What Does your Phone Voice Say about You?

Pretend you didn’t know you. Listen to your phone message. What ‘first impression’ are you making?  Do you sound happy to hear from that caller? Sluggish? Disinterested? Timely?

When I phone an agent today, I have no idea where that agent will answer his or her phone—or from what phone the call is being answered. And, I don’t really care. Technology allows the phone to follow the agent. That’s great. Here’s what’s not so great. Many times the agent’s message is so dull, powerless, or mumbled that it doesn’t sound as though the agent wants to talk to me. Or, the agent’s message is so long, that I’m impatient by the time I get to leave the message.

What Impact Do You Want to Make?

Surveys show that consumers want their agent to be enthusiastic. So why do many of the agents’ phone messages sound as though they are terribly tired or uninterested in the caller? Here’s the principle.

We use our senses to make snap judgments about people.

The less senses involved, the more important it is that we communicate properly. On the phone, there is only once sense involved—that of hearing. You have no ability to communicate your warmth, your interest, etc. visually on the phone. You have only your voice.

Decide What You Want to Communicate

What conclusions do you want your caller to have about you? Write down the five most important judgments you want your caller to make about you and your business approach. Now, listen to your own voice message. Do you believe you are communicating your ‘best self’? Ask five other people to listen, too. Decide what you like and what you want to change.

Research your Competition

Don’t listen only for your own communications. For three days, listen carefully to the tone, intent, and messages you hear on answering machines or voice messages of other agents and brokers. Listen carefully to how agents answer the phone at their offices. What do you think those agents are communicating? Do you believe they are communicating the kind of qualities they want to communicate—and think they are communicating?

Four important tips to remember when recording your own message:

1. Stand up—you’ll sound as though you have much more energy.
2. Write out your script first—and be sure it’s not too long. I don’t really care where you’re going to be all day!
3. Modulate your voice pleasantly. Try to get some resonance.
4. Sound as though you’re looking forward to hearing from me! 

These simple tips will increase your trust rate and your business. Get to ‘hearing’ today! Best news for budgeting: These tips cost you nothing, but reap you great benefits. First impressions count: Create your best phone voice.

The market is slowly improving. Yet, many agents are not changing how they do business to take advantage of it. Historically, agents have ‘snared’ clients by promising they could get something for them, do better than that other agent, or represent them so client always won–and made the other client lose. (Not always legal is it?). In a market ruled by short sales, foreclosures, and other ‘not-controllable’ outcomes, that sales strategy just comes back to hit the agent in the face!

Stop Over-Promising and Under-Delivering

According to a recent California Association of Realtors’ survey, buyers gave agents an overall satisfaction score of 4–out of 100!

Obviously, this over-promise strategy didn’t work very well with buyers! One of the areas buyers said agents were deficient in were negotiation skills. Although I think that’s true, I believe the anger is caused by something else. Unfortunately, many agents are still using that old-style sales technique of making promises they can’t keep. I think they made promises to buyers, and, when they couldn’t get what they promised, the buyers thought the agent didn’t have negotiation skills. Better negotiation skills isn’t going to make a bank sign something the bank has not intended to sign!

This is not the era of ‘over-promise’ and ‘under-deliver’. It is the era of ‘under-promise and over-deliver’!

For example: The agent is attempting to get the bank to accept an offer on a foreclosure. To get that buyer to work with him, the agent has promised he will ‘get that bank to sign on the dotted line’. NOT! Now, the agent has over-promised to get the client, only to let the client down. The client believes the agent doesn’t have sufficient negotiating skills. Actually, the agent has used deceptive, over-kill sales tactics with the client. It’s a situation the agent can’t hope to win. Agents who are working like this must think clients are really, really dumb.

The Customer Doesn’t Know What He’s Getting–Until He Doesn’t

Have you heard that marketing saying? We all want to believe there’s a tooth fairy. We love to find ‘found money’. We want to believe all those smooth salespeople that say they can get us something for nothing. But, when it doesn’t happen, we turn against the salesperson. That is certainly happening in the real estate industry.

The Answer: Learn to ‘Tell the Truth Attractively’

Instead of using the old sales tactic of over-promising, learn to do a consultative interview with your potential client. Tell him what you can and can’t do. Give him your credentials and testimonials. Promise him you will rely on other experts in areas where you aren’t an expert. Become a ‘partner’ in solving problems. You aren’t a magician, you don’t control sale outcomes, and you aren’t an attorney–or a judge, or a bank.

