How To Lead Your Clients

It sounds terrible to say, but when it comes to kids, dogs and clients, you have to lead them. If you let them lead, bad things tend to happen. 

In the world of real estate, there’s so much complexity. It’s not uncommon to have your client want to pursue a strategy that, on the face of it, looks like a good idea. However, with experience and having seen things play out countless times, you’ve seen how that approach ultimately doesn’t deliver the desired results. In fact they can often backfire (for example, when the client asks: “why don’t we price the listing high and we can just negotiate with any interested party?”).

Agents oftentimes find themselves saying to their clients, essentially: “I see what you’re trying to do. Let me help you not so quickly shoot yourself in the foot.” 

This is a responsibility for the agent, to properly advise the client and help them make the best calls for themselves at every waypoint. Especially with fiduciary representation. 

And when it comes to those key decision moments, you as the agent do not want to be making those calls on behalf of your client. It’s their transaction, their opportunity, and their role to be the final decider. However, you as the agent need to set them up to make the best decisions. So, how can you best provide guidance and wise counsel? Here’s a quick playbook:

At every significant waypoint, think of it almost as pressing pause with your clients, gathering their attention and focus, then strategically discussing what’s at hand. 

An easy structure to go with is to think of it like laying out the playing field (summarizing the situation), and then highlighting the different options with their pluses and minuses. If properly handled, the client should be empowered to make sense of the different options, and see things clearly and strategically.

Then, you want to open up the conversation to their questions, and provide wise counsel to help them make the best calls possible. Once I’ve gone through the overview and options, I’m deliberate about shutting my mouth, stop talking and listen actively, and let them fill the space with their thoughts, questions, etc. as they are wrapping their minds around what’s at hand.

For example, you’re advising your seller in an inspection negotiation: “the other side came back with a laundry list of items requesting to be repaired. The list might be a little on the excessive side by typical inspection negotiation standards, but we also know that it took us a while to find a buyer and go under contract, and we’re not a 100% certain of our prospects if we push back too hard and end up hitting the market again. We can either accept their terms outright (will go over the terms shortly), or we can negotiate. If we negotiate, you can choose to do none, some or all of their repair requests” and then go over the terms and details of those options. What questions do you have? How would you like to be proceed?”

In this example, most likely the client will be looking for a strategy where they can push back as much as possible (and minimize their repair expenses), just short of pushing the buyer to the point where it breaks the transaction. 

When done properly, the client is in a good position to make the right strategic calls, and oftentimes the best path is fairly clear. Occasionally it’s not so clear and they’re essentially in judgment call territory, but even then at least they have framework for understanding their situation more clearly, and are still empowered to make the best call for themselves.

An additional benefit of partnering with your client in this way is that it gets the client involved in the decision making process as you navigate their real estate sales process. They begin to see that very few things are for certain in real estate, that good strategic calls can make a big difference, and they understand their role in partnering with their agent in a positive manner to achieve the best outcomes at every step of the way. 

In this way, client and agent are more aligned, like a team working together to make the most of the market and their opportunity, versus the client having a “why didn’t you deliver x-result” mentality, which can tend to feel more adversarial. A real estate career is a much more positive endeavor when client relationships are structured to be more positive.