Past and Present of Jewelry Pins and Brooches

From the earliest ages of man, fashion has been present. In fact, accessories have long been a standard way of expressing ones fashion sense, and jewelry pins and brooches have long been popular. Fashion brooches are very popular because of their incredible versatility.

Jewelry pins and brooches were originally created as a way to secure a large piece of cloth around ones body. These early jewelry pins and brooches were not as fancy as those that we see today. When they first emerged as a way to secure a cloth as a garment, it was usually a simple thorn. However, as the years passed jewelry pins and brooches began to evolve.

As man’s capabilities grew and changed so did the fashion brooches that they were able to produce. During the Byzantine era, fashion brooches embraced the eras fascination with color as well as incorporating a traditional safety pin fixture. From there, fashion brooches continued to change having gemstones added onto them and intricate design work adorning the metal that the brooch is fashioned from.

Today jewelry pins and brooches are very prevalent when it comes to the world of fashion accessories, and there is great variety in the styles that you can choose from. In fact, there are so many styles on the market that it can be difficult to narrow down your options. Thankfully, it does not need to be difficult. With a few small decisions, you will be able to find the perfect fashion brooches for you.

The first thing that you want to decide is how formal you need your jewelry pins and brooches to be. Generally, fashion brooches with precious and semi precious stones on them are much more formal than simple metal or colored pins. Additionally, you are going to want to give some thought to what type of metal you want to have. There are silver pins on the market, gold pins, and even beautiful rose gold brooches. If you want to expand your accessory collection, you may want to get a few pins of each metal.

You also want to give some thought to the shape of the jewelry pins and brooches that you are looking at. Think about what you need the fashion brooches to do. Are you looking for something to put on your jacket lapel? If so then you might want to look for a medium sized pin that is somewhat seasonal. Or if you need a pin to secure a scarf you may want to choose a large sized pin, but try to keep its design simple so that you do not detract from the design of your scarf.

Finally, you want to make sure that you really like the style of the jewelry pins and brooches. Do not feel like you need to buy something because it might be a good addition to your accessory collection. If you do that you may get stuck with pieces that you will never wear. Instead, choose fashion brooches that you really love that way you will know that you will get your moneys worth out of them.

Making Your Presentation Useful And Interesting

Most agent presentations put sellers to sleep, mainly because most presentations lack interest, usefulness, and structure.

To increase the interest in your presentation, follow this advice:

o Share market knowledge. Become a student of the local marketplace and share meaningful statistics. Also track trends in the national marketplace, both to enlighten your prospects and also to distinguish yourself as a well-read, well-connected, and well-informed agent.

o Ask questions. Listen in on typical listing presentations, and you’ll hear the agent talking 80% of the time, with the prospect hardly getting a word in edgewise. I guarantee you that the seller finds that monologue uninteresting.

o Watch the clock. Don’t let your presentation run too long and don’t save the information the seller most wants to receive until the very end. If you put your price recommendation at the very end of a 90-minute presentation during which you did 80% of the talking, you can pretty well predict that your seller will be tuned out.

o What the prospect has to say is more important than what you have to say. Great salespeople do less than 25% of the talking. You already know all that you need to know about what you’re thinking. You need to learn what your prospects think and know and desire, so you can match your service to their wants and needs.

Keep it short and sweet. Let’s get right to the point . . . a 90-minute presentation is neither short nor sweet. What in the world an agent finds to talk about for 90 minutes I have no idea, but I do know, for sure, that sellers don’t want to sit through a 90-minute appointment, and they most certainly don’t want to listen to an agent for that long.

Within the first few minutes of the appointment, inform your sellers that your listing presentation will take no more than 45 minutes. Based on my own experience, I can tell you that more than half of the sellers will thank you when you tell them that your presentation will be brief. Many times, I’ve had clients thank me again when I was walking out the door with the signed contract, sharing their appreciation that I wasn’t there all night!

A good, brief presentation results from a proper structure, a clear presentation plan, and knowing what to say and how to convey it.

