Browse Bernice’s speaking topics designed to enhance your skills, build on your strengths, conquer challenges, and increase your profits. For more information on sponsoring a seminar or class contact us.
Click on the title below to read the class / seminar description.
- Strategies for Navigating Employee vs. Independent Contractor Status in Real Estate
- Lead Great Virtual Meetings: The Steps You Need to Succeed
- Creating Listings Where There Are None
- Increase Your PQ Factor: Stop Resisting, Start Persisting
- Hot Trends to Take Your Business to the Top Tomorrow
- Independent Contractor Status Under Fire
- How to Recruit and Train the Successful New Agents of Tomorrow
- How to Create a Red Hot Production-Based Business Plan
- Turn Your Team Into a Sales Machine
- Win the Mindset Game to Work Less to Make More
- Harness Your Negotiation Power
- Put It Local, Take It Global: Nine Secrets for Working With Global Clients
- “Don’t Call Them Wealthy: Secrets to Working with Affluent Clients”
- Coach Your Office to Increased Profitability
“We met before your session in the audience and I had the privilege of sitting in your session in Orlando last weekend. I just wanted to say great job. Your delivery and message was excellent and very entertaining.”
~ Broker owner of a Franchise in western Canada
Strategies for Navigating Employee vs. Independent Contractor Status in Real Estate
Audience: Agents, Broker-Owners, Managers
Session Length: 60-180 minutes
Description:
The laws and regulations governing Independent Contractor status are contradictory. This session helps participants to implement best practices to minimize their risk due to failure to correctly follow these laws, improperly supervise agents, or if future legislation, litigation, or regulation forces real estate agents to become employees.
Learning Objectives:
Upon completion of this course, participants will be able to:
- Distinguish which tests of Independent Contractor status in their state apply in which situations (e.g., the IRS tests, ABC test for IC status, plus State and National Labor Board regulations.)
- Implement best practices to minimize the risk due to any legislative, legal, or regulatory measures that may impact Independent Contractor status in their state or nationally.
- Utilize at least one of three business-to-business models which would allow agents to legally continue as Independent Contractors if the real estate industry is forced into an employee model for agents.
- Minimize the risk posed by agent teams violating the Independent Contractor supervision laws and regulations in their state.
Lead Great Virtual Meetings: The Steps You Need to Succeed
Audience: Agents, Broker-Owners, Managers
Session Length: 60-120 minutes
Description:
What matters most when leading a virtual meeting is who you are as a leader—not tips and techniques on using the meeting platform. Our Six Principle Leadership Model addresses how to easily engage participants, handle technology issues, and implement best practices that work across ALL virtual meeting platforms.
Learning Objectives:
Upon completion of this course, participants will be able to:
- Implement The Six Principle Model for leading effective virtual meetings on both audio-only and video-based virtual meeting platforms.
- Apply best practices that work across multiple delivery platforms
- Avoid 15 common mistakes most virtual meeting leaders make.
- Create powerful content, easily engage participants, conquer technology challenges, and develop their unique personal strengths to become an outstanding virtual meeting leader who consistently attains stellar results.
Creating Listings Where There Are None
Audience: Agents, Broker-Owners, Managers
Session Length: 60-120 minutes
I. Learning Objectives: Your attendees will learn:
- The latest NAR research about where listings are coming from in today’s market and what you can do about it.
- Why face-to-face lead generation strategies are critical to listing success.
- Sixteen strategies for creating listings where there are none.
II. Listings Hiding in Plain Sight
- Avoid being a secret agent
- The coffee house strategy
- Past customers and your sphere of influence.
- The most costly mistake to your business
- The most surprising statistic from NAR in 2014 and what it means to your business.
- Families in transition
- The Boomer shift is on: how to capitalize on it
III. Untapped Opportunities
- So The Reverse PURCHASE Mortgage Opportunity
- Foreclosures, bankruptcy, and trust sales
- Auction.com and E-Property Watch
IV. Listings Hiding in Plain Sight
- Use the list approach for “Homes for Heroes”
- The teenage opportunity: the helicopter parent
- Put Zillow and Trulia to work for free
- The Investor Opportunity
- The 1031 Opportunity
- Watch for shifting market trends: relocation, new companies, up or down trending markets such as oil or technology.
Hot Trends to Take Your Business to the Top Tomorrow
Key Learning Points:
- Attendees will be able to stay a step ahead of their competitors by preparing for major shifts resulting from the trends outlined in this session.
- Ten opportunities to capitalize on these trends to grow your business.