Be Ready to Lose Once In Awhile

If you want to build a loyal clientele over time, you must be ready to lose to win. Sometimes you will lose a client to that old style manipulative agent. But, that client will come back to you, and be more loyal that ever. Remember, ‘the customer doesn’t know what he’s getting–until he doesn’t. And, when he realizes what has been done to him, he will appreciate your candidness and steadfastness. That’s the way to build loyalty over decades.

What do you do to build loyalty and counter the claims of that old-style ‘over-promising’ agent?

A Resource to Guide You to Today’s Representation of Buyers

Whether you’ve been in the business 3 minutes or 30 years, it is time to polish your buyer presentation skills. I’ve put together all the resources you need: Buyer presentations, with a PowerPoint presentation, and your own guide, where I coach you as a presenter. This is a really comprehensive guide, with over 150 pages and several presentations–plus dozens of checklists and documents.

Take a look at The Complete Buyer’s Agent Toolkit.

Most agents tell me they did not receive a job description when they started in the business (or in the interview). If not, why not? In my last blog, I discussed the fallacy that agents should start out as ‘independent’ business people. Now, I don’t mean they shouldn’t take responsibility for their actions and success. I mean that we shouldn’t abdicate our responsibility to teach, train, and coach them so they become great salespeople (so they can become independnet).  Besides not having skills they need to succeed, they usually don’t even know what the job is!

Poor Job Descriptions Abound

As I teach management courses nationally, and speak nationally, I see many examples of poorly thought-out job descriptions and activity plans. What do you think is a poor job description? Take a look here.  ( a preview is to the right).

Why do you think I regard it as a poor job description? It’s not:

Prioritized

Some of the activities don’t result in success

My conclusion: This job description was written by an academic who had never been successful in real estate!

Abdicating  Leadership Responsibilities

Part of that abdication of management responsibility, I believe, is managers not providing a prioritized job description to agents. Notice I said ‘prioritized’.  Which activities should the agent start with? Which are important to be successful? Which are less important?

Before I share my job description with you, please write the job description you believe is the one you follow. Is it helping your hurting you prioritize your most important activities?

My Prioritized Job Description

Now, take a look at the prioritized job description I developed as a foundation for the new agent’s start-up plan,  Up and Running in 30 Days. How does yours differ? What does your job description say about what you think is important? Are you gaining as much success as you should? What does your job description and business plan have to do with those results?

For a printable copy, click here. 

Get that job description refined. Talk to other agents to assure it’s the job description that reflects how you want to work. Compare that job description to what you actually do every day. How close can you come to your job description in your everyday execution? Now, you’re getting much more effective and efficient.

Getting the guidance you need to succeed: If you’re a new agent (under 1 year), you need Up and Running in 30 Days. If you’re a seasoned agent, you need The On Track to Success in 30 Days System. Why not assure you have a better year in 2012?

Whether you’re new or in business for decades, read on. You may be deluding yourself about your path to success.

There are many skills required in this business that people new to it just don’t have. Yet, too often agents believe all they have to do is to start in this business and go to training. They will be successful. Then, when they start failing, they can’t figure out why. In this blog I’ll name 3 qualities and skills you need to develop fast. My question to you is: How are you going to develop or refine them?

Skill # 1: Time management

Most people go into real estate from a field that required them to show up on time, do specific work, and work for at least eight hours. If they didn’t fulfil the minimum requirements of the job, they were fired. Understandably, many people don’t like to work under those strictures. So, they go into real estate where they can name their own hours, work at their own speed, etc. etc. The problem is, with many, that they don’t understand that working at their own speed many be working at a failure speed.

My question: How are you developing your time management skills? Did you bring them from your former business? (Most agents don’t).

Skill # 2; Being accountable to a plan

When I was regional director for a very large international franchise company, I found, as I screened them,  most potential owners and managers had never had anyone hold them accountable. In fact, there was a negative feeling about being held accountable. When you have a ‘boss’, you are accountable to that work plan and to your boss. In real estate, we’re so careful not to step over the boundaries of the independent contractor concept, we rarely hold anyone accountable to anything. The result: Most people never know what the job really is, and whether they are on track to attain their goals.

My question to you is: Who is helping you be accountable for your own success? Who is your coach? (And don’t tell me it is YOU…..)

Skill #3: Implement a plan of action.

It is just amazing to me the kablooey plans of action out there. In another blog, I’ll show you why most of them lead to an agent’s failure. Most of the time, in fact, an agent isn’t provided a plan of action. He/she is just told suggestions or 50 ways to do something. The result: The agent has no idea how to prioritize activities and proceed. He has no idea whether what he is doing every day actually is leading him toward a goal.

