In a changing market, skills matter more than ever. Your negotiation and sales skills take on added importance, and the “old market” stuff won’t cut it anymore. If you’re still using those old scripts, there’s a good chance you’re setting unrealistic expectations for your sellers and setting yourself up for failure.

That’s why I want to share three ways to update your scripts and skills to match today’s “new market” conditions.

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Create the contrast.

What’s critical now is to present information by positioning it in the right frame of reference. Don’t just show sellers what’s happening right now. Educate them about the evolution of the market spanning the last couple of years. Show them the data: more homes on the market, fewer closings and price adjustments where applicable.

Then – and this is very important – refer to previous conditions as the “old market” and current conditions as the “new market.” This creates a clear delineation and will help them understand that what was happening six months or a year ago is not the case today. That we’re in an entirely “new market.”

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Use pricing analogies to overcome objections.

No matter how well you position yourself and the market conditions, you’re still going to get homeowners who say: “I understand the market has changed, but I want X price.” Sound familiar?

Here’s a great tip from one of my personal coaching clients that illustrates that the market alone will determine the price of their home:

He first asks them if they own stocks or are familiar with the stock market. When they say yes, he then poses this question:

If Netflix is trading at $270 a share, can you call your stock broker and say, “I want to sell all my Netflix stock at $500 a share today.”

No, you can’t. Because that’s not what it’s worth in today’s market.

Homes that are similar to yours are selling at X price.

And then, inevitably, when you get this response:

“Another agent said they can get me much more…”

…use this script:

I could line up a thousand agents outside your door, but we’re all looking at same data and we’ll all come in within one or two percent of each other. If someone is promising you much more, you’ve gotta ask yourself what they’re up to. Are they just wanting to take your listing to generate a bunch of buyer clients? What’s their motive?

This dialogue plants the seeds of doubt in the seller’s mind and gets them to understand what seems too good to be true probably is too good to be true.

Be direct.

Another one of my personal coaching clients shared this tip with me: Be direct. She says she tells sellers flat-out the difference between today’s market and the recent past:

In the old market, I could put a ton of cushion in the pricing. There was nothing for sale and demand was so strong, people would still make offers and we’d get deals done. But now, in the new market, we’ve got to be pinpoint accurate. If we want to sell in today’s market, it needs to be priced at X.

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