In this workshop, we will cover:
- The difference between lead generation, lead follow up, and
lead conversion
- Why it’s important to do all three
- Learn how to plan and schedule these activities into your
calendar for maximum effectiveness
- Learn at least 10 different ways to generate leads
- Develop an action plan for the next 30 days to generate
more leads and more sales
- Team up with an accountability partner to help you stay
focused and on track for those 30 days so that you’ll hit
your goals

file is called lead_generation_ seminar.mp3

- What goals are, where do they come from, and why it’s important to have them
- Identify what stops you from setting and achieving your goals
- At least 7 different goal categories and why it’s important to have some in all categories
- How to write powerful SMART goals
- A 7 step process to help you identify what’s missing from your plan for accomplishment
- The 5 Step Planning Process to make sure your goals get turned into action steps every week
- Develop a 30 day action plan to move your goals closer to being achieved

Play Audio: Goal Setting and Accomplishment Workshop

Audio: Goal Setting and Accomplishment Workshop

Negotiation Skills Audio

Play Audio: How to Design and Deliver Powerful Presentations

Audio: How to Design and Deliver Powerful Presentations

THE QUALITIES/CHARACTERISTICS OF:

A GREAT PRESENTER 

 WHICH ONES ARE YOUR GREATEST STRENGTHS?

WHICH ONES ARE YOUR AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT? 

PLANNING A POWERFUL PRESENTATION

I.   KNOW YOUR PURPOSE

      A.  WHY ARE YOU THERE?

      B.  WHY ARE THEY THERE?

  C.  WHAT’S THE BOTTOM LINE?

II.  CREATE THE CLOSE

     A.  WHY DO THIS FIRST?

     B.  SOME TIPS

     C.  MOVE THEM TO ACTION

III.  DESIGN THE OPENING

      A.  CAPTURE THEIR ATTENTION

     B.  USE QUOTES, STORIES, QUESTIONS, ILLUSTRATIONS

     C.  NO APOLOGIES; START ON TIME

IV.   OUTLINE THE BODY

A.  BRAINSTORM MANY POINTS

B.  THE RULE OF THREE

C.  STRUCTURE

V.   ADD SPICE

A.  ENGAGE THE AUDIENCE

B.  EVERY 6-8 MINUTES

C.  EXAMPLES

VI.   VISUAL AIDS

A.  TO ENHANCE

B.  BIG, BOLD AND SIMPLE

C.  WHEN NOT TO USE

VII.  TAILOR TO THE AUDIENCE

A.  SEEK FIRST TO UNDERSTAND, THEN BE UNDERSTOOD

B.  ASK QUESTIONS

C.  TAILOR YOUR MATERIAL

VIII.  MAKE CONFIDENCE SHEETS

A.  HELPS YOU FOCUS

B.  “FAST FOOD” FOR THE EYES

C.  BIND THEM IN ORDER

IX.   REHEARSE

A.  OUT LOUD

B.  LOGISTICS

C.  VIDEOTAPE YOURSELF

DEALING WITH ANXIETY AND NERVOUSNESS

SYMPTOMS OF NERVOUSNESS

STEPS TO RELIEVE THE TENSION

1.  IT’S ONLY NATURAL

2.  WHAT’S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN?  HOW LIKELY IS THAT?

3.  QUICK AND EASY THINGS TO DO TO RELAX YOURSELF

4.  MORE THINGS TO DO

5.  EVEN MORE THINGS TO DO

CONTROLLING THE ENVIRONMENT

I.  MAKE A CHECKLIST

A.  VISIT THE SITE

B.  DESIGN YOUR LIST

C.  USE IT!

II.  DISTRACTIONS

A.  ON-GOING VS. SUDDEN

B.  YOURS

       C.   THEIRS

III.  HANDLING QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

A.  SET GROUND RULES IN THE OPENING

B.  SOME TIPS

C.  WHAT IF THERE ARE NO QUESTIONS?

BUILDING AUDIENCE RAPPORT

I.  APPEARANCE

A.  WHAT TO WEAR

B.  COLOR

C.  STYLE

II.  BODY LANGUAGE AND VOICE

A.  SMILE, WATCH FOR HABITS

B.  TONE, RATE, VOLUME, AND PITCH

C.  CHOICE OF WORDS

III.  KEEP THEM INVOLVED

A.  ASK QUESTIONS, TELL JOKES

B.  INVOLVE THEM IN ACTIVITIES

      C.  CALL THEM TO ACTION

Audio: 5 Step Planning Process For Real Estate Agents

Here’s my Five Step Process for doing your planning for the week.  Remember, it’s extremely important to spend 30-60 minutes per week working ON your business, not IN your business.  Take time on Sunday (my recommendation, though some of my clients do it on Friday afternoon) and follow these five steps to get the most out of your week:

Step One: review your yearly, quarterly, and monthly goals first to get back in touch with what you said you wanted to accomplish.

Step Two: review the previous week for lessons learned, insights, things you want to repeat, things you never want to do again, etc.  This is not meant to be a Pity Party.  Just 3-5 minutes in review to appreciate yourself for having had a great week and to identify things that need to be corrected.   

Step Three: review the upcoming week, checking all your appointments, meetings, lunch dates, etc. (the things already scheduled onto your calendar).  You’re checking to make sure you didn’t double book anyone, that you left enough driving time between appointments, etc.  What this review does is it triggers action steps.  For instance, whenever I see a lunch appointment on my calendar, it triggers me to reconfirm that person the day before by adding it to my To Do list.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve forgotten to do that reconfirming and then I show up for lunch, only to have the other person call the restaurant to say they’ve forgotten, would I please forgive them, etc.  Again, 3-5 minutes is all this should take.