Trend #1: National Economic Trends—The Good News
Trend #2: Economic Trends
Trend #3: Demographic Trends
- Opportunity #1: Capitalize on the demographic shifts
Trend #4: Millennials Take Center Stage in 2015
- Opportunity #2: Show first time buyers the benefit of buying now.
- Opportunity #3: Target the sweet spot—58 percent of 35-44 years olds expect to purchase in the next three years.
Trend #5: Speak Digital
- Opportunity #4: More Images, Less Words
Trend #6: 3-D Marketing with Matterport
- Opportunity #5: Convert more Millennial Phone Inquiries
Trend #7: The Listing Data Tug-of-War
- Opportunity #6: Face-to-face strategies are far and away the biggest generator of closed listing transactions.
Trend #8: Agent Reviews
- Opportunity #7: Video testimonials posted across platforms Disruptive Real Estate Trends
Trend #9: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—Increased Government Intervention in Real Estate
- Opportunity #8: Prepare now for upcoming changes—CBFP says everyone must switch, “NO exceptions.”
Trend #10: Independent Contractor Status Under Fire
- Opportunity #8: Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
- Supervisory Requirements: Whether you are an a broker or an agent, if Game Changing Tech Trends
Trend #11: Augmented Reality
- Opportunity #9: Lifestyle videos, photos, and online redecorating tools attract lifestyle surfers.
Trend #12: 3-D Printing
Trend #13: The Internet of Things *
- Opportunity #10: Nest thermostats, apps to control your home, and monitor what is happening in your home are already available. Stay up to date .
Trend #14: Wearables and Embedded Tech
Trend #15: Robots, Robots, Everywhere
Increase Your PQ Factor: Stop Resisting, Start Persisting
Today most lead generation and conversion strategies focus on working harder, but what if there were a different way to attract higher quality clients? Based upon the latest psychological research on the factors correlated with happiness and business success, the PERSIST Model (Perspire, Embrace, Resilience, “Self-ish,” Internally Anchored, Service, Timing) offers REALTORS® a powerful new path to success that focuses on their unique profile of strengths and personality factors.
Session Outline
- Learning Objectives (5 minutes)
- In-session Assessment: This will provide attendees with their personal PERSIST Profile
(10 minutes) - Deep-dive into the seven steps of PERSIST Model including helping attendees interpret their personal profiles. Specific focus on how attendees can use their results to communicate more effectively with clients, create a better business by giving back to their community, and by engaging in better self-care to be more effective personally and professionally.
Perspire: How to make the shift from being a “go-getter” who believes the route to success is by working harder to becoming a “go-giver” who attracts high quality clients easily. (20 minutes)
Embrace: Each individual’s path to success is different. Based upon their individual production, attendees will learn how to identify their personal high probability lead generation patterns based and to leverage those into more business. (20 minutes)
Resilience: Repeated studies have shown that emotional resilience is highly correlated with real estate sales success. This part of the session will cover three strategies attendees can use to increase their emotional resilience. (20 minutes)
Break (20 minutes)
Self-ish: There’s a difference between being selfish in the self-centered sense as opposed to being “self-ish” in terms of caring for yourself first so that you can do a better job of caring for your clients and your family. Attendees will identify “10 Daily Delicious Habits” to better care for themselves and to create a higher quality life for themselves and their loved ones. (20 minutes)
Internally anchored: Internal locus of control is highly correlated with sales success. In contrast, an external locus of control often leaves people feeling victimized and at the mercy of externals. Attendees will learn five specific ways to make the shift to be more internally focused. (20 minutes)
Service: 67 percent of the REALTORS® profiled in Billion Dollar Agent: Lessons Learned, were actively engaged in their community. Moreover, Millennials search for evidence of community and charitable involvement when selecting an agent. Attendees will learn about open house with a purpose plus four other strategies to grow their business by community involvement. (20 minutes)
Timing: When does persistence become “pest-sistence, “or worse yet, a harmful proposition? Strategies to recognize when to persist and when it’s time to stop and direct your energies elsewhere. (20 minutes)
4. Takeaways and Conclusion (5 minutes)
Independent Contractor Status Under Fire
State legislatures have adopted statutes requiring brokers to supervise their agents. In most states, this supervisory function directly conflicts with labor laws governing independent contractors. These conflicts have opened the door for attorneys to allege that Boston Pads, Coldwell Banker, Redfin, and ZipRealty have misclassified their agents as independent contractors rather than employees. This litigation asserts that labor laws controlling independent contractor status should take precedence over real estate law. Other challenges to independent contractor arise from litigation outside the real estate industry, IRS regulations, and rulings from the National Labor Board.
