Coach Your Coaches (aka Real Estate Agents)
If your agents are leaving FSBO appointments without a signed listing agreement, you don’t have an agent problem — you have a training problem.
A new POWER AGENT® on a recent coaching call, a strong producer who decided to move up from the $400,000–$475,000 price range into the $600,000–$750,000 market sat down with three FSBO sellers last week. She came home with notes. No listings.
This is not her problem. This is a training problem she carried in from before she found us. And it may be one of the most expensive blind spots in your office.
Most agents are taught to use the first FSBO visit to build rapport. Get in the door. Have a nice conversation. Leave the brochure. Come back next week with the proposal.
That model worked twenty years ago. It does not work now. And it is costing your office listings every week.
Teach them to secure the listing on the first visit
Here is what I would tell every agent in your office tomorrow morning. Lean in for the listing on the first visit. Not the second. Not the third. The first.
The first visit is the only one where the seller has invited you in and their guard is down. By the second visit they have read the discount brokerage’s website, talked to their cousin who got a license fifteen years ago, watched a flat-fee listing ad on Zillow, and figured out twelve reasons not to hire you. By the second visit, you are no longer their guide. You are a presentation they have to sit through.
If your agents are walking out of FSBO appointments without a signed listing agreement, they are leaving money on the table that has already been prepaid by their time and their gas. That moment is the appointment. Train them to finish it right there.
Real estate is won at kitchen tables, not on follow-up calendars.
Reset the conversation before you talk fees
Most agents do not lose first-visit listings because they are bad at asking. They lose first-visit listings because they get bullied on fees.
The seller asks the fee question. The agent gives a number. The seller says, “There is a brokerage that will do it for half.” The agent goes quiet and asks if they can come back next week to talk it through. That is not a listing conversation; it’s a retreat.
Train your agents to never engage on fee until they have reset what the seller thinks an agent does. ALWAYS communicate value before you talk money. ALWAYS.
The conversation goes like this. “Before I answer the fee question, I want to make sure you and I are on the same page about what you are actually hiring. If you think a real estate agent is someone who puts a sign in the yard and uploads photos to the MLS, the discount brokerage is a fine choice. If that is the work, the fee they charge is roughly right. But that is not the work. The work is the pricing analysis, the negotiation strategy, the buyer qualification, and the dozens of small calls that protect your sale on the days when it tries to fall apart. Once we agree on what the work actually is, the fee question answers itself.”
When your agent walks into that conversation that way, they are not defending a price. They are educating the homeowner. The homeowner can hear the difference.
Recommended reading: Three FSBO Dialogues for Getting the Appointment
Recommended reading: The Magic of Metaphors and Analogies
Replace flat fees with performance fees
Most agents have one fee. One number, one model. There is a better way. Performance fees.
A flat fee is a budget. If you charge a seller a flat $10,000, you have decided how much you can spend on photography, advertising, open houses, and prep work. If the home takes ninety days, your budget runs out long before the work does. The listing dies on a Wednesday in week eight and you cannot explain to the seller why.
A performance fee aligns the agent’s outcome with the seller’s outcome. The higher the sale price, the higher the fee. The lower the sale price, the lower the fee. If the home does not sell, the agent does not get paid. That is fair. It is also better marketing.
When your agents walk in with three or four performance fee options, the seller can see the agent has skin in the game. Build it into your office systems this quarter. Two or three models, written down, explained on one page. Train every agent on the conversation.
Powerfact: Pay agents for outcomes and they will deliver outcomes.
Your Job as the Leader
Here’s the truth most broker-owners already know but rarely say out loud: agents don’t struggle with the hard conversations because they aren’t trying. They struggle because nobody has ever sat them down and made them practice those conversations out loud. The fee discussion. The first-visit close. The seller who is underwater. The buyer who wants to lowball in a hot market. These aren’t skills that develop on their own. They develop through repetition, role play, and a safe space to get it wrong before it counts.
And honestly? Most brokers never got that training either. They were handed a desk and figured it out the hard way, just like their agents are doing right now. This isn’t about blame. It’s about recognizing that when agents improvise under pressure, listings get lost, and that’s a gap worth closing.
Pick one conversation this week. Get your agents in a room. Run it three ways. Let the agents play the seller. Let the broker play the agent. Find the words that work. Write them down. Practice them again next week.
Coaching is less about pep talks and more about running drills.
Your agents are not salespeople. They are licensed real estate coaches. Treat them like coaches. Train them like coaches. Reward them like coaches. The office that does this consistently will outproduce the office down the street that is still chasing recruits with sign-on bonuses.
Serve don’t sell, coach don’t close.
If you do nothing else this week, ask your agents one question. When was the last time you earned the listing on the first visit? The answers will tell you exactly where your training program needs to go.
For Your Agents…
Here’s what I want every agent reading this to hear: leaving a FSBO appointment without a signed listing agreement doesn’t mean you failed, it means you haven’t yet been given the tools to finish what you started. That changes today.
The first visit is your moment. Not the second. Not the third. The first. That’s when the door is open, the guard is down, and the seller is actually listening. Don’t leave that kitchen table without doing the work you came to do.
When the fee question comes up, don’t retreat. That’s the moment to reset the conversation and help the seller understand what they’re actually hiring. If they think a real estate agent puts a sign in the yard and uploads photos, the discount brokerage looks like a perfectly reasonable choice. Your job is to change what they think an agent does before you ever talk about what you charge.
And stop thinking of your fee as a number you have to defend. Think of it as an outcome you’re promising. That shift alone will change how you show up at every listing appointment.
None of this works without practice. The conversation you fumble on Tuesday is the one you nail on Thursday, but only if you role-played it on Wednesday. Bring your hard conversations to coaching. Let us help you find the words that sound like you.
I believe in the value you bring. Go back to that kitchen table. This time, don’t leave without it.
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Contact us at galec@darrylspeaks.com.
Darryl Davis is an award-winning international speaker, real estate and business coach, and best-selling author of three books, all published by McGraw Hill Publishers.
For more than 35 years, Darryl has spoken to and trained more than 600,000 sales professionals around the globe to more than double their production year after year. His book, How to Become a Power Agent in Real Estate, tops Amazon’s charts for one of the most sold books to real estate agents.
He was awarded the Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation by the National Speaker’s Association, which is given to less than 2% of all speakers worldwide.
Whether from a stage or Zooming into a virtual room, Darryl’s extraordinary humor, relatability, and natural gift for teaching real-world, results-producing skills and mindsets to audiences have made him a client favorite throughout his career.
Audiences will laugh, learn, and ultimately walk away better prepared for a changing world, with the tools, skills, and training they need to build their businesses with more ease and less stress and to design lives and careers worth smiling about.
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