Step Four: lead generation time.  Remember, I define lead generation time as any activity that could generate a lead.  This includes phoning, door knocking, sending out post cards or a newsletter, doing an ezine or email blast, faxing, attending a mixer or Chamber of Commerce or networking event, taking out ads, doing a TV spot, writing an article for publication, etc.  Anything that puts your name out there to potential clients.  MREA recommends 2 hours per day, Monday through Friday.  It doesn’t have to be all at once.  Do a half hour here, an hour there, etc.  If you don’t have a lot of leads, then maybe 3-4 hours per day is more appropriate.  Use your judgment.  Just remember what Gary once said (and I’m paraphrasing I’m sure): “If you don’t have leads, then you won’t have listings, and if you don’t have listings, you don’t have a business!” 

Step Five: everything else!  Going to the gym, doing paperwork, spending time with family, riding your bike, reading time, relaxation time, everything else gets scheduled after those first four steps.  And don’t schedule up every minute of every day.  Leave some time for spontaneity, serendipity, smelling the roses, you get what I mean. 

Play Audio: Time Management 1

Audio: Time Management 2

Play Audio: Time Management 2

Audio: Time Management 2

Play Audio: Time Management 3

Audio: Time Management 3

Play Audio: Time Management 4

Audio: Time Management 4

That’s right, you can’t manage time.  Despite all the workshops, software programs, PDAs and personal planners available today, you can’t really manage time.  I say that what you do manage are people’s promises and commitments (your own as well) made in time.  A co-worker promises to have a report to you by three o’clock on Tuesday, you make a commitment to attend your daughter’s soccer game on Saturday, and so on.  We make promises and commitments to do something within a certain time frame, and that’s what we manage, not time itself.  So if that’s true, how do we manage our promises?  How do we organize ourselves to get more done in less time, and with less stress as well?  Here are five general principles that I have found extremely useful in my life to help me be really productive and effective:

 1.     Have a planning system and use it religiously.  And by system I mean something more that just post-it notes and scraps of paper.  It can be a personal digital assistant, a computer based software program, or a pen and paper planner such as Day Timer or Franklin Covey.  It needs to work for you, it needs to be relatively simple to use, and you should have only one system (just don’t lose it!).  Having one planner at work and one at home is confusing, not to mention that we always forget to write down our promises in one or the other and wind up missing an important event (either business or personal.  Oh, I forgot to ask: you do have a personal life, don’t you?). 

 2.     Set goals, both short term (daily, weekly and monthly) and long term (quarterly, annually and beyond).  The best goal setting formula I have seen is the SMART system: specific, measurable, attainable and action oriented, realistic and time bound.  Non-jargony so that anyone can understand your goal, measurable so you can tell if you reached it or not, able to be accomplished by you (with possibly some assistance from others) and action oriented meaning sub-goals or milestones along the way, a stretch or challenge but not so unrealistic that you’ll fail, and a due date, a specific deadline, a by when.  Your goals should also be written down, shared with supportive others, challenging and positively stated.  Brain research shows that the mind would rather move towards a positive goal than run away from or avoid a negative one (“I put healthy, nutritious food into my body” is better than “I will stop eating jelly doughnuts.”). 

3.     Determine your priorities.  You can’t do it all, no matter what they say.  So what’s most important to you (not most urgent)?  Some questions I use to help me sort this out are:  “What’s the best use of my time right now?” or “If I could only do one of these things on my list today, which one would it be?”  Then I work on that one until it’s done (completion frees up energy) and then begin on the next.  In the words of Goethe, “Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.”  Or in the words of Dr. Steven Covey, ”Remember that the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing!” 

4.     Schedule a week at a time.  Again quoting one of Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Begin with the end in mind.  Look at what you’ve got planned for Friday.  How does that impact what you’ll do on Thursday?  On Wednesday?  Tuesday?  Today?  Look into the future and plan backwards to the present.  And rather than prioritizing your schedule, try scheduling your priorities.  Efficient is doing things right, but effective is doing the right things.  The greatest leap in my productivity and effectiveness (and satisfaction, too) was when I went from daily, seat of the pants planning on the run to a very focused process every Sunday evening of planning the entire week.  Try this weekly planning process for the next three weeks and if you don’t see a dramatic improvement in your productivity, I’ll refund your money.

5.     Complete the day before you go to sleep.  Look at your to do list.  Check off all the things you accomplished and congratulate yourself for doing what you did, not lamenting what you didn’t.  Re-schedule those things that need doing by transferring them to another day, see if there are any that can be delegated to someone else, and check to see if any of them can be dropped (maybe they’re no longer relevant).  Then go to sleep with a clear mind, uncluttered by thoughts of all the things you have to do.  They’ll still be there in the morning.  You’ll be much more refreshed and capable of handling them after you’ve gotten a good night’s sleep. 

     There’s a lot more I could say about this subject (and in my half day and full day seminars I do!) but for now that should be sufficient to get you started.  The key is to make and keep your promises and hold others accountable for theirs.  I promise you a richer, more rewarding life if you do, and you will become a Master of Time Management in the process. 

     Brad Warren is a business coach and creator of custom designed training programs in a wide variety of people skills.  He can be reached at Warren and Associates, 5320 Proctor Lane, Castro Valley, CA  94546, 510-537-0107, brad@bradwarren.com

Audio: Communication Styles: Learning How To Build Rapport and Avoid Misunderstanding

This is the communication Styles Audio File on “Communication Styles: Learning How To Build Rapport and Avoid Misunderstandings” is a one hour teleclass on communication and personality styles.