Audience: Association and Company Leadership, Broker-Owners, Managers, and Agent Team Leaders
Session Length: 60-180 minutes
This session will cover:
1. An in-depth review of the current litigation including potential effects on the real estate industry in your area.
2. How the three-prong vs. 11-prong tests for independent contractor status differ.
3. Broker risks and best practices to mitigate those risks.
4. The greatest risk: agent teams where independent contractor team leaders (not the supervising broker) treat their independent contractor team members as employees. Examples include requiring them to prospect at certain times, hold open houses, or use the team lead’s systems and tools. Steps brokers can take to protect themselves from violating Local, State, and Federal Labor Laws.
5. How and why arbitration provisions in your Independent Contractor Agreements may protect you from potential class action lawsuits.
6. Potential risks for franchisors based upon lawsuits from outside the real estate industry. What can be done to mitigate these risks.
7. What if all agents became employees? New financial models, innovations, and how brokers would handle their current situation-breakout and group discussion.
How to Recruit and Train the Successful New Agents of Tomorrow
Is there a profile for hiring a successful new agent? The answer is “Yes!” This session looks at the new 2015 research from the Texas Association of Realtors on the specific predictors of new agent success plus additional studies conducted over the last decade that specifically identify where to look for new agents, various types of success profiles, as well as best strategies for recruiting, developing, and retaining your successful new agents of tomorrow.
Please note: I have a version of this session available for a new agent audience rather than broker owners and managers
Learning Objectives:
Participants in this session will learn:
- The four most important reasons that new agents leave the business and what to do about it.
- Where to locate potential recruits who have the greatest probability of achieving success as new agents.
- How to recognize the fourteen key predictors of new agent sales success.
- Ten questions to use when interviewing new agents to determine whether a real estate career is a good fit for them.
Audience: Broker-owners, managers, trainers, and recruiters.
Session length: 75-180 minutes. The longer sessions will explore best new agent recruiting and retention strategies generated from session attendees.
Session Outline
I. The 2015 agent and broker research from the Texas Association of Realtors® on new agent success and the specific factors correlated with success.
II. Previous studies conducted by California, Texas, and other assessment providers such as Target Training International and the Real Estate Simulator.
III. Specific findings
The four most important reasons that agents leave the business and what to do about it.
- Which careers result in the most actual hires once the agent completes the licensing process.
- Key predictors of new agent success: (Do the right thing mentality, understands real estate is a sales career where you generate your own leads and run your own business, business vs. job mindset including business planning and written goals, emotional resilience, systems, effective face-to-face, current on technology.)
- The 10 Questions to new agents can ask to discover, “Is real estate the right career for you?”
- How to minimize loss of new recruits due to financial reasons: the hard truths about costs, working full time vs. part time, and how much they will net after taxes.
- Questions to assist rookie agents in determining which broker is the best fit for them.
- Primary challenges broker/owners and managers face with new agents and what to do about them.
IV. New agent data: demographics and what the agents actually are saying
- Demographics-older agents still the norm.
- The four most needed skill sets once agents acquired their licenses.
- Pre-licensing effectiveness.
- Three hardest parts of the business.
- Sources of rookie real estate agents first three deals.
- Most used technology, social media, and apps.
V. Primary conclusions and recommendations for new agent recruiting and training in the future.
VI. Longer sessions: best new agent recruiting and retention strategies generated from session attendees.
How to Create a Red Hot Production-Based Business Plan
Learning Objectives.
In this session your attendees will learn how to:
- Create a business plan based upon your personal production profile.
- Overcome challenges you face in implementing your plan.
- Best practices from your peers for your 2015 business plan.
Session Outline
I. Learning Objectives
II. The “Business Plan at a Glance.”
- Schedule Personal Annual Goals first-Start with Your “Why?”
- Three secrets to staying healthy?
III. BHAG and its relationship top production goals
IV. Exercise: how to determine your personal high probability lead generation patterns and then use those patterns to implement your business plan.
V. Factors for evaluating your production patterns-what to look for and how to turn these patterns into actionable items.
VI. Calculating the number of transactions necessary to reach your goal.
VII. Secrets of implementing a time blocked schedule-daily, weekly, and monthly
VIII. Update your plan quarterly-look for market and opportunity shifts.
IX. Best practices and feedback from attendees
Audience: All levels
Length: 60-180 minutes
Turn Your Team Into a Sales Machine
Goal: To provide attendees with the most effective strategies and best practices for creating, managing, and growing an agent sales team.
