if not addressed.
How do you feel knowing you are avoiding the task you know will make your successful and move you closer to your goals?
This is the cause of many a stressful situation.
The result of all this stress is it affects physical health just as much as mental wellbeing.
The cost of procrastination is significant – financially and emotionally.
Key factors that cause or stimulate procrastination
There are several contributors to procrastination.
I have listed three key contributors to focus on initially.
- Behavioural – habits
- Cognitive – thoughts
- Environmental – community and cultural.
So, what is the solution?
I often have people asking me for a solution.
It’s important to be aware that no one solution fits all. However, there are solutions for each!
If you struggle with procrastination, ask yourself, ‘how do I ensure that I do the task when it needs to be done?’
In cognitive behavioural therapy, the focus is to understand the trigger event that creates the feeling of anxiety or the fear of failure and to learn how to dispute those thoughts.
The therapist’s role is to extract those thoughts and then assist in diminishing their hold.
Using these same thoughts as motivational triggers is the key to finding a solution.
Catastrophising the outcome is the biggest challenge for most people, and understanding and disputing that thinking is paramount.
Is it simple to overcome? Yes.
Is it easy? Perhaps not.
Is it possible to overcome it? Absolutely!
Getting over procrastination does need continual work. It is like any habit, usually ingrained and, for the most part, unconscious.
It is also imperative to improve your emotional intelligence and develop the self-awareness to overcome procrastination.
Introspection and reflection are practices required to develop strategies that work for you.
For some people, the environment can play a part and for some, talking to a mentor.
You must examine the modality you relate to and one linked to you actioning a task you enjoy.
This is the process of mapping across certain behaviours that work in one context and can be used to help you in another.
An ideal solution to overcome procrastination is to work on taking one small step at a time.
Let’s get to work!
This story was originally published in April 2025 and republished, August 2026.