Webinar: Buyer Control & Client Management

Sameer Amini: Today, we're going to talk about buyer control and client management. And before anyone gets uncomfortable with the word "control," let me be clear about what this is and what it's not. This is not about manipulating a buyer. This is not about being pushy or aggressive. This is about leadership and about being the professional in the room, about providing the structure and guidance your client actually needs, but usually do not know how to ask for. So here's the truth about this business. New agents, especially a lot of you that are either in the college right now in your career programs or about to decide to get into it, new agents in their career lose enormous amount of time, money, and energy to buyers they cannot control or they cannot lead. They drive hours for casual showings. They show 30 homes to people who are not ready to buy.

Sameer Amini: They chase people who are shopping other agents. And by the end of their first year, most of them are exhausted and broke. The best agents flip that dynamic. They set the frame, they lead, okay? They filter, and they do this without ever being pushy because it is not about pressuring that buyer. Again, it's about professionalism. That is what we're going to build together, hopefully, in this webinar, and I'm going to share as much as I can. So again, let me define what buyer control means in this session, okay? Again, every time I say that, it doesn't mean manipulating the client into decisions that are not right for them. It doesn't mean pressuring them or being aggressive. It means leading the relationship, providing structure, setting expectations, and then qualifying them properly.

Sameer Amini: Filtering the wrong clients out early so you can serve the right ones with a lot of time. It means being calm, prepared, professional, and that professional who guides the process. So instead of being panicked, instead of reacting, you don't want to be someone who lets the process just completely drive you and that client and that whole experience to the ground, okay? So here's the framing I want you to hold in your mind. Think about the last time you went to a good doctor, okay? Or a specialist. They didn't ask you what medication you wanted. They didn't present you with 15 treatment options and ask, "Okay, well, you pick." They took your history, they asked you really good questions, examined you and said, "Here is what I recommend, and here is why." You didn't feel controlled, you felt led, and you left more confident and not less.

Sameer Amini: That is the professional to client dynamic in real estate as well. When you set it up correctly, your clients don't feel controlled. They feel led. They feel confident. They feel that they're working with someone who knows what they're doing,

Sameer Amini: and they refer you to their friends and family as well. So let's keep continuing. Here's the first mindset shift that I want every single one of you to make. Most new agents assume the client controls the relationship. It feels intuitive. They're the ones signing the money. Customer is always right. Wrong. Or at least, let me just say incomplete. In every real estate transaction, someone is going to lead. If it is not you, then it's going to be the client. And if the client is leading, guess what they're leading with? Emotion, incomplete information, and often unrealistic expectations. That is not criticism of clients. That's just what happens when someone tries to navigate the biggest financial transaction of their life without any expertise. So again, your job is not to be a servant. Your job is to be an advisor.

Sameer Amini: There is a huge difference. A servant does exactly what they're told, whereas an advisor asks the right questions. They provide context. They set the expectations. They tell them what's next and guides their decisions. So advisors, again, get respected. You would not go to a lawyer and tell them how to structure your contract. You would not go to an accountant and tell them, "Listen, this is how I want you to prepare my taxes." You go to these professionals because they know what they're doing. You're going for their expertise, and you follow their process because you know they know what they're doing. Your buyer should feel the exact same way about working with you. And they will if you set it up correctly from the first conversation.

Sameer Amini: So let me name the specific mistakes that cause new agents to lose control, okay, of that client relationship. And if you can spot these in yourself early, you can fix them before they cost you a year of your career and a lot of time and a lot of money. Mistake number one is desperation. So you just got your registration, okay? Every lead or every potential person that might turn into a deal feels precious. So you say yes to everything. You say yes to everyone. "Yes, I can drive 45 minutes for that showing." "Yes, I'll meet you on Saturday morning at 8:00." "Yes, I can show you houses," even though you have not talked to a lender and gotten your pre-approval. Every yes to the wrong thing weakens your position. It doesn't strengthen your position, by the way, if you think saying yes means that you're going to serve somebody better.

Sameer Amini: Mistake number two is fear of losing it. You show one house. They want to see three more. You say, "Sure, of course." They want to see three more. You say, "No problem." Before you know it, it's now 30 houses. They've made no decision. They're actually now more confused than ever about what they even want. You were afraid the whole time that if you pushed back, they would leave.

