In this Q&A Thursday video, real‑estate coach Chris Pree reviews a short seller call submitted by a student and demonstrates how to turn a dead‑end conversation into a productive lead. He explains why simply accepting a "no" (property not available) is a missed opportunity and introduces a three‑question probing formula—“Where are you going?”, “By when?”, and “What if that doesn’t happen?”—to uncover seller motivation, timelines, and fallback plans. Chris provides concrete script snippets for follow‑up, emphasizes the importance of setting a future callback date (the "bookends" technique), and advises agents to ask sellers when they should be called back. He also promotes his QLS Home Study Course and other free resources (smartrealestatecoach.com) for scripts and training. Throughout, he encourages agents to apply the formula immediately, positioning it as a simple, repeatable tool for any seller call.
Chapters
Hey guys, it's Chris Pree with another Q&A Thursday. This particular week in our mastermind calls we're doing, a student said, can I send you a couple recordings? Because they know we like to critique calls of just people that have either hung up or the call was really short and I thought I couldn't go anywhere with it to see what you would do. And this particular call was a seller. This comes up all the time is why I want to make sure it was a Q&A for you guys, because you can put— can and should put this into play tomorrow in your calls. The seller, she said, are you open to— no, actually, first she said to the seller, is the property still available? This you're going to get all the time. And they said no. And the student, the investor, our Working Smart community member said, oh, okay, no problem, thanks. And hung up. Now, script for you guys. Whether they say no, it's not available now, or whether you're calling an expired or you're calling a FSBO that said no, we took it off for a while. Any of those answers are not, oh, okay, then hang up. The best question for you to then follow up with is this very important. Oh, cool. Interesting. If it had sold, where were you going? If it had sold, where were you going? I'm curious. Okay. Because that's going to then spew out the motivation or the lack of. Example. Well, we were going to go. We had a job relo and now we can't go to this neighborhood, or we had this neighborhood picked out for our kids and now we can't get them into the school system. You know, that type of urgency is, oh, they're motivated. Now you can play with it. Hey, if I could get you full price, then In the time you want, would you be open to selling an owner financing or lease purchase? That's simple, right? If, on the other hand, the answer to that is more, I don't know, we were just trying it, we were just throwing a number out, we don't care, then you're not really going to follow up unless the next question gives you a pretty positive answer, because this question is going to be with either motivation. Okay. I'm just curious. In fact, I had one of these this week. Guy said, I listed with an agent for 90 days. I said, okay, I'll call you in like 70 days if you want. And I said, or do you want— I don't want to bug you. Or do you want me to wait longer? Like, ask them when you should follow up. So in the examples I gave you, I'm not selling or I took it off the market or something like that. You're going to say, okay, I'm just curious, is there a time in the future that I should check with you at which you might want to sell again to rekindle that? And you restate their goal. Right. So you can do it that way too, in addition to what I already gave you. All you're looking for is a window to call back. Don't give an excuse to get off the phone and say, yeah, yeah, okay, to call me back. Tell— ask them, look, is it worth me calling back? Is this going to be something you're going to revisit? So if it's so, where were you going? And then try to hone in. I put— I tell my community members that I coach, put bookends on this thing, like find out a date when you can call them back. Super important, by the way. If you want a ton of scripts for the sellers in our QLS Home Study Course, if you have it, just go to— if you don't have it, I don't know why you don't have it. You should have it. QLS, our QLS staple course. I believe the link is smartrealestatecoach.com/qlsyoutube. If it's not, just email support@smartrealestatecoach.com. In the— in a month or two, you're going to find live seller calls like us talking to people live. You're going to find PDFs with all kinds of scripts on them. You can print them out, put them on your computer. This is stuff that you can and should do by yourself. Whether we never do business with you again, as from a coaching standpoint, right? If we never meet, rather, you can do this. And let me give you the 3-question formula. I'll leave you this nugget that you can literally put into play tomorrow and you'll have some fun with it. And this 3-question formula is no different than you'd ask your neighbor. So if your neighbor put a sale up, put a for sale sign out, right? Not sure where to get started? Go to smartrealestatecoach.com/getgoing for free books, strategy calls, and a whole bunch more. We're going to help you get going the wicked smart way. We've been after this for over a decade doing exactly that. Would you not go out there and go, "Hey, what's going on? Where are you going?" Well, I'm going to Florida. Oh yeah, how come? You have a job reload? Yeah, we we we got a job reload. Oh, we're sick of this weather. Interesting. So when did you want to be there? Well, we've got to be there by blank date. Ah wow! So if that doesn't happen, what are you guys gonna do? You staying here? And when you say, "What if that doesn't happen?" What's your plan B? Or what if that doesn't happen? You staying here? Just like the other script I gave you, the answer, the motivation spews out or the lack of. Okay, where, by when, what if it doesn't happen? Where are you going? By when you need to be there? What if it doesn't happen? 3-question formula to use on all of your seller calls. Make it a great week. I'll see you next week on the next Q&A Thursday.
