Peter Fletcher

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5 tips that will keep you performing at your peak

July 15, 2014 by Peter Fletcher

Nutritionist and peak performance coach Julie Meek has the following simple tips that will help you to perform at your best.

1. Treat your life like a sprint, not a marathon. Put another way, keep the finish line in sight. Creating short-term, achievable goals helps to give today and tomorrow urgency and meaning.

2. Create cycles of intense effort. Rather than watching the clock for 8 hours divide your day into 90-minute segments. Make it your goal to go all out then have a break. Get up, walk around and reward yourself for a few minutes. Then get back to it for another 90 minutes of intense effort.

3. Get moving. Study after study have shown that people who are active are more productive. In fact, just 20 minutes of exercise every second day halves your chances of developing Alzheimer’s.

4. Take performance enhancing supplements. No, that doesn’t meta contacting the Essendon club doctor but it does mean taking some basic supplements including fish oil tablets (or eating more fish), a probiotic such as Yakult, and — this is my favourite — up to 3-4 cups of brewed coffee per day.

5. Take a break. Whether that’s a physical break such as a weekend off or deliberately quitting a project that’s not working it’s important that you continue to be the person with the hand on the steering wheel of your life.

Filed Under: Strategy

The theme for my blog posts for the rest of 2014

June 29, 2014 by Peter Fletcher

So far this year I’ve written approximately 180 blog posts. As best as I can figure it I’m about 2 off the pace of a post per day, a challenge I set myself at the start of the year. So far, so good.

But there’s a problem. There’s no single, unifying theme to my posts. Possibly there’s a general theme of commitment but it’s more inferred than explicit.

So it occurred to me last night that I could use the theme of gratitude for the last 6 months of the year. The posts would create a series called 184 Things I’m Grateful For. When I write about a person I’m not writing about a thing, so I’d need to change that to 184 People I’m Grateful For.

It seemed like a plausible idea but then I started listing the people I’d put on my list. I got to 17. That’s a long way short of 184.

Rather than make it such a daunting task I could break the last 6 months into two. The first 90 days could use the Grateful theme and the last 90 days could be something else.

I could even beak the last six months into monthly chunks. July could be the 31 Things I’m Grateful For. August could be 31 People Who Inspire Me. September…that’s ages away.

So that’s it. The rest of the year will have six different themes starting with gratitude.

Filed Under: Strategy

Keep pressing the go button

April 9, 2014 by Peter Fletcher

The best leaders communicate vision and mission. Yet, they do more than that – they use communication to create shared vision and mission. That means communicating doubt and having the courage to admit they don’t know all the answers.

As a leader I’d much rather have all the answers and everything perfect. But getting results and moving fast demands that you stay fluid and ask for help. That pulls people into your world and gives them a sense of how they can be a bigger version of themselves by helping you.

Getting things perfect is the reverse of what works to get results. Artists know that no portrait is ever perfect. Authors know that no words are ever good enough. There’s always something that could be done better. But the great artists press the go button. They declare enough. They stop painting and move to another canvas.

And that’s what’s needed in this life, the ability to communicate something that isn’t perfect and let the world deal with that imperfection in its own way.

For now, keep hitting the publish button. Keep putting things into play that aren’t quite right. It’s that activity that gets things done.

Filed Under: Strategy

Who owns the client data in your business?

March 11, 2014 by Peter Fletcher

A bike with stolen front wheel

Agents who don’t take their data security seriously risk being left for dead. Image: Arcturus Aldebaran http://www.flickr.com/photos/42973403@N07/7293651626/

For too long now, too many real estate agents have avoided the question of who owns customer data.

It’s time for that to change.

It seems that agents have no problem protecting data that’s locked in their trust accounting software but everything outside that is left to chance.

If that sounds like you it’s time to answer the following questions. 

  • Who owns the customer data collected in the sales admin process after a sales reps sells a house to a close friend or relative?
  • What about when they sell a house to a Facebook friend? Will you allow them to remain Facebook friends or LinkedIn connections after they leave?
  • Is every contact the sales rep enters into the company CRM now company property? If so, how will you account for the sales rep using their personal mobile phone, performing the action out of ‘normal’ working hours, and entering the data using their own computer and internet connection?
  • Do you have any claims of ownership over work-related data and communications performed during work hours, using work equipment via Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter?
  • Who owns the sales reps Outlook contacts that are stored on your server? 
  • Who owns the data that the sales rep brings to your agency on an Excel spreadsheet? Do you – or the rep for that matter – even have the right to use it under the Privacy Act?
  • What happens when a sales rep adds a client or prospect on Facebook or LinkedIn? Can they still communicate with that client after they leave? 
  • Will you allow the sales rep to upload the Outlook contacts database to Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter so they can add their contacts as social connections?

Regardless of your answers to these questions, it’s important – no, make that essential – that these issues are addressed and made clear in your employment contract. 

And once you’ve done that, make it clear that you mean what you say through training and through your actions.

For example, if your policy is that all customer data collected by the sales rep in the course of their employment is company property, don’t then allow them to import into your CRM system customer data that they’ve brought from their previous agency.

That just makes you a hypocrite and makes a mockery of your data policy.

Have I got you thinking? If so, share this post with your agent friends and tart a conversation that will make a difference.