Sameer Amini: And now they're going to leave anyways because they're way confused. They don't even know if they want to do this anymore. And I've seen that happen many, many times. Mistake number three is not qualifying them. You never ask the right questions at the beginning. You do not know their real timeline. What is their real budget? What is their actual motivation? Why are they doing this? Now you're two months in, and you find out that they cannot actually buy anything because they thought they could buy with a 5% down payment, and they were very confident about it. But when you actually go through the pre-approval process, oh, they needed to come up with at least 10 or 15% down payment, which they did not. Mistake number four is being reactive. You wait for them to call you.

Sameer Amini: You wait for Dammit to send you listings or say to you, "Oh, by the way, I was on realtor.ca, and here's a few listings that I found here." You wait for them to make decisions. They are driving the process. You're just trying to catch up with them. The pattern in all four is the same. You're not leading any of them. And in the absence of that leadership, chaos fills this space, by the way. So how do you actually lead a buyer relationship? There are four levers, I would say. That is what we're going to hopefully talk about as well. So number one, set expectations early. Everything about how this relationship works, what you're going to do, what they're going to do, how you communicate, what times of the day you're active in your communication, and what times you're not, and what a good outcome looks like. Okay?

Sameer Amini: All this gets defined in the first meeting. Not the second, the fourth, or the tenth. The first. Number two, prevent shopping behavior. Buyers who are shopping other agents, dabbling in the market, and are not financially qualified will burn hundreds of your hours of your time and stress you out, too. We'll talk about how to spot them and filter them out politely. But let's go to number three. Keep buyers focused, responsive, and decisive. The buyers you do work with need structure. So structured showings, and then after the showings, you debrief with them with your communication expectations. These houses didn't work. Well, let's figure out what exactly you did not like about these houses, what it did not match about what your needs were and what your wants are. And you keep going through this process of elimination.

Sameer Amini: And so the next thing you go for showings, you're not booking 10 houses. You're booking three that meet everything based on all the feedback on the ones you've already shown. Okay? So a framework for making the decision when the right home does show up. Number four is manage difficult and unrealistic clients.

Sameer Amini: So you will encounter people who are going to be very demanding, very unrealistic, or unfortunately unpleasant. How you handle them determines whether they eat your career up or you just keep moving. So each lever in detail with actual language, actual scripts, actual questions that you can actually literally grab from this webinar and use them. Let's go. Number one. This is, again, the lever one, setting expectations early. Almost every problem you will have with a buyer coming comes back to something that should have been established in the first meeting, but it wasn't. So if you take one thing from this entire session, take this, okay? The buyer consultation, which is what we call the first meeting, we always frame it in the real world as, "Hey, I'd love to help you buy your first property, but let's go through our first meeting.

Sameer Amini: It's going to be a buyer consultation. Let's meet at the office." Okay? So the buyer consultation is the most important 90 minutes or 60 to 90 minutes of that relationship. Now, if we say 90 minutes, then that means it's a long meeting. It's not a coffee chat. It's not a quick conversation. This is a consultation meeting that you have it structured. It has an intro. It has parts and pieces to it that you're going to flow with them together. Professional consultation where you learn about the client, they learn about you. Both of you agree on how you're going to work together. I have seen many agents, as a manager of the office, come to me and say, "Sameer, I don't know what to do.

Sameer Amini: The clients message me at 11:00 at night, and they expect a response." Now, every time I hear that, again, I always come back to, "Well, have you established the boundaries of what time do you respond and what times you won't respond and how the expectations are?" And usually the answer is, "No, I didn't." So again, coming back to the buyer consultation and setting up those expectations. Now, most new agents skip this step. This step is completely skipped. They meet a buyer. They get excited. They jump straight into, "Okay, let's go see houses." That's a disaster. You skip the moment where you're supposed to establish yourself as the professional, learn their real situation, and set the frame. Remember, that client wants to go on the showing.

Sameer Amini: You want to say, "I would love to take you on the showing, but we just need to go through this consultation meeting." Here's what most new agents miss, okay? Buyers who value the process do not mind the consultation. They actually really, really appreciate it. It signals that you are very serious, and dealing with you means being organized and working through a system. Buyers who resist the consultation are usually the same buyers who would have wasted your time. So the consultation itself actually becomes a filter for you. So in the beginning of your career, please don't say yes to working with everyone and anyone who comes in front of you.

