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“PowerPoint presentations are a new form of anesthesia and torture. They were even used at the Abu Ghraib Prison.” ~anonymous U.S. military officer.

Every month I attend a breakfast meeting of independent professional consultants. It’s a well-run nonprofit, and the ritzy country club where we gather serves bacon done just the way I like it — chewy, not brittle. Every month, we have a speaker. Nearly every month, the speaker drags us through a PowerPoint (except for one banker, who shunned slides for an unadorned speech, telling us that, in the “interests of efficiency,” he wasn’t going to explain the financial jargon he was using!).

Every month, my distaste for PowerPoint grows. The speaker interrupts eye contact repeatedly, most of us more than one table back from the screen can’t make out much of the lettering, and the give-and-take that should enliven any such presentation takes another nosedive — offering nothing but the illusion of coherence. It’s technology as a crutch, standing in poorly for the good old-fashioned display of public speaking skills that we have within us.

What I’m getting at is that we can all interact with an audience directly and express ourselves in well-prepared fashion. Well-prepared means a 15-minute presentation that you’ve laid out in logical form, as if writing an email to an intelligent friend or associate. Once you’ve got that down, rehearse it in front of a mirror or a family member or a co-worker. It’s that simple. Don’t let PowerPoint obstruct the face-to-face effective communication that serves us so well.

PowerPoint’s emphasis on process over product hit home when I worked last year with some Navy SEALs in Virginia Beach, Va. Back in the states between combat and security deployments, they were on the staff of the Naval Special Weapons Development Group, and they asked me to help cultivate a concise, to-the-point writing style to communicate efficiently with their Pentagon superiors. It quickly became apparent that they were also frustrated by briefings they gave for senior officials, including ambassadors and politicians.

To a man, they hated PowerPoint. As elite warriors, SEALs are subject to constant training — updates on weaponry, civil affairs, language, explosives, you name it. Too often, they complained, that meant absorbing one slide after another, then being pronounced “trained,” as if that’s all it took. They’d appreciate these words from Richard Danzig, Navy secretary in the Clinton Administration: “The idea behind most of these briefings is for us to sit through 100 slides with our eyes glazed over, and then to do what all military organizations hope for… to surrender to an overwhelming mass.”

Against that background, here’s what we came up with for the SEALs’ briefings: Instead of a PowerPoint projector, make sure there’s a flip chart, blackboard or whiteboard within a few steps of your podium or lectern. Leave the lights on and lay out your presentation, pausing every few minutes to walk over and write out some key points. I told them their audience would track their moves and pay close attention to what they had to “say” with the magic marker. In other words, a few salient words or phrases on the board would link them to their listeners in an almost physical sense, with nothing technological standing in the way. (As a side benefit, strolling from podium to board and back is a good way to deal with nerves.)

“But what about all the information you want your audience to take away?” you may ask. “What about all that stuff that shows up on the slides I use now?” No problem. At the beginning, just tell them not to fret about scribbling down any details you throw at them. Tell them you’ll hand out fact sheets at the end.

After all, the overriding goal is engagement and involvement in what you have to say. A good speech or presentation — again, keep it to 15 minutes, 20 at the outside — succeeds if it leads to a vigorous Q&A session. When you speak directly to your listeners, instead of looking away and repeating endless bullet points on a slide, you’ve set the stage for trading ideas verbally instead of passively absorbing one image after the other.

I can’t say it any better than renowned Italian marketing and advertising consultant Giancarlo Livraghi: “The PowerPoint syndrome isn’t just the misuse of specific technology. It’s a cultural disease.”a

Here is the best-kept secret about finding new listing leads.

Most agents know what to do when a customer fills out a CMA request on his website (or calls to ask for one). The problem is that those are few and far between. Right? Right. Another concern is that most sellers who ask you for a home valuation also ask several other agents at the same time.

Why do you think that you always seem to be competing with other agents on listing presentations, anyway? Here’s why. We all use the same two age-old favorite and often touted sources of seller leads: FSBO (for sale by owner) sellers and expired listings.

Just like the CMA requests, the problem with both FSBOs and expireds is the fact that you’ll be competing for those listings with the hungriest and most aggressive agents in your market. Have you noticed? I sure have.

And while both FSBO’s and expireds are good sources for listings, those properties tend to be tougher to sell, either because the seller is unrealistic or because the property has been stigmatized by having been on the market since well before you get to list it. That makes typical listing leads lower quality and harder to win. Not a great combination.

I like getting my seller leads from a place where nobody else is looking: from buyer leads! What?! That’s right – from my buyer leads! Let me explain. According to the National Association of REALTORS, first-time homebuyers account for 40% of all real estate purchases.

That 40% number has held constant for years and shows no indication of changing any time soon, although last year with the government sponsored first time home buyer incentives, it did spike up to 47%, but as soon as the program ended, so did the spike. One thing is for certain: none of these first-time homebuyers are listing leads!

Another 23% of homebuyers are looking for investments, while 13% are purchasing vacation homes. Of the investment properties, some are bought to “flip,” while others are bought to hold and rent. The same is true of vacation home sales: many are bought to hold, while many others are step-up purchases, resulting in potential listings as well.

That being said, the best numbers from the NAR tell us that 52% of all buyers are also selling – some in the same markets as their new purchases and some in other markets – so more than half of the buyer leads that you get will also be sellers.

Here’s the little-known secret that will give you the first, and hopefully only, shot at those sellers: Buyer leads almost always find a replacement home before thinking of selling.

As professionals we understand that this is not in the correct order, but our clients typically get it backwards. The human psyche is hard-wired with a security need. We don’t quit our job until we line up another. We don’t sell our car until we find the new one. The same is true with real estate.

