What happens when a brokerage CEO tries to buy a house and can’t even get an agent to call him back?
That real-world frustration set the tone for a brutally honest fireside at BAM Pro Bowl III, where NextHome CEO James Dwiggins and real estate trainer Jared James challenged agents to see the business from the consumer’s seat.
They went straight to the friction clients feel in real time, including slow responses, missed details, and an unclear process. Those are the moments that shape whether a client trusts you and determine whether you ever get the chance to talk about value at all.
As the conversation wrapped, Byron Lazine distilled the discussion into six takeaways that don’t just improve service. They redefine what it means to operate like a professional in today’s market.
1. Standard of Communication
If agents want to be taken seriously as professionals, responsiveness has to be a standard.
As the fireside chat made clear, most trust breakdowns happen long before negotiations. They happen when consumers are simply trying to reach an agent and can’t.
James Dwiggins put this in stark terms by describing his own experience trying to buy a home:
“It is so frustrating the experience that I’m going through right now…I’m buying a house in the East Bay of Northern California. I reached out to three agents over MLK weekend to look at the properties. I didn’t hear back from any of them. When I finally heard back from one of them three days later, we set up an appointment. She forgot about the appointment when I showed up four days later to go tour the property…
“If we can’t figure out how to contact and follow up and be in touch with our clients on a regular basis…we got to get out of this business.”
For Dwiggins, these moments told him everything he needed to know about that agent. And it’s the same for other would-be buyers and sellers every time an agent fails to respond or flakes out on a potential client.
Before an agent ever explains their value, consumers are already judging whether that agent is reliable, organized, and worth trusting with a major financial decision.
Jared James reinforced that agents don’t get to negotiate response-time expectations. Consumers bring those expectations with them, shaped by every other service experience they have.
“Expectations are like love languages. You don’t determine what your partner’s is, and if you don’t speak it, they feel left out.
“So when he says, ‘Hey, I expect somebody to get back in an hour,’ if you can’t, you’re in the wrong business. That’s what you’re supposed to do. That is an absolute must.
“Number two, when following up with that person, we’ve taught our people forever. You follow up till you get one of two fingers, right? Till you get a finger that says, ‘Let’s work together.’ Or you get a finger that says, ‘Let’s not work together,’ that I’m not going to show you right now.”
Elevated agent status starts long before you get to share your market expertise or put your negotiation skills to work. It starts with whether you answer the phone (or how quickly you get back to them if you miss their call), how you follow through, and how you respect the urgency of the moment from the consumer’s point of view.
The easiest way to understand how this feels from the consumer side is to experience it yourself. That brings us to takeaway #2.
2. Secret Shopping
James Dwiggins argued that time in the industry can become a liability when it distances agents from the friction buyers and sellers feel every day. The longer someone has been in real estate, the easier it is to assume the experience still makes sense to consumers.
Secret shopping is how those assumptions get exposed.
“By the way, you all should do this as part of your business every year. Go pretend to buy a house in another city and go be a home buyer. Literally, everybody should do this. There should be a requirement in your office… Pretend you’re transferring jobs and go somewhere else and go experience what I am obviously frustrated about right now.”
The point in this exercise is to relearn what actually triggers trust or frustration when time, money, and stress are real.
Secret shopping reframes improvement in a practical way.
- What frustrates you as a buyer or seller will frustrate your clients.
- What earns your patience will earn theirs.
Agents who want to elevate their status have to experience that reality firsthand.
3. First Impression Online
Another point the fireside drove home repeatedly has to do with the consumer’s first impression of you as a real estate professional.
By the time you meet a buyer or seller, the first impression has already happened…online. Consumers know where to look for info on any real estate agent with an online presence.
Jared James challenged the idea that agents can win trust in the opening minutes of a meeting. As someone who shows up consistently online, here’s how he put it:
“If you are trying to sell them in the first 10 minutes, you’ve already lost. Because if you went up against me, I’m not going in there with that being my first impression…
“Now, I want to make a very important point here. We have learned our whole lives about the idea of how important first impressions are. And when people say you never get a second chance to make a first impression. That’s 1991. That does not exist anymore… because the consumer today is researching everything. They know you before you walk in the door.”
Consumers arrive having already done their homework. They’ve watched videos, scanned social profiles, read reviews, and formed expectations about who the agent is and how they operate.
The in-person conversation either reinforces that belief or shatters it.
As James Dwiggins added, this research isn’t passive scrolling. For experienced buyers, it’s a deliberate way to size up the person on the other side of the transaction.
“You should be assuming that everybody’s going to search the shit out of you to know everything about you, because for me, any type of advantage I can get in a negotiation, I’m going to spend that time.”
One of the ways Dwiggins researches is by looking up the agent on ChatGPT.
