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Open
House Draws
Baltimore-area
real estate sales associates are turning open houses into events that will
woo potential buyers who may otherwise wouldn't have come to take a look.
"When
football started, we did a tailgate party. We grilled hot dogs at one of
the houses," says Tracey
Lane, an associate broker with Keller Williams
Flagship in Millersville, Md. "I put clowns out on the street, and
when the kids go in, they get hot dogs and face-painting."
Ashley
Richardson of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage's Lutherville, Md.,
office held an art show, using the walls of a vacant home as gallery space.
The event, which was linked to the art community, attracted 500 visitors,
including several potential home buyers.
James
Schneider, broker at Distinguished Properties in Annapolis,
Md., invited a carefully chosen list of
guests to a Tuesday evening sunset charity affair at an estate on the Severn River for sale for $13 million.
The valet
parking staff placed a gift bag in each guest's vehicle that included a
brochure of the estate with a note asking that they share it with anyone
who might have an interest in buying the property. The event was so well
received that Capitol File, a Washington D.C.-area magazine, included a
photo spread about it.
Source:
Baltimore Sun, Andrea F. Siegel (02/01/09)
Video of the Month
Where
do you look for good employees. Click the image for some helpful tips from www.AllBusiness.com.
Cardinal Rules
In her book, The First Book of Common-Sense
Management (William Morrow, 1989), author and consultant Diane
Tracy lists cardinal rules new sales managers should follow during the
first few weeks on the job.
Here are some of those rules:
1. Don't take an ego trip.
Don't come in like John Wayne and sweep away all the old rules and
procedures. Until you know for sure why procedures are being used, be careful
about changing them.
2. Don't make careless promises.
Never promise anything unless you are absolutely certain you can deliver.
3. Don't play Genghis Khan.
If you start ordering people around like slaves, you create enemies you
don't need.
4. Don't play favorites.
Good leaders are fair in the treatment of their subordinates.
5. Don't babble without thinking.
Stupid, thoughtless remarks can come back to haunt you.
New At Alpha
Condo
Trouble: A new course, Condo
Complications, explores issues in financing, buying, selling, and
managing condominiums. The two-hour class is March 26.
Forward to a friend
Published by OMG
Distance Learning. Copyright ©2010
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How to Run a
Successful Sales Meeting
Provided by Sharon Newey
Meetings are
an important part of most corporate structures; but especially within
sales. Many people will moan (sometimes inwardly!) over scheduled meetings
because over the years they've sort of gotten a bit of a bad reputation.
We've probably all attended a meeting and then left when it was over-
scratching our heads and wondering exactly what was accomplished from that
hour of time. The problem with the majority of workplace meetings is that
they are unstructured, completely unplanned, uninspiring and therefore-
unproductive.
Here are some tips to help
you run a successful sales team meeting; one that your sales team will
thank you for and actually leave the meeting knowing exactly what is expected
of them and how they're going to get it done!
1. Have a
clearly defined purpose and outcome.
In order for a meeting to be
successful, you must have a way to measure the results. Don't have a
meeting for the sake of having a meeting, in other words, schedule meetings
to generate a specific outcome.
2. Set
an agenda (and stick to it).
Before the meeting, an agenda
should be created that outlines what each member of the sales team plans to
discuss, in line with the planned outcome of that particular meeting.
You'll want to plan the best way to use the allocated meeting time while
still giving everyone ample opportunity to say what they need to say. You
will need to have some flexibility with your agenda as you can never
completely predict how much time you may need on a certain topic, but
having the agenda and distributing it to the sales team before the meeting
helps everyone get focused and stay on track.
3. Engage
the participants.
One reason meetings tend to
fall short of their planned outcomes is due to the participants each
attempting to take notes about what is being discussed. You may find it
works better to assign a note-taker to each meeting, or simply record the
meeting and have someone transcribe it into written form afterwards for
each participant. That way, everyone can be actively engaged in the
discussion or presentation of the meeting, and not focused on trying to
write down everything that's being said.
These tips should help you
run a successful sales meeting with your sales team. Proper planning before
the meeting ensures the meeting will have focus; careful actions during the
meeting result in progress toward the desired outcome of the meeting. Using
these keys should give you some new ideas about how to elevate your
meetings from what people consider a “waste of time” to what is considered
time well spent.
4. Be
a Clock Watcher
Time flies
when you're having fun - and it's been known to get away from people during
a meeting, too. Take a tip from Google: when they hold meetings, they
literally project a four foot tall image of a timer on the wall. The timer
counts down the time left for a meeting or time for discussion of a
particular topic within the meeting. It adds some pressure to keep the
meetings moving as planned on the agenda. While you don't necessarily have
to have a wall projection of a timer; you may want to keep an egg timer or
clock visible to everyone at the meeting to help the sales team stay
focused and on task.
5. Use
Visual Aids
A large
percentage of the population consider themselves to be "visual"
learners. If they can't see it, they can't understand it. Visual aids
should be used in meetings to help people "see" what you are
trying to explain to them.
Visual aids
can be things like flip charts, video presentations, slide shows, or
transparencies, among others. The best visual aids:
- Designed
simply
- Contain few words, often with bullet points
- Make only one point per visual (one point per slide or per page on a flip
chart for example)
- May be props or actual products
These tips
should help you run a successful sales meeting with your sales team. Proper
planning before the meeting ensures the meeting will have focus; careful
actions during the meeting result in progress towards the desired outcome
of the meeting. Using these five keys should give you some new ideas about
how to elevate your meetings from what people consider a "waste of
time" to what is considered time well spent.
Sharon
Newey is a management Consultant and trainer who specialises in developing
New Sales Managers. Helping them develop the skills they need to succeed
quickly in the new business economy. She provides free articles and Ttps on
her website, www.managingsalespeople.com
_____________________________________________________
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Chief Economist and Lem Marshall to Alpha's
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The event will include a full
day of interesting topics, networking with fellow agents and affiliates.
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