Real estate is facing cost pressures from multiple directions.
And when margins get tight, the instinct is to compete on price. Lower your compensation, hope volume covers the difference.
Leila Hormozi, who built her own sales career before co-founding Acquisition.com, argues that discounting has nothing to do with the market.
In a conversation with Neel Dhingra, she broke it down to one question: are you deciding from strength, or from fear? She identifies the biggest fear behind the decision to discount and the signal that gives it away.
She also reveals what to change in your next client conversation to stay premium while winning more business.
Playing Not to Lose Vs. Playing to Win
Dhingra asked Hormozi a question that’s been coming up a lot lately: how should real estate agents handle the pressure to discount when margins are already tight?
That pressure is amplified when a potential client asks for a discount or a rebate.
Her answer starts with a single diagnostic question she says applies to any pricing decision in business:
“The question I ask is, ‘Are you making this decision out of a place of strength or a place of fear?’ And in business, if you want to win, you have to play to win. You can’t be playing not to lose.”
Playing not to lose means dropping your price so you don’t lose the client in front of you. Playing to win means holding your price because you already know the value you bring.
Hormozi illustrates the pattern with her own hairdresser.
“You know what’s funny is that so my hairdresser, every time I see her I’m like, ‘That’s it?’ And she’s like, ‘I just don’t want to raise my prices, you know?’ And she’s at the point where she’s so full that she cannot take on any more clients.”
She’s turning away business because her calendar is full, and she still won’t raise her rate.
Swap “hairdresser” for “agent,” and the pattern holds in real estate too.
The Fear that Drives Agents to Discount Their Compensation
Ask Hormozi what the real risk is in holding a price, and she reframes the question entirely.
“A lot of people don’t want someone to say no to them. So it’s like you discount, you lower your prices because you can’t handle the rejection. And maybe you’re getting rejected because you’re not good enough. Or maybe you’re getting rejected because you haven’t practiced enough.”
Both of those are fixable. A discount fixes neither one. It just avoids the conversation you don’t want to have.
Hormozi takes it a step further, tying every discount back to a decision made on your own.
“You’ve literally constrained the resources that you were capable of acquiring purposely. Nobody asked you to. And there’s other people not doing that.”
No one forced that discount. Other agents in the same market aren’t doing it, and they’re still closing deals.
Act Your Way Into the Price You Want
Hormozi built her own pricing confidence the same way, starting from the bottom of her own sales career.
She remembers the fear showing up at every price point she sold at.
“I remember at each level, the one thing I focused on was like I was so nervous because I was like, I can’t believe anyone would spend this much money. There’s no way I could sell something that cost this much.”
Her sales path looked like this:
- A $300 package, early in her sales career
- $25,000 sales
- $35,000 sales
- Eventually $100,000 sales, working through the same fear at every level
The fear didn’t disappear as the numbers grew. She just stopped acting on it.
“Your brain, when you give it constraints, it will focus on that path. If you always have this over here that you could do, it actually works not nearly as well because our brains like predictability and certainty.
“The moment that we cut off a path, it will find a way forward.“
For an agent, that path gets cut off before the listing appointment starts. Decide your compensation ahead of time, and walk in with it already settled instead of negotiating it in your head at the kitchen table.
The Signal That’s Costing You the Deal
Dhingra also asked Hormozi about the habits agents show without realizing it, the small signals that cost them credibility in a room.
Hormozi’s first focus wasn’t so much about mannerisms or body language.
“The job of everybody in here is to help someone make a decision. Think about the people in your life that you trust to help you make a decision. How do they act? How do they show up? How do they talk?”
Clients are running that same test on their agent, whether they say so or not.
“It’s like get to the point, allow for the point to be there and don’t overexplain yourself. I would say that’s probably the number one thing that I see.”
Overexplaining your price or your value prop does the opposite of what it’s meant to do. It signals uncertainty, and clients pick up on it before the sentence is even finished.
It sounds like you’re still trying to convince yourself you’re in the right. And if you’re not confident in the value of what you’re offering, why should they be?
