Facilitator: Janet Konefal, Ph.D Assistant Dean of Complementary & Integrative Medicine UMMSM

This course is designed for those who want to produce change in their lives. The course is open to business professionals, lawyers, educators and those interested in self-development.

You Will Learn How to :

• Communicate effectively
• Provide leadership
• Achieve desired behavior changes
• Enhance realtionships
• Understand other’s model of the world

The course begins October 10 and will end on January 17. It is held  two weekends per month at:

 University of Miami / Clinical Research Building

Medical Wellness center 1120 NW 14 St

Miami , Fl 33136

call for more information 305-243-4751 or email jkonefal@med.miami.edu

or visit the website www.cam.med.miami.edu

 In a Google search you can get results in two ways.  First, you can pay for results – you will notice this when you see sponsored results or the right hand side bar of any google search.  Second, you can earn “organic” results which come from the information and backlinks you have on your website.

What search terms do you think are important in your real estate market?  Let’s start with big area searches like Aventura Real Estate, Miami Beach Real Estate, Sunny Isles Beach Real Estate, etc.  Maybe your focus is a little more narrow -  think of subdivisions and condo buildings like Acqualina, Aventura Lakes or The Beach Club in Hallandale Beach.  Whatever your terms are – you need to set up a Google Alert to keep an eye out on the competition.  Here’s how: (the end of the video gets a little more advanced, but you will get the idea)

1. Your Market area and real estate.
2. Your name – hint:  if you have a common name  make sure you put it in quotes and maybe use one other word ( like the city where you live or work).   This way you willonly get Alerts for yourself not someone else with your same name.
3. Just your market area – keep up on all the news
4. set up a link: yourwebsite alert for your website and maybe one for a competitors website so you can “spy” on what they are doing
5. Anything else of interest to you !

Learn About the History of Google

What does this have to do with real estate?  The consumer turns to search engines like Google to look for everything, including real estate .  Understanding how Google works is the first step to improving your internet marketing. 

As the video mentioned, what made the Google experience different from other search engines was the concept that ideas and information on the internet are related and that relationship in the internet world is demonstrated by links.  The relevance of any website can be judged or ranked by how it links or relates to other sites.  Here are a few new geeky terms for today’s vocabulary lesson (all from Wikipedia) :

Backlinks are incoming links to a website or web page. In the search engine optimization (SEO) world, the number of backlinks is an indicator of the popularity or importance of that website or page (though other measures, such as PageRank, are likely to be more important). Outside of SEO, the backlinks of a webpage may be of significant personal or cultural  interest: they indicate who is attracted to that page.

Search Engine Optimization  is the process of editing and organizing the content on a webpage or across a website to increase its potential relevance to specific keywords on specific search engines and importantly ensuring that external links to the site are correctly titled and in abundance. This is done with the aim of achieving a higher organic search  listing and thus increasing the volume of targeted traffic from search engines.

Page Rank is a link analysis  algorithm that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web ,with the purpose of “measuring” its relative importance within the set.

Now that you have added Backlinks, SEO and Page Rank to your geek talk , let’s look at a tool that will show how your website might be doing.

 Meet Website Grader  Go to the website and enter any website you want – yours if you dare – and get your site scored.  There may be things on the report that you don’t understand but with your new found geek skills, you will get the  idea.  As an example, you can find the report for ewm.com here.

 Put your new skills to use.  Google yourself – see what comes up.  How many entries are there for your name that are you and not that other person with your same name?

Grade your website – how did you do? 

Every year we, the Real Estate Brokers, set out to help our associates  achieve their goals.

Often they are just words and numbers on a piece of paper. There is no real plan or accountability set in motion.

The goal is important and I am going to suggest a little roadmap to get to where you are going!

Picture your goal ( your end result)
Describe in detail what it looks like….what colors do you see…is the image large or small… is the image close to you or far from you (Visual)
Describe in detail what it sounds like ( Auditory) What do you hear? What are people saying? What are you saying? Your spouse , your kids?
What does it feel like? What sensations do you have when you have achieved your goal? Feel it and describe it . (Kinesthetics)
How will you know that you have achieved your goal? How will others know?
Your goal needs to have  visual, auditory, and kinesthetic qualities to it.

You actually need to imagine yourself there “as if ” the goal has been accomplished.

Once you have accomplished this task you will be able to move on to the steps that you will put in place to achieve this goal.

What will you do?

How will you do it?

When will you do it?

Where will you do it?

What does that look like?

The list can go on & on … the more specific you are the clearer you will become!

In a conversation we generally wait for the other person to stop talking and then we hit them with our ideas or problems; a give and take negotiation.  On the other hand there are a couple of ways to tackle the parking dilemma.  You can throw out what you learned in driving school, do 50 mph in the parking lot, slam on your breaks, and then turn on your blinker.  The preferred choice of South Florida drivers!  Or you can negotiate with the other drivers around you.  Forget about that parking space and follow a couple who look like their leaving; a clear sign to everyone that wherever they parked is now your spot.  John Strelecky, author of “Be a Master Negotiator with Three Simple Steps”, offers some suggestions on how to build on the negotiation skills you already have. 

•    Step 1: “Know what you want and why you want it”.  Basically be prepared.  The more you know the stronger your argument will be.  The example John offers is knowing exactly how much you want when you ask for a raise.  Be precise when you speak, it lets the people around you know you mean business.   
•    Step 2: “Do Your Research and Have Multiple Options Ready”.  Know that if you can’t get exactly what you want you have a back up plan.  For example your boss turns you down on the raise you asked for, before you start pouting see what else you can do.  “Well I understand my raise in not in the budget this year but how about…”
•     Step 3: “Ask What the Other Party Needs and Wants”.  Take into consideration what everyone’s goals are.  Maybe you can leverage something you have, to get what you want.

68% of the total  condo sales in the Aventura area are below $300,000. The $300,000 and below price range accounts for 39% of the condos currently on the market in Aventura.

We also have seen a decrease in the number of listings on the market . This is an indicator that the market may be changing for the better.  18 months ago we had  a 33 month supply of condos in Aventura to sell . Today we have an 18  month supply which is much  healthier number.

Before you know it we will be on the upswing with more selling and less inventory.

Are you getting this information from your broker?  This information and anaylsis can keep you a step ahead of your  competition.