My question to you is: Do you have a proven, prioritized plan of action and are you executing it?

So, after I’ve given you 3 skills agents need to succeed, what do you think? Is real estate an ‘independent’ or dependent business? I believe it needs to be a ‘dependent’ business at the beginning. That is, I coach the new agent as he/she starts his/her business. I am the leader. The new agent is the follower (or the struggling agent). There is the dependence. Once the agent ‘has it’, I step back, and become more of a consultant. Have you been a successful follower, so you can learn the business right? If so, why not?

If you haven’t read the great book,  Outliers, get it and read it now. One of the great lessons in the book is that no one succeeds alone. In later blogs, we’ll talk about the ‘community’ it takes to help someone be successful today.

Give me your feedback on the ‘independent’ or ‘dependent’ concept. What do you think?

Getting the guidance you need to succeed: If you’re a new agent (under 1 year), you need Up and Running in 30 Days. If you’re a seasoned agent, you need The On Track to Success in 30 Days System. Why not assure you have a better year in 2012?

At the end of this year, I’m focusing on business planning in both of my blogs. Look for ready to use checklists, processes, and systems. Let’s all get great plans for 2012!

What’s your lead generating plan for 2012? We all love it when some seminar guru tells us we just have to take care of our present and past clients and we’ll get rich. The first part of that statement is true. We DO have to take care of our present and past clients, and that’s an important part of re-creating our business. And, the sad truth is, many real estate agents do a very poor job of that. So, we do start there.

When You Don’t Have Enough

But, what if you don’t have enough ‘potentials’ from those sources? You must look further.

Your Business Success Greatly Depends on Your Having Enough Lead Generating Sources

Here’s where the difficulty comes in. In many instances today, a real estate agent, even a seasoned one, does not have enough past clients to provide the necessary leads to grow his business in a challenging market. My experience, having been a top salesperson, and directly managing hundreds of salespeople, has taught me that reaching your monetary goals starts with

enough lead generating sources.

You must have at least 100 active, identifiable past clients, in your up-to-date database, to drive your business upward. And, in some markets, that may not be enough.

Other Exceptional Sources of Leads for the Experienced Agent 

In my resource for the experienced agent, On Track to Success in 30 Days System for Experienced Agents,  I’ve worked really hard to help experienced agents see where they’re ‘missing the boat’. Too many get stuck in a career rut. Or, they may put barriers in front of themselves that keep them from reaching that next career level.

Besides helping them put their careers under a microscope to find solutions, I’ve also provided solutions that work in this challenging market–including a lead generating plan.  I have identified 5 sources of leads for you that most agents never think of.  They are especially good for experienced agents, because you have been in the business and you have a wealth of knowledge and experience.  Putting these sources of leads into your lead generation and marketing plans will dramatically increase your business.

Have You Orphaned your Clients?

In this blog, let’s talk about the first source, the ‘client orphans’.  What are client ‘orphans’? These are buyers and sellers who closed transactions with an agent in your office. The agent has left the business. Now, the client has no one to turn to. You can step into this breach. If you need business, and are willing to create and implement a marketing plan to reach out and communicate or time with these ignored people, you can ‘adopt’ them.  Who is keeping in touch with those ‘orphaned’ buyers and sellers?  No one.

Orphans May be Unhappy with the Company 

Be aware, though, they may not be too accommodating when you first talk with them.  They are disappointed that someone has not cared enough about their interests to keep in touch. (This is a great lesson to all of us. Never, ever, love ‘em and leave ‘em!).

Note: A recent survey showed that less than 1/3 of agents who closed transactions went back to the buyers and sellers they worked with AFTER the transaction closed. No wonder clients think we love them and leave them. We do!

How to ‘Adopt’ Those Orphans

When someone leaves your office, go to your manager and get a list of their ‘orphaned’ buyers and sellers.  Call those people, and explain that the manager has asked you to keep in touch.  They will be thankful and appreciative.  You will gain another source of business, and the industry’s image (and the company’s image) will be maintained–or raised.

Manager’s tip: Create a system to re-assign those orphaned buyers and sellers to an agent willing to form a relationship with them.  If you do this regularly, you will save lots of marketing dollars (remember, it costs 6-9 times more to get a new customer), and you will increase your company’s reputation as a company who cares.  Also, you will provide lead sources regularly for your agents.