“One of the other things I did is I went to ChatGPT, and I looked up the listing agent, and I’ll tell you why I wanted to do it. I wanted to know who the listing agent was, how experienced they were or not, and what kind of negotiation I can probably do with that agent based upon their level of experience.”
In that context, trying to manufacture credibility in the room is too late. Elevated agent status is built upstream, through visibility, consistency, and relevance, long before that first appointment.
Which brings the conversation to what actually builds confidence once you’re in the room.
4. Process
Once trust is validated and expectations are clear, the next question consumers are asking themselves is “Does this person actually know how to guide me through what’s about to happen?”
As Jared James argued, this is where a lot of agents lose leverage. They focus too heavily on outcomes they don’t control and not enough on the one thing they do.
“Our focus when it comes to a seller is on process, not price. And we tell them that we don’t control the price. A market is the market. The market changes all the time. If I told you…that I always knew exactly what the market was going to do, and I was always a hundred percent correct on price, would you believe me or think I’m full of crap? … I don’t control the market. I control the marketing. And so I’m absolutely going to focus on process for a lot of reasons.”
Price predictions can be second-guessed or proven wrong by the market. Process, on the other hand, is something consumers can feel immediately. It shows up in structure, clarity, and how confidently an agent explains what happens next.
Process also gives agents a way to differentiate without posturing by clearly mapping the journey and keeping their clients in the loop every step of the way.
No one’s expecting you to predict the market perfectly. Instead, agents must able to explain what’s happening, why it matters (to them, specifically), and how they’ll navigate each step when things don’t go to plan.
Of course, explaining the process clearly is one thing. Showing it is another.
5. Transparency
The discussion stayed grounded in how consumers actually experience real estate, not how agents hope their work is perceived. A recurring theme was that most clients don’t see enough of what happens during a transaction to understand the scope of the job.
James Dwiggins spoke directly to that gap.
“That process needs to be showing people intelligently the amount of stuff that goes on in a real estate transaction. Because a lot of times what people are going to research isn’t based upon reality of what is going to occur.
“Remember, consumers think you get paid too much money. That is a fact in every study humanly possible. So you’ve got to get really good at presenting the amount of work that you do. Show them what’s happening in the process.”
From the consumer’s point of view, much of the work remains out of sight. When progress, problem-solving, and coordination happen behind the scenes, clients tend to underestimate both the effort and the expertise involved.
Dwiggins tied that disconnect to everyday expectations shaped by other services.
“You can track a pizza, you can track an Uber, you can track almost anything. You got to give that client the ability to see what’s going on to justify that value.
“And then…you’ve got to expand your value beyond the close of that transaction.”
Showing the work changes the conversation. Timelines, task visibility, and clear checkpoints help clients understand what’s being handled and why it matters at that moment.
This is where better visibility can shift how clients experience the entire transaction. Some MLSs are beginning to roll out tools like Rayse that allow agents to share timelines, presentations, and closing summaries so clients can see what’s happening throughout the process. When clients can follow the work in real time, it becomes much easier for them to understand the value being delivered. (Agents can check whether their MLS has adopted Rayse or learn more at rayse.com.)
But that commitment to transparency shouldn’t stop after the sale closes.
6. Build out lifetime conversations and clients
The final section widened the lens beyond the transaction itself. The conversation kept returning to the idea that most agents still treat closing day as the finish line, even though that’s when the relationship actually gets tested.
Jared James framed the issue in terms of relevance. People move when life forces a decision, and they work with the agent who stayed present long enough to earn trust.
“We are no longer an industry where it’s enough to get in front of people when they’re ready to buy and sell.”
“We have to integrate into their lives even when it doesn’t lead to a closing.”
That integration comes from continued value-based follow-up and human connection over time.
James Dwiggins added practical context around how long that relationship actually lasts.
“It needs to be the seven to thirteen years they own that house that you are consistently following up with that client so that you are front of mind. Call ’em on their birthday, call ’em on the anniversary of the sale of their house. Find reasons to have a conversation.”
The work during that period isn’t complicated, but it does require intention. Staying in touch. Acknowledging milestones. Being present without turning every conversation into a pitch.
Dwiggins was blunt about what breaks trust fastest in this phase.
“For the love of God, don’t try to sell them real estate. Just talk to them as a human being. Just connect with them. Just be top of mind on a human level. That’s all you got to do.”
This final point tied directly back to the rest of the framework. Communication standards, empathy from secret shopping, online presence, process, and transparency all feed into this stage.
Lifetime clients are built through steady, human follow-up long after the paperwork is signed.
The full replay of BAM Pro Bowl III, complete with the fireside chat, is available in the BAMx Skool Community. Not a member yet? Sign up for a free 7-day trial to get full access.
