A seller stopped one of our BAMx members at the gym and told him they were thinking about switching agents.
He knew the house, down to its recent price reduction. So he set up a call and spent 45 minutes giving them advice.
The seller stayed with their agent and made the changes he suggested. The home sold.
He told us on this week’s BAMx Roleplay Mastermind that this has happened to him three or four times.
And I get it. You want to help people, and a slower fall means more sellers and buyers who don’t know what their next move should be.
But helping starts with asking the right questions.
During a recent BAMx Role Play Mastermind, Tom Toole, Lisa Chinatti and I worked with BAMx members through four hot-seat scenarios. Here are 11 scripts that came out of it, grouped by the type of conversation you’re going to have a lot more of in Q4.
Scripts for When a Seller Listed With Another Agent Reaches Out
A seller who’s under contract and on the market with another agent is a different situation from an expired listing. With expireds, lead with a free value offer to earn trust. Here, somebody else has an agreement with this seller, and you need to respect it.
The general rule across the country is that you can have this conversation when the seller reaches out to you. Your local rules come first, so if they say something different, follow them.
Keep the early conversation away from two topics.
- The contract. Stay out of the contract. Nothing more to say here.
- The house. Pricing and positioning can wait until you know what the seller wants.
1. Diagnostic Questions
The first thing I want to know is whether this seller is unhappy with how things are going or looking for a second opinion.
Start with questions about what they wanted when they listed.
“In order for me to help you, I’m coming in here without all the background, without all the information. Why did you originally list? What did you want to have happen when you went on the market? When did you want this to have happened? How did you want it to happen? Have they changed anything since going live?”
Tom pointed out you’re interviewing the seller as much as they’re interviewing you, and you need to decide whether you want this listing.
“Tell me, what’s your plan?”
“Where are you moving to?”
“How did you end up selecting the agent that you hired?”
2. The Commitment Question
Save this one for after you know what the seller wanted and why it hasn’t happened.
“I know you might not have that information now. If you’re free to move legally and I show you the best path forward, are you going to make a change?”
The “if you’re free to move legally” part is your disclaimer, and it keeps the conversation where it belongs. The seller’s current agreement is between them and their agent, and your question is about what happens once they’re free to decide.
Know your local rules on when a seller can change agents, and keep that condition in the question every time.
3. Moving the Call to a Meeting
The one reason to get on the phone with somebody is to book a meeting.
This script comes from Tom, and it’s how he moves a long call to an in-person meeting.
“When you get into those detailed conversations, you know what this sounds like? It’s something really important we should be talking about face to face once I see your property. So when would be a good time to get together?”
Tom’s done with 45-minute phone calls because they don’t move anything forward. Once you give away everything you’d normally cover in person, the seller has less reason to meet with you, and the appointment gets harder to book.
When you get to the meeting, walk the seller through your game plan and take it with you when you leave.
They may not be free to move yet, and you don’t want to interfere with the other agent.
Scripts for Following Up With Open House Leads
Open house leads go cold fast, and your follow-up starts before you lock the front door.
Lisa’s first rule is to send a video text before you leave the property. Buyers hit several open houses and hear from a handful of agents afterward, and their focus is on the house. A video that arrives three days later gets forgotten, so your job is to make your face memorable before that happens.
She also suggests filming the video in the part of the home buyers will remember most, like a standout kitchen or a backyard pool. Buyers connect your face to the house they liked.
You know one thing for sure about everyone who came through the door. They gave up part of their weekend to tour a home, so they’re interested in homes on the market right now.
4. The Open House Question
Use this question in place of “Are you working with an agent?” because it opens a conversation about what the buyer needs.
“Has anyone taken the time to sit down and simply walk you through what it takes to buy a home in today’s market?”
5. Ten Days of Inventory
After the open house, skip the voicemail about how much is happening in the market. Buyers ignore that message almost 100% of the time.
Spend the next 10 days sending them homes. Bringing inventory is the number one thing buyers want from an agent, so I change up the message and keep the listings coming.
“Hey, we saw each other at 123. Thanks for coming. Not sure if you saw 124. It was also open on Sunday. I thought you should have this information.”
“I know this is 20 minutes from the house where I met you. I loved meeting you, by the way, but this one to me seems like the deal of the week.”
“Hey, I know this is a stretch. I think this is the best deal of the week. This one was open on Sunday, but I’m not sure if you were able to get there.”
Reach them on every channel you can find over those 10 days, from their mailing address to their social media profiles.
Tom reminded everyone to focus on what the buyer is excited about and to be patient. It can take six or seven calls to reach someone.
Lisa pointed out the plan depends on when you met them. A lead from this past weekend gets the full 10-day push. A lead from a month ago needs a re-engagement approach, because a brand-new 10-day campaign won’t match where their motivation is.