Building your Business AND the Reputation of the Company and Industry 

You and I both hate it when a client says the agent didn’t get back to them or keep in touch. Many times, that’s because the agent was either an uncommitted part-timer or out of the business. By adopting client orphans, you can prove that real estate agents care more than just a commission. This not only raises your image, but the image of your company and of the industry. Plus, it provides you another source of ‘leads’ who learn to love you.

New Business Planning Series

If you’re unsure how to start your plan, if you don’t see the benefit of planning, I’ve got some answers for you.  I’ve been working on business planning for years……and I’ve just come up with a series that I think answers questions like, “How do I get started? How do I know what numbers to put in? How can I make my plan useful?  How will I know that it works?”

I call this big program Come See 2012: Beyond the Basics of Business Planning. In it, I’ve created 2 webinars to walk you right through the planning process. I’ve made it simple and straightforward–but not so simple it won’t work!  Along with that, I’ve provided the most updated versions of my planning documents–15 of them!

In addition, I’ve added several bonuses:

• From the Coach: 53 Pointers for your Business Plan
• Biggest Marketing Dos and Don’ts
• Especially for teams: How to use the planning process to teamify and inspire

All for a VERY affordable price of $79. Why not let me walk you through the process, provide inspiration, and confidence that your plan will work to give you a great 2012? Click here for more information and purchase.

What should a business plan do for you? Appease your manager?  (I’ve been there, so I know that’s why we do it sometimes….) Or, should it actually provide you specific, day-to-day guidance about what to do to make your business thrive? If you’re a practical person like me, you don’t like to do ‘busy work’. You and I believe, then, that a business plan should have a practical application for every day of your business.

How Does your Business Plan Stack Up?

Take this quick ‘exam’ to see how your business plan stacks up.

1. By going through your process of business planning, you get the ‘vision’ and mission principles to make the positioning, marketing, hiring, and termination decisions right for your particular business.        T                      F

Does your plan have an over arch of your vision? Few business plans start with vision. This causes huge problems when real estate professionals try to implement—such as implementing a marketing plan.  A potential coaching client told me she ‘wasn’t very good at marketing’, and wondered how to get better. You can’t become a great marketer unless you have a very clear vision of who you are and where you expect your journey to take you.

It all starts with a crystal clear idea of your vision, mission, and positioning in the market. Your business plan should contain these very important statements. Then, when you design an institutional marketing plan, you’ll be able execute your thoughts and feelings visually.

If your vision and mission aren’t well defined in your business plan, you simply have no solid foundation to make those tough leadership decisions.

2.  Your business plan starts with reviewing and researching the past year in all your business areas.                                             T                         F

Are you ignoring the obvious? If your planning ‘template’ doesn’t lead you through the analysis of key business statistics, you simply don’t know what happened. So, you can’t possibly make decisions for next year, because you don’t know whether to do it, stop doing it, or start doing something differently!

Example: What percent of your listings sold within normal market time? What was the percent of list price to sale price? Few business planning templates ask you to grab these statistics and analyze them. Yet, these are the statistics that directly point you to your strategies and tactics for the coming year.

3. Does your business plan have an ‘action plan’ area, so you can translate your yearly and monthly goals into daily actions—and actually schedule these actions?                                                      T                         F

Is your business plan so theoretical that no one could follow it daily? I have seen so many business plans that only played on the ‘results’ playing field. Writing down the results you want are great, but if your plan doesn’t get down to where the rubber meets the road, (what you need to do daily), you simply are doing an exercise. In other words, you have to get past the ‘what’ and get to the ‘how’ and ‘how much’.

For example: You may say you want to increase your ‘sold’ listings by 25% in the coming year. How are you going to do that? You may build into action part of your plan that you are going to take several courses in gaining marketable listings.

4. Does your plan consist of integrated, ready-to-follow systems so you can delegate?                                                                           T                      F

Michael Gerber, author of The E-Myth and The E-Myth Revisited, says that a business plan consists of the integration of systems. Most managers and agents feel they are working too many hours. They want to be able to delegate specific duties. But, without systems and processes in place, delegation is impossible.

Sell me your business. Pretend you wanted to sell me your business. I walk into your office. What systems do I see? What systems can I buy from you, so I don’t have to ‘reinvent the wheel’? What systems do you have that integrate and reflect your values in the overall way you do your business?

How did you do on the ‘exam’? Here’s your opportunity to think through your business at a much deeper, more meaningful level. Doing so will re-motivate you, re-ignite your passion, and provide you some solid answers for next year.