Sameer Amini: One of the ways you filter on people that are not worth your time … are people that are not going to go through the systems and the structures that you have set forth, and they don't want to go by it. And again, that becomes its own filter. Now, if someone will not sit down again with you for the 60 to 90 minutes before you start looking at homes together, they're not treating this as a serious engagement. Better to know that upfront than spending weeks with them, getting burnt out and stressed by them, than realizing that at that point. So here's what a proper buyer consultation covers. Okay? The consultation should cover their real situation. What's their financial position? What's their pre-approval status? Timeline, motivation, why they're moving. Okay? Feel free to take a screenshot of this slide, please. It's extremely important.

Sameer Amini: What is driving the urgency? What is the life stage? Do they have kids? Are they just getting married? What is the life stage? Family situation, location constraints. Then you go into their goals. What are they trying to achieve? Not just what the house they're looking to buy, but what life they're trying to build. Their previous experience with the real estate. What went well? What didn't? Okay? What they liked about their last agents, what they didn't. This tells you exactly how to work with them. And then your process. What is your process? How you work, what you do, when you do your work, when you're available, and what they can expect from you. What days, or what one or two days of the week you're going to go on showings, and what days you won't and you don't.

Sameer Amini: How often you will be in touch, and how you're going to handle those showings and negotiations. Then we go into their process, which means what they need to do. When you need updates, how they should communicate with you. Okay? And then you go into the actual signed representation, so their actual buyer representation agreement, which is not optional. This is something you must go through in your consultation. Explain the RECO guide, explain the buyer representation agreement, and then have them sign. Okay? Then the consultation is where you demonstrate that you are a professional.

Sameer Amini: Every question you ask, every explanation you give, is quietly telling them in the back of their mind, "This person knows what they're doing." Let me focus on one specific part of the consultation that, again, new agents don't get right constantly, the pre-approval conversation. Okay? Here's the rule. You don't show homes to buyers who are not pre-approved. Not because it's a strict policy, because it does not serve them. Here's the exact language, okay? When a buyer wants to see a house before they get pre-approved, you say something like, "I know it feels like the fun part is looking at homes,

Sameer Amini: but here's why I don't show homes to buyers who are not pre-approved. If we find something you love, it turns out you can't buy it because financing doesn't work. That's going to hurt you. It creates an emotional attachment to something that's going to slip away, unfortunately. So my job is to protect you from that. So let's get you the pre-approval this week, and then we can look at the right price range with confidence." Also, it helps them because, folks, outside of the script, if you know what they are pre-approved for, you're not going to go on showings on homes above that price point. So that actually, again, is going to save both of you the time. Always remember this other rule. The more homes you show someone, the more confused everyone's going to be. Always remember that.

Sameer Amini: Now, after the script, now coming back to the script, notice what happens in that script. Okay? So you're not making it about you. You're not saying, "This is my rule. You have to follow it." You're framing it as being in their interest, which it genuinely is. That is the truth. And you're naming a specific, concrete downside that they will feel emotionally. So which is more persuasive than any logical argument. If they still refuse to get pre-approved, you have your answer about them. They're not serious. Just move on politely. I know. Hearing when I say move on from a client, right now, it doesn't feel right for all of you listening that are new into this business or going into the business.

Sameer Amini: But if I go back in time, 12 years back in time, and tell myself, "Sameer," one thing, if I were to tell myself one thing, it would be, "Don't say yes to every single person that comes to you." Okay? And it would be these filters, one of which we're talking about, that I wish I had in mind to just start moving on from people that were not deserving of my value or my time. Okay. Now we're going to the second, which is preventing shopping behavior. So shopping behavior is when a buyer is really not engaged. They don't think you're really their agent. They're just dabbling, exploring. Maybe talking to two or three other agents also. Maybe not really ready to buy. Maybe they just enjoy looking at houses. Whatever their reason is, they are not in a serious professional relationship with you.

Sameer Amini: And shopping behavior is the single biggest time drain in this business for a new agent. Again, you can show 30 houses to a shopper and get paid zero. Meanwhile, you skipped opportunities because you spent all that time there, that you skipped opportunities to develop real relationships with buyers who could have transacted. So the hard truth is this, okay? Some buyers are going to be worth your time, some are not. Your job is to figure out which is which as quickly as possible, and spend your

Sameer Amini: time only on the ones who are worth it. This is not cruel. This is just you being professional. Look, doctors triage patients, lawyers screen cases, accountants qualify prospects. You get to do the same. Let's talk about how to spot, again, shopping behavior early and how to qualify them properly, and how to set the pace of that relationship instead of letting them set it for you. So here are the specific patterns of shopping behavior. Again, just learn to spot them fast. Again, take a screenshot here. Incredibly important slide. Number one is they resist meeting for a consultation. They just want to see houses. When you propose a proper meeting, they push back. Another is they're not pre-approved and don't want to be. They tell you it's too early for that. They'll handle financing later.

