Renae Quigley is a driven Eastern Washington agent who knows what she wants to accomplish. In two years, she went from executive assistant, to solo agent, to rainmaker and never looked back. But like most agents, there have been times when she’s lost her focus on accomplishing the tasks that need to be done to push her business forward.

The challenge with doing the activities that matter each day is that we get distracted by fun, bright, and shiny things. After all, the must-do things we need to do to keep our pipelines full and moving are not always that fun. And consistently doing these things can be hard.

So Renae developed a system to help her to regularly do the things that matter.

Renae recognized that the more distracted she was, the less productive she was. She knew she needed a simple system she could follow day in and day out that could keep her on the right track. That’s where she devised the 5x5 System.

What is the 5x5 System?

The 5x5 is a daily tracker based on the DTD2 that allows her to know who she needs to call and what actions she needs to take to not only keep in touch with people but also to build her database.

The DTD2 is an acronym for “Doing the Database Two” and is an approach for calling everyone in your database. Pioneered by Steve Schlueter, the DTD2 spells out exactly who you should contact each week in your database based on the first letter of their last name. There are two letters of the alphabet each week to call, which helps to eliminate call bias. (You know how that is, “I haven’t talked to so-and-so in a year, they won’t want to hear from me!) By using this system, you can realistically reach out to everyone in your database every 13 weeks.

How to use the 5x5 system

The 5x5 system categorizes five ways to connect with people every day. Yes, that’s right. You start with a fresh 5x5 every day that you are working.

1. DTD2: Make 5 calls, send 5 text messages, and interact with 5 social media messages daily based on the DTD2 call list.

2. Business to business calls: Reach out to 5 vendors or businesses. The goal is to set up appointments to learn more about what they do in their businesses and how you can be ideal referral partners for one another. This aspect of the 5x5 will help you to grow your referral and vendor network.

3. Cold calls: Make 5 calls to people you likely don’t know. These may be FSBOs, expired, referrals, or any other people that you should be reaching out to because you both may benefit from being introduced to one another.

4. Birthday cards and calls: Look several days ahead to see whose birthdays are coming up so that you can send them a birthday card. Then, when it’s the actual day of their birthday, follow-up with a phone call as well. This category has the potential for 10 reach-outs depending on the celebrations coming up in the upcoming week.

5. Just because cards: Send 5 “thinking of you” or “thank you” cards to people in your sphere. Provide a personal touch and show them that you value the relationship and that they are in your thoughts.

This simple yet effective system is beneficial for several reason. It can keep you on the right track, remove distractions, and provide you with an accurate picture of your performance. Renae, for instance, has found that by following the 5x5, she is able to make 40 contact attempts every day. Because tracking your activities is an essential aspect of this system, using the 5x5 form daily will also allow you to see your actual conversion rates. This can help to make your business more predictable and take some of the anxiety out of the day-to-day activities in your business. It can also allow you to better understand what tweaks may be necessary for your lead generation time.

Renae can attribute 24 pieces of business in her pipeline – past, current and future – to implementing this system in her business. As she says, when you use the 5x5 system consistently, results will follow.