Click here to see each of the parts of a business planning system–and the order in which they should be explored

 FREE Webinar

Join me on Nov. 29, at 1-2 PM, PST, for a ‘meat-packed’ webinar on business planning: Beyond the Basics of Business Planning. I’ll help you find the hidden problem areas of your business, reveal how to put inspiration into your plan, and give you several strategies for next year. Space is limited! Register today.

Click here to register.

Everyone knows they need business plans. Yet, most people attempt to write a plan without a system–a guide–a map.  If your business plan isn’t really a roadmap, it’s not doing you any favors!

Here are some aspects to look for in your planning system.

Is it a System, or is It Just a Piece of Paper?

Be sure your business plan is a comprehensive, proven system, designed to take you through the necessary planning steps. Here are three areas you need to evaluate about a planning system before you start using it for your plan:

1. Customization. Is the plan customized and proven for your business? You need a system that is proven for real estate salespeople. See the end of this blog for a ‘flow chart’ of a complete listing system.

2. Specific analysis of your past selling history. Does your planning system give you direction in analyzing the most critical parts of your business in the past year? This is one area that most planning systems gloss over. Yet, it is the most important area for real estate professionals to assess. Knowing exactly what your business habits were–and the results of those habits–will lead you to make changes in your business, both in business habits and in budgeting.

For example: Do you know the ratio of your listings taken last year–to your listings sold–in normal market time? Most agents don’t. Why? Because they weren’t asked that question in their business planning systems.

3. Separates the “dollar-productive” activity portions of your business from the support portions. Many agents fail because they don’t do enough “dollar productive” activities, those activities that directly lead to sales and listings sold. That’s because the business plan system they’re using doesn’t differentiate between those activities and “support” activities. In her work nationally with real estate companies and agents, Carla Cross has analyzed hundreds’ of agents’ plans. She has found that the planning system itself, if it’s deficient, will lead the agent off-track.

All Activities are NOT Equal. Poor business planning systems are structured in a way that leads the agents to believe that all activities are equal in outcome. Not true. It all needs to start when the agent first starts the business. Up and Running in 30 Days, Cross’s business start-up plan, has clearly prioritized activities, numbers, strategies, and dialogue. Agents shouldn’t ‘graduate’ to a long-term plan until they’ve mastered short-term planning.

Being critical of your planning system is really the first step in planning a successful year. You’ve made sure the system you’re using is going to lead you through a thought process that automatically creates a good business plan. Now, the only thing left to do is the implement your plan!

Click here to see the ‘flow chart’ of an effective business planning system.

FREE Webinar

Join me on Nov. 29, at 1-2 PM, PST, for a ‘meat-packed’ webinar on business planning: Beyond the Basics of Business Planning. I’ll help you find the hidden problem areas of your business, reveal how to put inspiration into your plan, and give you several strategies for next year. Space is limited! Register today.

Click here to register.

For Owners, Managers, Trainers, and Agents

If you’re an owner, manager, trainer, or agent who wants to build a team, you need these strategies. Otherwise, you’ll only be supervising workers. Here are the truisms about how people work, and the strategies to developing leadership with the people who work with you:

Truism #1: People don’t know what’s expected of them. Just because people accept a position doesn’t mean they know how to proceed with the job.

Strategy: They need to have clear direction, a job description and a firm understanding of the responsibilities–prioritized. Do you have a job description for each of your team positions? Do you provide it prior to hiring? Do you coach to it? Do you help your team members get so good at it that they can start training new team members (move into leadership)?

Truism #2: People don’t know WHAT to do to get the job done. Even if you hire someone who has real estate experience, it doesn’t work to leave it to them to figure what exactly needs to be done—from your point of view. They don’t know your priorities. They don’t know how you work.

Strategy: Provide them the processes and systems they need to succeed. Do you have processes and systems in place to teach them exactly what needs to be done?

Truism #3: Most people will struggle with the ‘how’.

Strategy: It’s your job to teach them HOW. Some people think “leaders” are the “idea people” and aren’t supposed to get into implementation. But if you want your team to excel, you must show them how.

Having worked with assistants for over 15 years, I have found that assistants and team members need help in systemizing any process that you want done. They need help in developing dialogues to deal with affiliates and consumer in the way you expect. They are good at systemizing their own processes–but not good at all at systemizing ours! Help them.

Do you have foundational systems in place from which to improvise? Do you have a solid training program to bring a new team member on board? Do you a method to ‘clone’ yourself to develop someone who can take over your job?