Many agents translate the terms structure and plan to mean “canned presentation.” They say, “I don’t want to sound mechanical and scripted.” People sound mechanical and scripted for lack of practice, not because they have a pattern or process to follow. In fact, most people require professional service providers to follow plans. For example, when I board a plane, you can bet that I want the pilot to follow a “canned” preflight checklist, landing checklist, flight plan, etc. I want the attorney who defends me to have well-constructed or planned legal briefs, questions, and arguments.

I am not working to “can” anyone, but the necessity to plan your presentation is essential. You need to have a framework that you are comfortable with, that allows you to deliver key facts, findings, and segments, using key phrases and dialogs, every time you present. I would rather an agent err on the side of “canned” than just “wing it.”

Other advice:

o Know your prospects. If you aren’t completely clear on your prospects’ interests and needs, you haven’t qualified them well. Acquiring prospect knowledge is truly the key to a good presentation. You absolutely have to secure the right information before going into the appointment.

o Set a goal to keep your presentation to 45 minutes or less. Look at every piece of sales material you present. Does it demonstrate clear benefits to the seller? Does it need to be used? Does the seller understand it? Does it create differentiation between you and the other agents? As the saying goes, “when in doubt, leave it out.”

o Limit the volume of PowerPoint slides or color presentation binder pages that eat up your presentation time and your chance to dialog with the sellers. Typically, each page in your presentation – whether it’s on a computer screen or on paper – represents two minutes of presentation time by the time you turn to the page, talk about it, emphasize key points, and ask for questions to confirm your prospect’s understanding. Do the math: 30 pages eat up an hour, putting you well over your time limit before you even get to the contract!

By following this advice, you are on your way to making your presentation one that is useful, structured, and interesting – that all sellers appreciate -, and it will set you apart from the rest.

When Presenting, Stay Within Your Time Limit

When you’re giving a presentation, it’s crucial that you don’t go over the time limit.

Whether you’ve set it yourself or have agreed to a time limit set by the meeting organizer, you need to prepare so that you can cover your topic within that time limit. No one will usually complain if you end a minute early, but the moment you go past your time limit, people will get restless and impatient.

It’s disrespectful to ignore the time limit. If you go over by ten minutes, what you’re really saying to the audience is, “what I have to say is so important that I really don’t care what it is that you’re missing while you sit here and listen to me.” And that’s not the message that you want to send to your audience and it certainly won’t help you keep their attention.

(Yes, the situation is different if you are running a discussion, negotiation or brainstorming session where everyone decides that more time is needed. But what I’m talking about here is a presentation where you have a fixed amount of time and a fixed amount of information to convey within that time limit.)

Practice

The best way to determine how long it will take to deliver your content is to practice delivering it and time yourself, particularly if it’s the first time you’ve given this presentation.

There is no magic formula about how long it takes to present a certain number of slides. It depends on how much information is on the slides, how long you take to explain it and whether you answer questions during your presentation or at the end. I’ve seen people spend an hour on one slide. I’ve also seen them deliver twenty slides in three minutes.

Cut out what you don’t need

Focus on what the audience needs to know, rather than everything you could possibly tell them. Eliminate anything that’s not related to your message. If it doesn’t support or help the audience understand your message, eliminate it..

Keep extra material in your notes in case you get a question about it. You can also send it to people before or after the presentation, but don’t clutter your presentation with extraneous information that wastes time.

This is a difficult part of the process, especially if you’re an expert in your field. There’s so much that you could say and that you want to share, but you don’t have the time. So you have to be careful at choosing which facts, stories, examples, data, that you’re going to share and which ones you’re not.

Acknowledge that you are not covering everything

During your presentation, you can say, “in the interest of time, I’m not going to go into detail [on the design of this experiment, the process by which gathered this data, etc.]. If you’re interested, see me afterwards and I’ll share it with you.”

If you stay within your time limit when you’re presenting, the audience is more likely to pay attention and remember your message.