Filed Under: Strategy Tagged With: data, data ownership, data policy, data security, Facebook, LinkedIn, Policy, Privact Act, Privacy, Social media, Twitter

Lisa Barone on becoming a more prolific writer

March 13, 2013 by Peter Fletcher

For a writer, there’s nothing worse than staring at a blank screen and being unable to write anything. It can be demoralising.

Most writers go through the experience but some have developed clever strategies to produce words on demand. Lisa Barone is one such writer.

According to Lisa, writer’s block is just an excuse. “I believe in fear and being burnt out. Writer’s block is what we call those things when we don’t want to admit to them,” she says.

To maintain motivation when motivation is least present, Lisa uses a combination of pragmatic workarounds and ritual. “If I can’t write out of fear, I’ll often put “Dear Lisa” at the top and pretend I’m writing a letter to myself that no one else will read. Then, once it’s done and awesome, I’ll strip off the top and publish it,” she says.

She writes straight after a workout, which produces “the perfect storm of endorphins and stillness” and blocks out distractions by turning off her phone and listening to rain or white noise on her headphones.

Finally, Lisa reads a lot. In her view “the only way to become a better writer is to learn more about your topic and expose yourself to more voices.” It’s sound advice.

Filed Under: Blogging, Strategy Tagged With: Lisa Barone, writer's block, writing

Tips and negotiation secrets from real estate super coach Tom Ferry

May 23, 2011 by Peter Fletcher

People are buying lifestyle not a house.

It’s important to become a hyper local expert.

Start building a newsletter called How’s the Market.

Buy a Kodak video camera and do a monthly video market report. Send this out to our past clients. Your clients are now seeing you online.

Geographic farming.
It’s all about lifestyle. Record on video the same info you’d send in the mail. Create some market commentary.

Four most important consumer questions for a website
1. Use the term market statistics.
2. How much is my home worth. Share with them
3. What’s for sale. Add some coming soon listing (use your site as an exclusive launch pad)
4. Blog, which answers the question why should they choose you as an agent. Allow people to post reviews. Be open to negative reviews.

Open Houses
Drive traffic to your website. Get to the point where people say “I see you everywhere”.

Be social. Have lots of pillars to extend your brand.

Make your listing presentation consumer-centric. Show case your full team. Show that people are buying 8 for the price of 1.

Start your video blog.

Pre-qualify your vendors so your presentation can be customized for the individual seller.

Show up 15 minutes early. Video yourself doing a pre-sales video in the front yard. Explain to the seller the importance of the video to the sales process.

Q John McGrath How do you deal with fee discounters?
TF you’re not going to win every time. Arm yourself with info and stats. How many transactions do they do? List to sale percentage? Show why the seller is better listing with a full service firm.

JM Soft market, what are your suggestions to get the buyer to make a decision?
TF When, where, why and what’s your plan B? Buyers who are buying for lifestyle are motivated. Don’t waste time on the rest.

3 questions
What’s the worst case scenario? Don’t try the happy sale. Address their fears. Flush out, listen to their fears. Don’t defend.

What’s the most likely scenario?

What’s the best case scenario?

We want the emotion to come out and that allows the anxiety balloon to deflate.

Filed Under: Strategy Tagged With: AREC11, sales, sales coaching

5 simple website tweaks guaranteed to bring you more free search traffic now.

April 23, 2011 by Peter Fletcher

Google Search page

Tweet

Here are 5 simple tweaks you make to your website right now that will get you more free search traffic immediately. Not next week, not next month, now! More traffic means more sales, so get cracking.

Here we go.

  1. Give every page a unique TITLE tag.
  2. I see a lot of agent sites that include TITLE tags that don’t relate to what the page is about. Make them short (usually less than 60 characters) and descriptive (not just a bunch of keywords).

    Most of the real estate specific content management systems provide for a way to customise the TITLE tag, even for each property listing.

  3. Related to point 1, load the keywords you want to rank at the front of the TITLE tag.
  4. Agents often place their business name at the front of the TITLE tag so that it reads “Smith and Jones | Real Estate in Upper Kabbah”. They repeat that on all of the pages on their site e.g “Smith and Jones| For Sale | Real Estate in Upper Kabbah”.

    That’s fine if the agency wanted to rank for the search term “Smith and Jones” but most agents would want to rank for “real estate [suburb name]”. As search engines place a greater emphasis on the first words in the TITLE tag using the name of the agency at the front is working against, not for, getting found in search.

  5. Keep your TITLE tags short.
  6. Every word you add that isn’t what you want to rank for dilutes the SEO impact of your TITLE tag so keep them to less than 60 characters. Stuffing keywords into your title tag makes your site rank worse, not better.

  7. Add links to your most important products (services/properties) directly from your home page.
  8. This will help search engine crawlers find your most important pages easier.

    Provide a link to your main services (sales, property management, strata management) in the body of the home page. Also provide a link to the properties you have for sale and to rent in the suburbs you want to rank for using the search phrase as the anchor text.

    For example, if you want to rank for “real estate Scarborough” add a section called Find Properties for Sale with “Real Estate Scarborough” linking to a page that contains all the properties you have for sale in Scarborough.

  9. Write a good META Description.
  10. The META description is usually displayed as a short paragraph in the search results. That’s called a snippet. A good snippet acts as an advert for your content and will increase click through rates leading to more traffic. Take the time to write a good one. Google will ignore a META Description if it thinks there are words in the page content that provide a better description, so make sure yours is accurate and meaningful.

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Filed Under: Strategy

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About Peter

Speaker, trainer and coach. I write about living, loving and working better. Love a challenge. More...

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