Sameer Amini: They don't understand the connection between financing and the search. Another is they cross shop. You notice they mention other agents, or they say things like, "The other agent I'm working with," or, "The other agent that showed me this house." Any hint to another agent is you're not their agent. You're just one of the options. They ask you to show random houses across the city. No pattern. There is no pattern. They want to see a townhouse, then they want to see a detached, then they want to see a finished basement, then an unfinished base. There is no pattern. Serious buyers have criteria, and they have a list of what's important to them. And again, buyers who are just shopping, what they have is just curiosity. Another is they're constantly changing what they want. This week, it's a condo in downtown.

Sameer Amini: Next week, it's a detached in the suburbs. Their criteria shift by the week. Sometimes, if you have a client that this is the behavior they're exhibiting, maybe it's time for another meeting sit-down to realign everybody on exactly what we're looking for and why. And usually, when a client is changing and showing this behavior, the buyer consultation was never done, or if it was, it was not done correctly or properly. Another is they'll not commit to a timeline. So when you ask when they want to move, they say, "Whenever the right one shows up." Again, that's not a timeline, folks. That's just a hobby for them. Okay? They will not sign representation. They will not sign anything. When you bring up the buyer representation agreement, they get very uncomfortable. They delay, they refuse completely.

Sameer Amini: Even if you say, "Look, let's sign the contract only for two weeks." If we're going to go out for house shopping or anything, not even house shopping, just house showings, even after the buyer consultation, you could sign a buyer a contract even for one week or two weeks, so they

Sameer Amini: don't feel that they're in a contract for months. Okay? So any of these on its own, any of these behaviors, can be innocent. I agree with that. But two or three of these behaviors together is a pattern. When you see that pattern, have a professional conversation and either move them into serious engagement or move them completely out of your calendar. So here's a short list of qualification questions that will tell you almost everything you need to know about whether a buyer is serious. When are you looking to move? That's a great question. Serious buyers have a real answer to this. Shoppers say, "Whenever." Another question is, are you pre-approved? If they're serious, they're going to say, "I have a lender. Yes, I've spoken to them." The shoppers have not thought about it even at all.

Sameer Amini: Question is, what happens if we find the right home this week? The serious buyers have an answer. The shoppers say, "Well, we're going to think about it." So take a look at this screen. I'm not going to go through every single one, but again, feel free to take a screenshot of this. Ask these questions. Actually ask them, please, and note these questions, because these are the questions I always ask in the consultation out loud and listen carefully to how and what they answer. The answers will tell you almost everything you need to know about the next six months. All right, so here's one of the most important concepts in client management. You set the pace and not them. New agents fall into a pattern where they wait. They wait for their client to reach out. They wait for their client to want to see a house.

Sameer Amini: They wait for them to make a decision. They're just reacting. Professional agents have it in reverse, okay? They set the pace. They call on a schedule. They send curated listings on their timeline. They schedule the next check-in before ending the current one. They always tell them what's going to happen next and when. They tell the client what is happening next. So I've seen this difference in my own personal career, where I was actually in the above section where I was waiting. But when I did flip around that entire experience, even for myself, everything changed. Okay? And especially when you tell a client what's going to happen next and when. That sets a task, that sets a date and time for not just the client, but for you, too, as the agent. So again, when you do that, you're not being pushy. It's about being professional.

Sameer Amini: You're running the process. The client is being served by that process. So here's what this looks like. Okay? At the end of every conversation, you never end without setting the next

Sameer Amini: touchpoint. So I'll send you three listings this week that match what we talked about. We're going to connect Friday to pick which ones we see next. You see, again, I said what we're going to do. Whatever we discuss, I'm telling them I'm going to do this now, and now I'm saying what we're going to do next. And you shouldn't say, "Well, call me if you want to look at anything," or, "I'm going to send you these. Let me know whenever you want to take a look at them." So at every stage, you tell them what's happening next, not the other way around. The next step is going to be a, "Here's what I need from you by this." Okay? When you set the pace, everything is going to move. When you wait for the client to set it, everything is going to stall. Now let's move on to our third lever. So this is keeping buyers focused, responsive, and decisive.