The key to generating an unending supply of fresh listing leads is to generate lots of buyer leads and then find the half who are selling too. In most of those cases, you have the opportunity to list a home without anyone else’s knowing it’s going to be on the market. What a huge advantage!

So over half of the buyers will either have a home for you to list or – better yet – have a listing lead you can refer to an agent in another market, giving you a referral fee with very little work involved! No picked-over expireds. No FSBOs that know it all. Just an endless supply of new inbound seller leads with no competition.

And having that endless supply of inbound listing leads is the key to becoming the dominant listing agent in your market. Now I’m going to share an added benefit of generating your own inbound customers.

Never worry about violating the “do not call” regulations again.

In March of 2005, the FCC imposed a $770,000 fine on a Phoenix, Arizona, mortgage company for violating the Federal Do-Not-Call Law. The FCC alleged that Dynasty Mortgage made 70 calls to 50 homes in Arizona and California between March 2, 2004, and January 20, 2005. A fine of $11,000 per incident was imposed on 70 separate counts, and the company was given only 30 days to pay the fine.

Curtis White, Dynasty’s president, said that his company had extensive systems in place to try to ensure that any do-not-call numbers were not called. However, some calls may have been made mistakenly because of a “flaw in the system,” and the company is now working to fix the problem.

If this example doesn’t make you think twice about cold calling, nothing will! I can remember many days of cold calling when I would make more than 70 calls! It would be easy to violate the DNC laws accidentally by calling homes that “showed” to be “okay” on the latest list (which may have been out of date at the time of your calls). And $11,000 is a huge marketing cost to incur accidentally.

So how can you be certain that this kind of disaster never happens to you? By making only prospecting calls to inbound leads! How can you do that? With lead capture gateway technology, every lead is permission-based. By this, I mean that the lead has first contacted you and given you his phone number and, with it, implied consent to market to him.

The Federal Do-Not-Call Law is very clear on the fact that, in such instances, there’s a three-month window of exemption from the date of inquiry. And your innocence is very easy to prove if you have a time-and-date stamped inquiry on file for each lead. Inbound Internet leads are the safest of all leads to call – period.

So how safe is your marketing? Do you have efficient lead capture on your website? If you don’t, the first step to becoming a dominant real estate agent is having too many customers. You really have to start there. Everything else is second to that.

Today, the lead vendors and national real estate companies are spending lots of money tapping the Internet, and if you’re going to compete with them, you’re going to have to have technology that places you on the same level with them.

What’s next? In the next chapter, we’ll start discussing the actual listing presentation that I used to list 114 homes in a single year – all at 8% or more! What’s the key to building your credibility as a listing agent?

How can you go up against the top agents in your market and come out with the listing? How can you be totally confident walking into every single listing presentation? How can you make your presentation different from every other agent’s in your market?

All these questions will be answered in the next chapter, so you won’t want to miss it. In the meantime, work on getting your technology and your advertising in place. There’s never going to be a better time to start than right now.

Whilst browsing the internet I came across a number of articles on negotiating and having read several began to wonder who these people were negotiating with and why were they bothering to negotiate at all. I was amazed at the language used in the articles and the suggestion that you would want to negotiate with someone you know is going to con you, stitch you up or rip you off. What does the person or organisation you distrust have that is worth the effort of negotiation, it can only be a crook or assassin you want to bump of the spouse or burn the business down for the insurance money.

Why would you want to negotiate with a business or person you know will not stick to any agreement reached and you will be forever employing lawyers to check the small print every time you order or sell to them and you know there will be a dispute over something or other and you may never or you will have to wait ages to get paid or recover your money.

There are only two reasons why you need to negotiate: You are in dispute or you want to do a deal. If you are in dispute there are a number of steps you have to take before you can begin negotiations, the first is reconciliation, the second is communication, the third is negotiation — sounds very much like being married.

The majority of us negotiate because we want to do a deal that is beneficial to all the parties involved. Negotiation is about compromise not setting up barriers that need defending, if you do not want to compromise then don’t bother negotiating, tell the other party you have no interest in doing business with them.

If you are interested in doing deals and deals is what makes your business profitable then you have to negotiate but, before you pick up the telephone to arrange a meeting make sure you are talking to the right party for this deal. Research is imperative, make sure you understand why your business needs this deal and what affect the deal will have on your business, is there another supplier/customer you could do a better deal with? Make sure you understand what you can negotiate away and what cannot be negotiated.

Once you understand why you want or need the deal go and find out everything you can about the target, ask around, check the newspapers, magazines, contacts in other businesses you know that have dealings with the target, your bank manager, is the target under money or time pressure, do they pay their bills etc. You would be surprised what little snippet of information may clinch a deal.

When negotiations begin never ever give away what you know about your target and never impart your business problems to the target. During the negotiations and if you have done your research you will hear the fear you can exploit that will clinch the deal and nine times out of ten it has nothing to do with price. It may be delivery times, stocking levels, storage, expertise, marketing, something that may be small and insignificant to you but extremely important to your target.

How do you find the fear? You ask questions and let the target talk and talk, never interrupt, never answer for the target, never show how clever you are by pre-empting, make notes and listen, do not be afraid to rephrase a question to dig further, leave a little space between the target ending their answer and you starting the next question, you never know what they might add. Next time you watch a news programme listen to the reporter, if they are any good their questions will find the answers and if they know there is a little more to come listen for the silence.

In summary make sure you know why you want to negotiating, carry out in-depth research, prepare, ask questions and don’t be afraid to say No. Never confuse Negotiation for Selling they are two different skills.