Truism #4: When accountability factors aren’t built in, things don’t get done. There’s a great difference between “do it the way you want” and expecting results and “do it the way you want and let’s check how it’s going regularly”.

Strategy: Hold your team members accountable for each step along the way to completion of a task as well as the end result.

The pay-off for developing competency and leadership skills in all of your team members is a business that is ‘owned’ by all those involved, with empowerment assured.

Vince Lombardi, one of the greatest football coaches of all time, said of teamwork, “Teamwork is the primary ingredient of success.”

Your goals is to develop processes, systems, and training for your team members to bring them into a leadership mentality with you, so you can delegate more responsibilities and finally replace yourself!

What obstacles have you encouraged trying to build your team?

Below: If you’re an agent, please pass this opportunity on to your manager!

Want leadership actions you can put immediately into practice with confidence? Take a look at my subscription series for anyone who wants to step further into leadership: 365 Leadership. You’ll get one leadership action per month that you can put to work in your real estate office. Read what attendees are saying about the program at 365 Leadership.  Join us. It’s profitable and it’s fun–and it’s very affordable!

In my new resource, Knock Their Socks Off: Tips to Make Your Best Presentation Ever, I show a simple three-step format to create your persuasive presentation. No matter why you’re in front of people, we need to be

                                                                   persuasive

Think about it. Real estate salespeople: When you’re doing a listing presentation, what do you want to happen? You want them to sign the listing agreement when you’re done. So, it’s extremely important that you organize your listing presentation using a persuasive format, not just an information-heavy dialogue flow.

In this blog, we’ll discuss great openings–one of the 2 most important parts of any presentation.

 Grab Their Attention in the Opening

 Have you thought about your opening? Or, are you nervously standing at the sellers’ door, worried about what you’re going to say? Are you hiding in your office because you dread doing that sales meeting? When we haven’t organized our presentation, we come up with some really boring, off-putting openings, like:

 I won’t take much of your time, but

We have a lot to cover today (boy, that sounds exciting and motivating, doesn’t it?)

We won’t get through the outline/presentation (then, why do we have that outline?)

I know you don’t want to listen, but

I’m not really prepared (this happens in many presentations in front of 2 or 2000!)

You just open your presentation book, point to the pretty pages, and say, “here’s a keybox”  (I’m not kidding. I’ve seen it….)

Great openings, yes? Yet, we’ve heard them dozens of times. You don’t have to settle for whatever comes ‘naturally’. Instead, make your openings

             Provocative

            Interesting

            Different

            Engaging

  Motivating

The First Two Minutes are Critical

I just attended a Train the Trainer’ session (yes, I still learn great stuff every day!), where the trainer said it was important to engage the audience in a meaningful way in the first two minutes of your presentation. I think that’s a great rule to follow today, because people’s attention spans are the length of a gnat’s eyebrow. So, the next time you attend a presentation, see how much time elapses before the speaker/presenter/trainer gets the audience into meaningful action. I don’t mean to ask a rhetorical question, either!

Want many more presentation tips for your next meeting, listing or buyer presentation, or sales presentation? Check out Knock Their Socks Off: Tips to Make your Best Presentation Ever.

In the next blog, we’ll talk about the other 2 parts of the presentation, and how to make them sizzle, too.

What mistakes have you seen presenters make in their openings? Let me know. Also–what do you do to grab their attention and interest in the first two minutes?

 We’re All Presenters 

Everyone in the real estate business presents: Agents present, when they are doing listing or buyer presentations. Managers present when they are recruiting, or doing their office meetings. Mortgage and title reps present when they are in front of a group of agents in an office, talking about their services. So, doesn’t it make sense to become ‘killer’ at those presentations? You’ll double your money and halve your time. 

Bug Off: I Do Okay Just Like I Am 

Yeah. I know. As a musician, I’ve worked with literally hundreds of people who thought they ‘played good enough’. Some people just get to a certain performance level and leave it there. Have you ever thought that, often, our presentation strategies (or lack of) 

work in spite of us, not because of us?   

As a musician, I know the thrill of performing at high levels. So, open your mind and consider stepping up to a higher presentation level. Not only will you have personal satisfaction, you’ll make more money!

Right now, I’m doing a leadership series called 365 Leadership. I just did a session on creating a listing presentation play-off. This is an awesome leadership action–a way to  help agents get exceptional presentation skills, have fun, and create teamwork. You can see more about 365 Leadership here.  The next full series starts January 2012.

In the next blog, I’ll give you 3 specific methods to increase your presentation skills.