Sameer Amini: Let's say you did the first and the second really well. You had the consultation. You qualified. You filtered out the shoppers. You're working with real buyers who are serious now. The work is not done. Real buyers can still eat months of your time if they cannot stay focused and respond promptly or make decisions when the right one shows up. So your job at this stage is not to add more houses to show them. Your job is simply to add structure to help them stay focused on what matters. So one of the items also in the consultation, if you want to add a note now, please, is you want to ask them for the list of must-haves. What are their absolute minimums? And then a second question to what would be their wants. Always separate what are the needs, and then separate what are the wants.

Sameer Amini: So now, when we're talking about this slide, again, your job is to help them stay focused at least on the list of the needs. Do they meet the needs? And then if it's yes, then second priority is, let's go to the wants. And you want to make sure they respond to you and to the market quickly. Right now, just to give you an example, a few years back, actually, the market was really healthy. If a buyer was looking for houses and they were taking a lot of time, or decisions were not being made quickly, I would say that almost every two or three weeks, the prices were going up by a certain amount. Okay? So it is incredibly important, depending on the market and what kind of market you're in, that responding quickly, it really does make an impact. Right now, the market we're in, real estate today, it's a little bit of the

Sameer Amini: opposite. Right now, it's not a bad idea, and I've advised my own buyers that if we have not found the right one, we don't need to rush. We don't need to panic. Let's wait. Depending on what time of the year it is. If you're in the middle of the summer, you're not going to have a lot of options. But if you're now in the spring market, fall market, you are now going to get a lot of options where the client can wait, and if they are able to. So again, it's all based on situation and scenarios. So the next few slides, let's cover that. Okay, so the 80% rule. I want you to remember now the 80% rule. So structured showings and debriefs. So after the showing, you debrief. Handling analysis paralysis, which we're going to talk about, and then setting response expectations, okay?

Sameer Amini: Each one of these that I just said is actually a skill you're going to build over your career. All right, so let's talk about the 80% rule first. Buyers, especially first-time buyers, walk into the process looking for 100% of what they need. The perfect house. Every feature, the right neighborhood, the right size, the right price, the right condition, everything right. The truth is, folks, does that house exist? It doesn't. Or if it does, it is priced at least 30% above what they want to pay, or it is already sold, or someone with more money has gotten it first. The buyers who buy are the buyers who accept that 80% is enough. The right neighborhood, the right size, the right price, the exact kitchen I dreamed of, the perfect finish on the surface. But enough of the important things, enough to build a good life.

Sameer Amini: Your job is to teach this to your buyers gently, repeatedly, from the first meeting. Because if they hold out for that 100% and that is what they're aiming for, like in a very serious way, they will still be looking a year from now. Imagine going on showings with a client for more than a year. And they will have watched the market move up while they were being picky about a countertop. Here's the language I use. "You're never going to find 100% of what you want. We've made this list. Here's a list of your needs. Here's a list of your wants. Together, if we can find 80%, that is a home you should probably buy. The 20% you would compromise on is worth less than another year of searching and seeing the prices fluctuate." Say it often. It gives them permission to make a decision when the right home does show up, by the way.

Sameer Amini: Let me give you the structure for showings that keeps buyers focused. So before the showing, you send them a preview of what they're going to see. Two or three homes maximum, okay? In one showing block.

Sameer Amini: Please remember this. Do not book anywhere more than even four or five homes in a single day. Unless, again, they are extremely qualified and time is limited. More than that- If you show a lot of houses, trust me, that day, that first house that was really, really good and met the 80% rule will become a complete blur by the time they are now on the sixth showing that day. So during the showing, you keep them focused on the same three or four criteria you agreed on in the consultation, not new criteria they invent while they walk around the property, by the way, which happens a lot. If they invent new criteria mid-showing, note it. But you bring them back to what they agreed on. After each one, you do a quick debrief before moving to the next. "What did you like? What did you not like?