6. Reactivation
This script is for the leads who never responded during those 10 days.
“Hey, we met four weeks ago at the open house. You were talking about X-Y-Z. Did you guys end up giving up on that or is it just on pause right now?”
Silence doesn’t mean they’ve stopped looking. They may have left your open house and then seen rates jump. Keep the door open and let them tell you where they are.
Lisa also makes the case for a handwritten note people want to open.
Think of a nice wedding invitation, with heavy paper and handwriting on a quality envelope. She says you can buy 100 sticker wax seals on Amazon for about $12.
A personal touch like that puts you ahead of agents who send a few texts and drop leads into automated email campaigns.
Scripts for Working Your Neighborhood Without Being Cringe
One agent on the call is well known in the neighborhood she farms, and neighbors ask her real estate questions at school pickup.
She waits for them to bring it up because she doesn’t want to come across as pushy.
7. The Home Equity Report Pitch
Q4 gives you a clean way to be direct about what you do. BAMx members can find the full version of this pitch in the Role Play and Scripts classroom.
“Every year around this time, for all my clients, I put together home equity reports for their home. This year, I’m selecting just a handful of people who live in our neighborhood to make sure they have access to the same information as my clients. I’d love to offer that to you. I can send it to you, or we can chat about it.”
The pitch treats your neighbors like clients and tells a story about something you do every year.
Watch your delivery. Keep your pitch low and steady, because a high-pitched voice tells people you’re nervous.
8. Assuming the Visit
When they say yes, assume you’re coming to the house. Don’t ask whether you can stop by. Offer two times.
“Great. What I’ll do is come by for 10 minutes tomorrow. I can do 4:30 or 6. What’s going to be better for you? I’ll do a quick walkthrough to make sure this is highly accurate.”
If they won’t do a visit, send the report by email. Every report you deliver goes into a database you’ll build on every year.
Tom shared a few other ways he builds his name as the neighborhood expert.
- Sponsoring the Little League team he coaches, which cost him $300
- Direct mail, which gets expensive, so check your budget first
- Listing videos with a quick hook and a walkthrough, targeted on Instagram and Facebook to people who use Zillow, Realtor.com and mortgage calculators
Agents often overthink how to treat the people they know. When someone in your sphere brings up real estate, they want a consultant. Put them in your database and on a property drip the way you would a referral from a close client, and run your normal process.
Scripts for Pricing Conversations
In our fourth hot seat, an agent brought an expired seller who hoped to get $2.4 million. The comps pointed to about $1.5 million, and the home had sat at $1.8 million for about four times the median days on market. The seller had three or four other agents pitching him.
We went over the three pricing strategies to walk every seller through.
- Aspirational pricing, where the seller tests a higher number
- Comp-based pricing, which follows the sales an appraiser will use to protect the bank
- Competitive pricing, which sets the home up to draw multiple offers
Lay the three categories on the table and have the seller sort recent comps into them. When a comp goes in the wrong pile, I ask one question.
“Do you think that’s the right category?”
I don’t make decisions on price. The market does. No agent can promise a seller the perfect price, and conditions can change from one Tuesday to the next.
9. The Appraiser Framing
This is how I present comps. Note: I don’t call them my comps, and I don’t call it a CMA. Those words mean nothing to a seller. Instead, explain it how they would understand:
“Here are the exact properties an appraiser is going to put into their report to protect the bank’s investment.”
Appraisers work for the bank. A buyer who wants to pay more runs into these same sales at appraisal.
10. The Seller Question
Ask this once the seller has seen the comps. It puts the decision in their hands:
“Neither of us knows what the market is going to decide this home sells for. Now, if the market decides it’s closer to these recent home sales, the appraiser is going to use them. Appraisers work for the bank. They don’t work for these buyers. So even if a buyer wanted to pay more, the appraiser is going to point to these homes to protect the bank.
“If ultimately that’s where the market comes in, are you a seller at that price?”
Then stop talking and give them time to answer.
11. The 10-10-0 Framework
If a seller wants to try a higher price, get their agreement on this rule before we list.
“Ten days, zero showings. Ten showings, zero offers. That’s our signal to adjust the invitation price together.
These numbers can be adjusted for your market, depending on average days on market. List price is an invitation to the market, and the market answers with showings and offers. Sellers who adjust their invitation in the first few weeks keep more of their money than sellers who wait and get chipped away over time.
Ask the Question You’ve Been Avoiding
One of the best things you can do for a seller or buyer is slow the conversation down and ask the question you’ve been dancing around.
These scenarios will keep coming up through Q4 and into early winter, and agents in higher-inventory markets will see them the most.
We deliver all the scripts from every Role Play Mastermind, and BAMx members will find them in the classroom, along with the AI Script Advisor, which is trained weekly based on frameworks and scripts that our teams are using today. Sign up today to get full access to everything.