Please note that this session works especially well when combined with a panel composed of top teams from your company or association
Learning Objectives: Agents Who Attend this Session Will:
- Be more effective at hiring the right people for the right positions on their team including understanding the key behavioral profiles for each position, how to bring on new team members, as well as pitfalls to avoid.
- Be able to avoid the two common reasons teams fail by creating a team business plan and making sure that they are adequately capitalized.
- Be able to maximize their team’s performance as well as to customize a compensation model for their team.
Session Outline
- What constitutes an agent team?
- How do teams benefit consumers?
- How do teams benefit agents? (More balanced life, best person for the job handles that part of the client’s transaction.)
- Team Models: structures, requirements, and the wisdom of moving to an employment model based upon a number of currently pending court cases.
- Compensation models
- Systems, systems, systems
- Strategies for dealing with conflict and tough situations.
- Assigning team tasks-who handles what based upon team strengths?
- In office vs. virtual assistant?
- How do you explain the benefits of working with a team as opposed to a single agent to your clients?
- Group discussion (for longer sessions) on best practices and key pitfalls to avoid.
Audience: All levels
Length: 60-180 minutes
Win the Mindset Game to Work Less to Make More
Learning Objectives:
I. Your attendees will learn how to:
- Increase their income by winning the mindset game to work smarter rather than harder.
- Eliminate adrenaline and to create a negativity free mindset.
- Relax more to accomplish more.
- Use the Law of Attraction to gain more high quality clients.
Session Outline
- Secrets to Wining the Mindset Game
- How to avoid the five Splat Myths that can destroy your business.
- How to decrease the adrenaline in your life.
- How to reinvent your mindset
- Einstein vs. Young-what quantum physics has to do with your mindset, production, and well-being.
- The power of a negative comment: brain health and making your good brain great.
- How negative thinking creates a schizophrenic pattern in your brain and what you can do to set it straight (the antidote: laughter and giving back to others). People who suffer from depression, anxiety, and panic disorders are filled with ANTs, automatic negative thoughts.
- How to free yourself from ANTS-“automatic negative thoughts” by writing them down.
- How to create a negativity free mindset and free yourself from toxic people.
- Brain games to improve your productivity
- Why multi-tasking is a myth-strategies for raising your performance level.
- How to put attraction into action to work less and make more.
Audience: Agents, broker-owners, and managers
Length: 60-120 minutes
Harness Your Negotiation Power
What’s old is new—great negotiation skills have never really gone out of style and are more important today than ever. With Skype and Google Hangout, the hot new trend is good old-fashioned face-to-face negotiation except it’s now online. This session unlocks the secrets of using spoken language and body language to negotiate more effectively, how to set up showings so buyers are easier to close, as well as proven strategies for overcoming 13 of the most common buyer and seller objections, whether it’s face-to-face or online.
Your audience will learn:
- How to use spoken language and body language to negotiate more effectively.
- How to use the language of negotiation to close more transactions.
- Thirteen powerful scripts to overcome common buyer and seller objections.
Designed for: Broker/owners, managers, plus new and experienced real estate agents.
Length: This session may be presented as 60, 75, 90, or 120 minutes.
Unlock the Secrets of Leadership Success
This three-hour leadership workshop assists leaders at all levels of the real estate industry to identify their unique leadership style, avoid burnout, and to build stronger, high performance teams at all levels of their organization. Participants will learn how to zap negativity, create a positive mindset, as well as simple ways to manage conflict. The talking circle exercise that closes the workshop is one of the most powerful means ever created to build group cohesiveness as well as to illustrate the power of being heard without judgment or comment.
Target Audience: Association Executives, WCR, trainers, broker owners, and agents who hold leadership positions in the real estate industry who want to grow their leadership skills.
Length: 150-180 minutes
Learning Objectives: In today’s session you will learn:
- Leadership strategies for reducing stress and managing change in your organization.
- Four key components for effective leadership.
- How to eliminate energy drainers that block top performance.
- The secrets to attracting and leading a great team.
- Four strategies to prevent burnout and to avoid going “splat!”
- 3Eliminate costly adrenaline triggers (Adrenaline Quiz)
- Reinvent your mindset including how to handle negative comments, how to control your personal self-talk, what to do when a team member or direct report goes negative, as well as how to create a negativity free mindset.
- Put attraction into action: The six secrets of attracting and maintaining an effective leadership team.
- The four dimensions of leadership—“What’s Your Leadership Style?” Quiz
- Change vs. status quo
- Reaction vs. response
- Self-focused vs. other focused
- Open vs. closed (what it takes to avoid burnout)
- Four key leadership questions
- What results do you want to create?