Sameer Amini: On a scale of one to 10, where does this rank against what we're looking for? Do you want to see it again with your partner? Do you want to make an offer?" After the showing block, longer debrief. "Which one stood out? Hey, by the way, which one would you buy if you had to choose today out of the three options? What are you still looking for? What did today teach us about your real criteria? What's hitting your heart?" The structure sounds, again, obvious, but almost no new agents do this consistently. Most just show houses and hope the buyer eventually says yes to one. That's not a process, folks. You're just going on hope. The structured showing and debrief turns your work from hoping into actually leading. Let's talk about analysis paralysis, okay?

Sameer Amini: When a buyer has looked at enough houses to find something good but cannot pull the trigger, they keep asking to see more. They keep second-guessing. They just can't decide. This is one of the most common places in the buyer journey where relationships collapse. Buyers keep looking. Agents keep showing. Nothing is closing. The market is, by the way, moving with or without them. Now, the same buyer cannot afford the houses they were rejecting three months ago. Again, depending on the market. Your job at this stage is to help them make the decision. Believe it or not, folks, this is something you're going to see and you're going to have to help a lot of buyers with. Not add more options to the table. More options actually make it worse, not better. Again, when I say that, you must be thinking, "What are you talking about?

Sameer Amini: Because the more options, the more houses I see. Isn't that better? Doesn't that mean that I get to see everything and I have more options to pick from?" Again, when you have more options on the table and there's no structure, there's no list of what exactly we're looking for and

Sameer Amini: aiming at, everybody gets confused. Here's the question that cuts through this whole paralysis. The question should be, if this exact home were available six months from now at this price, would you buy it? If the answer is yes, then the question is not about the house, it's actually about their readiness, which is a completely different conversation you can have honestly. So another framing. Let's imagine you keep looking for six more months and see 20 more homes. Do you think you're going to find something significantly better than this? Or is this pretty close to the best you've seen? Their answer to that question, by the way, tells you the truth. Again, you're not pressuring anyone. You're helping them see things clearly. That is what a real professional does. Okay?

Sameer Amini: One more piece of the focused buyer picture, setting the response expectation. So again, the market moves fast. Good homes get multiple offers, depending on the area and the market, within less than two days. Sometimes in one day. Buyers who cannot respond quickly, by the way, lose good ones over and over again, then blame you for not finding them anything. So you have to set the expectation early in the consultation, something like this, and you can see it, by the way, on the slide. "When we find a home you love, we may need to move quickly. That means responding to messages within a few hours, even within minutes. Being available for a call to talk through offer strategy, being ready to sign paperwork the same day.

Sameer Amini: If your schedule doesn't allow for that in the next few months, we need to talk about the timing of your search." So again, understanding how you can squeeze minutes and when we can do this, and then communicating to the listing agent who you're putting the offer for about the same timings and the same time constraints. We're asking them to give you some time as well. So again, what you're doing is, that's a professional expectation. It's not asking too much. It's telling them the truth about how the market really works. And when the moment comes, you use the same framing. "This is the moment I need a response in the next few minutes even, forget hours, if we want a real shot at this one." Buyers who cannot meet the standard, depending on that hot market, are going to lose homes. That is the hard truth for them.

Sameer Amini: Again, your job is to tell them the truth so they can rise to it, not shield from it. This is now our lever four. This is managing difficult and unrealistic clients. And believe me, you're going to get them in your first year. Not just shoppers, not just paralyzed decision-makers, genuinely difficult buyers. Rude, demanding, emotional, unrealistic, convinced they know more than you. By the way, me being 12 years in this business, yes, I've come across clients that are 100% convinced they know more than me, and sometimes they're completely disrespectful.

Sameer Amini: This is real, unfortunately, and it will happen. And how you handle it, especially early in your first year, is going to matter enormously for you. Because if you let one difficult client define how you feel about the business, you're going to burn out very quickly. If you fold every time a difficult client pushes back, you will spend your career being pushed around There is a professional way to handle this. Three parts. First, do not personalize their behavior. Their frustration is usually not about you. It is about their life situation, their financial pressure, something they're not even telling you in their personal life, their fear of making the wrong decision. Understanding this does not excuse rudeness, but it depersonalizes it for you. Second, hold your professional standards. You do not have to accept mistreatment.