- What actions can I take today to stay ahead tomorrow?
- How can I better support those I work with to get what they want?
- What feedback do I need to create the best possible experience and outcome for my leadership team?
- Being Heard Exercise
Put It Local, Take It Global: Nine Secrets for Working With Global Clients
Today’s real estate market is no longer just local—it’s global. Serving the global real estate consumer requires a completely new set of strategies that honors cultural differences while also integrating the best of Web 2.0 strategies including the videoization of the web, iPodification, and innovative uses of social media platforms. This session reveals nine secrets of working more effectively with both local and global clients both on and offline.
Learning Objectives: Participants in this session will learn how to:
- Implement best practices that capitalize on four new business shaping trends: videoization of the web, iPodification, globalization, and social media.
- Modify their communication strategies to fit global clients including taboos to avoid, key points of differentiation between numerous countries, as well as key body language cues to watch for when clients are not fluent in English.
- Four key cultural dimensions that help agents and brokers understand differences between U.S. clients vs. those from other countries including directness, hierarchy, consensus, and individualism vs. collectivism.
- How to leverage Web 2.0 for business development and efficient global customer service.
- How to unlock the buying codes for most major countries.
- Five key expectations most global clients share.
- How to implement listing and website translation services, listing syndication, and video syndication to attract and convert more global business.
- Taboos to avoid.
Results: Your participants will provide better customer service to their global clients due to a better understanding of cultural differences, be able to reach more global clients through global Web 2.0 strategies, plus convert more global client leads into closed business.
This session may be presented in a 90 minute, 120 minute, or 180 minute format.
“Don’t Call Them Wealthy: Secrets to Working with Affluent Clients”
Ninety-two percent of today’s millionaire’s are self made—don’t call them “wealthy’—they call themselves “successful” members of the middle class. If you represent the top 10 percent of clients in your market area, this session will unlock the best kept secrets you need to know to represent the most affluent real estate clients in your market.
Don’t call today’s millionaires “wealthy’—they’re “successful” members of the middle class. This session unlocks the 12 best kept secrets you need to know to represent the most affluent clients in your market.
Designed for: Broker/owners, managers, and experienced real estate agents
Goal: To assist participants in doing a better job of providing the utmost in customer service to their clients not only in the luxury price range, but in all other price ranges as well.
Learning objectives: Participants in this session will:
- Be able to integrate the four pillars upon which luxury branding and marketing rely.
- Tap into the unconscious buying triggers that motivate buyers in all price ranges.
- Market more effectively to international clients based upon their “culture code.”
Session Outline:
- Dream-weaving: You’re not in the real estate business
- You attract who you are: how the Attraction Principle plays out in the luxury market
- “It pays to be seen in the right places.” a. The four pillars of branding your real estate business. b. Making the connection and keeping it strong.
- How to avoid the one mistake that will kill your luxury business in a heartbeat
- Why Miami rather than Beverly Hills? When knowledge of the local inventory is not enough.
- Unlocking the luxury buying code: secrets from the Fortune 100’s leading marketing guru, Clotaire Rapaille
- Shark aquariums and James Bond rooms: what today’s buyers really want. a. Multi-sensory marketing
- The Russians Are Coming: Tapping the buying codes from other cultures.
- Never make another referral again: the proper etiquette for introducing your best clients to the best service providers.
- Discreetly marketed properties—it’s all about your network.
- Strategies for Slaying the Dragon in the Deal: when product inventory and market statistics are critical
- All you have to do is to move your clothes—providing the ultimate real estate customer experience.
Length: This session may be presented as 90, 120, or 180 minutes.
Coach Your Office to Increased Profitability
What do agents want today when you try to recruit them? EVERYTHING! The market is slow, budgets are tight and many agents are exiting the business. This session gives you concrete, inexpensive steps that you can take to provide your agents with cutting-edge technology, plenty of leads, while simultaneously building your profitability.
Your audience will learn:
- Traditional and Web 2.0 marketing strategies to build your brokerage business and increase your profitability.
- Five recruiting strategies to attract more high quality, productive agents including how to spot the top producers of tomorrow.
- Managing and retaining across the generations.
- Tech tools to increase profitability and to attract the best young talent.
- Easy to implement strategies that will help your older agents become excited about using the latest social media prospecting tools.
- A simple six step-coaching model to help your agents become more effective and more profitable.
Results: Increased agent and office profitability, improved recruiting and retention, plus a significant competitive advantage for your office/brokerage in 2011 and beyond.
For more information on sponsoring a class email us.