Sameer Amini: You don't have to accept unreasonable demands. You're allowed to push back professionally. Third is know when to walk away, and this is, again, the most important thing I can say. Know when to walk away. Some clients are not worth serving. You have permission to end the relationship if it's causing you more harm than any benefit. Not easy to do, I know, but you're going to have to learn to know how to walk away. We might do a webinar on this, and so I'll keep it in my mind. Question from Stephanie. "Okay, so I had a buyer consult who was not approved yet from a lender, but he didn't know what the process is when buying a house. We sat down and had a conversation and went over some details, but I don't think they have looked for financing yet. Should I be following up this or not?" I love that question.

Sameer Amini: So if they have not been approved by a lender yet, so again, Stephanie, you want to bring up that same script in that slide, which is, "Before we start showing homes, before we go on or something, there's something extremely important that we must first try and get out of the way, and that is to get you pre-approved. In today's market, if we know that you have a pre-approval for a certain price, it's going to help you and me in many ways. First, we'll know exactly what price range we should aim at. And second, if you're going to fall in love with one of these homes, I want to make sure you fall in love with the one that we can actually close on successfully. I'm really trying to save you the hurt here.

Sameer Amini: I want to make sure that we spend and commit your time on something that you can close on." So you want to say something like that and say, bring it back to how important it is that we get through this step, and it doesn't take that long. "Hey, I'll put you in touch with a mortgage broker, and within maybe less than a week, they can get an answer on your pre-approval." So against that, I would go back to following up with it and then seeing where they're at and helping them with that step as well.

Sameer Amini: I hope that helps. Let's keep going. So, let me now name some specific archetypes so you can recognize them, okay? So the unrealistic seller. They want to list 25% above market. They have done their research. They are convinced their home is special, and they don't care about your comparables and your CMA, okay? They have ChatGPT on their side. The emotional decision-maker. Okay, so again, you can see all the different ones that I've put here. Just going to just pause and let you just read some of them. Feel free to take a screenshot. Everything on this slide is very, very real. Okay, so every one of these has a professional response. So let's talk about the language. So here's the language that lets you push back professionally, and we can take a look. On the unrealistic pricing, "What matters more? The list price or the sale price?

Sameer Amini: So if we list at your number, we're going to likely just sit on the market, get stale, and end up selling for less than we would have if we had priced it correctly from the beginning. What matters more to you? The list price or the sale price?" On the one that's an emotional decision-maker, I always respond with, "Look, I hear that you love this one. Let's just take a day before we decide and see how you feel tomorrow. If you still love it, your heart is set on it, we move. But let's not let the excitement of today just drive a big decision for you that's going to affect your next five, 10 years." On the armchair expert, okay, so, "I understand your family has opinions. I want you to trust the people around you.

Sameer Amini: But what I would ask is that when it comes to specific advice about pricing and negotiation, you trust me first, because I look at this market every single day." Then you have the abusive one, and for those ones, you want to be extremely direct. "I want to be honest with you. The way we're communicating is really not working for me. I need our conversations to be respectful for me to continue. I need us to keep communication reasonable within the reasonable limits. If we can agree on that, I'm more than happy to help you.

Sameer Amini: If not, I'm going to have to refer you to someone else." Every time I have said this to someone and I've said to them, "Look, I'm sorry, I'm going to have to refer you to someone," about 50% of the time, actually more than 50% of the time, I found that they completely change, and they actually start treating me completely differently and better. When they see that I'm not going to be involved anymore, that my value is now going to be out of the picture, they actually completely change.

Sameer Amini: And I've always been shocked every time I've said that. So actually, nowadays, whenever I do see the rude, disrespectful client, I love to say, "Look, I'm going to have to refer you to another agent." Okay. Now, on the one who will not even commit, you want to say something, "Look, let me ask you something honestly. What has to change for you to actually be ready to buy? Because I want to make sure I'm serving you well, and we're providing the right services, and I'm not sure you're actually ready right now. If it's okay, and it's okay if you're not- Let's just be honest about it, and if anything that has to change, let me know. I want to make sure we are able to move to a decision. Okay. So let's talk about when to fire someone. And believe it or not, you might be thinking, "What? Firing someone? A client? Refusing a client?" Yes.

Sameer Amini: You're going to need to know how to do this in your career. You're going to hear the phrase, "The customer is always right." In this business, that is not always true. Some customers are toxic, some are unqualified, some are wasting your time in ways they will never acknowledge. Staying in those relationships costs you real money and real energy. You're allowed to end an agent-client relationship. You are more than allowed to, politely, professionally, but definitely. Here's when to do it, okay?

Sameer Amini: When they're consistently disrespectful, and you've already had one direct conversation about it, when they refuse to follow your process after multiple explanations, when they're unqualified financially and refuse to address it, when you've shown them 20 or more homes with no decision, no criteria, everything keeps shifting, they're not following along. When your gut feeling has been telling you this relationship is going to end badly, listen to your gut feeling. Listen to it, always. The language for ending it is, "I want to be respectful of your time and mine. I don't think what you're looking for and how I work are the right fit. I'm going to refer you to someone else who can serve you better." And simply, that's it. Don't overexplain it. Don't apologize. Don't say, "I'm sorry. You know what? I'm sorry.

Sameer Amini: I don't want to do this, but look, I really…" Don't be indecisive. Don't show. Be firm, unapologetic, and don't get pulled into a debate. Fire the client before they even fire you. Fire them before they drain your energy for another six months. Fire them so you can spend the time on people that will actually move along and listen to you, and actually respect the process that you're putting them through. The right agent does not fear losing the wrong client. Let me say it again. The right agent does not fear losing the wrong client. You are the professional in the room. Please act like it. That single shift changes how you approach every part of this business. You are not a servant. You're not a concierge. You're not a driver ready to take people whenever they want to go.

Sameer Amini: You are an advisor, someone with knowledge, skill, and has a process, being hired to guide a major life decision. Okay? You want to be an advisor. Remember, advisors get respected. Advisors say yes to right things. Advisors lead. Advisors know when they attract the right ones by being the right professional. The tools we talked about today, the consultation, the qualifying questions, the 80% rule, the pushback script, the willingness to walk away, are all just expressions of that one shift. You are the professional, so act like it. The buyers who value that leadership will love working with you and refer you to everybody they know. The ones who do not will filter themselves out for you, and that's a win.

Sameer Amini: That's a major win. So start now. From your first client conversation, set the frame, lead the relationship, be the professional, and you will see the results will follow, and you have an amazing time in this career. So here's what I want you to do, actually, in the next seven days. So one, write out your buyer consultation agenda. Ask your brokerage what level of training do they have for going through these consultation meetings. Now, they should go. Maybe your brokerage has a really good system already, and follow theirs, okay? But if not, then you're going to have to write an agenda. In that agenda, what do you want to cover? In what order? How deep are we going in those sections? Type it up. Actually type it out. If you want to use AI to do this for you, go for it. Go use an AI tool to give you a proper consultation agenda.

Sameer Amini: Have it ready before you meet your first client. Number two is memorize your qualifying questions. Even if you don't, you know what? There's nothing wrong with you having a list of questions on paper and asking it one by one from the client. They will see that your process is written on paper and you're following it. Three, write out your pre-approval script. Again, the one that puts the requirement in the buyer's interest. So practice saying it until it sounds really natural about, again, getting them pre-approved. Four, write out your 80% rule language so that when the moment comes, it comes out early. Clearly. Feel free to role-play. Role-play these meetings with someone in your brokerage, with anyone, really. Anyone at home, friends, family. Go and role-play with them once you've set them. Any script.

Sameer Amini: Number five is, again, write out your pushback scripts. Realistic pricing. Number six, decide in writing what your standards are, what you are not going to tolerate. What behaviors will end a relationship? Write them down. And please have them somewhere printed, either on your desk, on a wall, put it on a phone screen. Put it as a screensaver, by the way, on your phone. You are, again, executing on a standard you have already set. If it's not yet set because you're new in this, well, I'm telling you right now, let's go. Let's set it now. Okay? So that's six items. None of them take more than 30 minutes, by the way. All of them put you ahead of 90% of the agents entering this industry. All right, folks. I want to say thank you so much for being in the session.

Sameer Amini: I hope this session gave you a completely different way of thinking about client relationships. Real estate truly is a business where professional agents win, advisors win. Not the friendliest, not the most eager, not the one willing to drive the farthest at any time and for any house. Okay? If you're currently, again, in our program, take these frameworks and start building them into how you think about client interactions, even before you venture your first client or you've dealt with the first one. The habit of thinking like a professional is what allows you to act like one when that moment comes. If you're still deciding whether this real estate is the right career for you, I hope today gave you a realistic look at what this work actually requires, and part of it, by the way. It is a real business. It rewards professionalism.

Sameer Amini: Folks, thank you so much. Thank you again for joining, and we'll see you on the next webinar.