In this presentation, Steve D. Valentine shares a five‑phase seller‑journey framework designed to turn real‑estate agents into wealth‑building strategists rather than mere salespeople. He explains why asking the right questions during a listing appointment—covering past experience, current goals, financial details, property condition, and expectations—gives agents the information needed to craft creative strategies, avoid post‑closing disputes, and increase listing conversions. Valentine emphasizes active listening, recording conversations with tools like Otter AI, and splitting the appointment into two phases (a walk‑through for emotional and physical property insights, followed by an office session for financial analysis). He also highlights the pivotal, often‑unasked question about a seller’s expectations of the agent, and shows how mastering these steps lets agents offer investment options, build client wealth, and position themselves as trusted strategists.
Chapters
If you want more yeses at your listing appointments and less hassle in your future and more opportunities to maybe build wealth and offer your clients more options and strategies, then listen up because this one's for you. The seller journey, the way I have learned it— by the way, I've bought over 1,000 homes, several of those from clients and several of them from you, with you as agents and sellers. So let's just walk through what I'm doing. By the way, if you're a seller watching this, Awesome. You should know this as well because it's really important. Because if you don't disclose this stuff, then we don't know how to help you. So here we are. Seller journey, 5 phases of questions. By the way, this is going to be really important if you want to build wealth and become a strategist and not just stay a realtor. Okay. Now, past experience. Why are we asking this question? Well, past experience has to do with if they bought or sold a house in the past. And those, those are important. They may have just inherited this house, so they've never been through the process. So we want to ask about their experiences. Now, this comes with multiple questions. Have you bought or sold a house? No. Okay, great. What do you know about the process currently? Who have you talked to? Who's been helping you? What have you been reading? You want to know what they know because you may be talking, talking out of turn or out of school because they know more than you think. Maybe they've sold a house, then ask them questions. What was your past experience with your agent? How did it go? What didn't you like? What did you love? All of those are important to how you're going to serve this client. And you may find out of this experience that they're real assholes. And you're like, cool, I've been active listening. This guy's an asshole because the way he treated and talked about the last real estate agent, you may go, oh, I don't know if I really want to work with these people. Okay, remember, in this process, can I give you a bonus for a second? You see, I like to go through a rapport, relationship, impact, income process with my clients. Because in between rapport and relationship is the determination whether or not I want to work with somebody. Because I do not want to chase listings. I want to sell houses and solve problems for people just like you. Okay, so we've been through past experience. By the way, you're gonna get all these questions in the PDF you download it, right? Current goals and outcome. Why is this important? Well, 'cause it all equals to what's next. I wanna know where they're going. I want them to be excited and focused, and I wanna know what they're focused on this outcome. When they sell the house, are they buying another house? Do they want to buy an investment property? Have they considered buying an investment property? What if this seller has $500,000 coming out and they just want to buy another house, but they don't need that $500,000? You could say, hey, you ever thought about buying a rental property? Let me show you what this looks like. Now I've just created 3 sales out of 1. Money. Why is money important here? Money is important because the numbers tell a story. And if you don't have all the numbers, you can't tell a true story to a seller because they don't see them. And why is the money important? Well, we want to ask them, hey, while you're walking around the property, so tell me about what you owe on the property. Awesome, you owe about $300,000. Great. How many mortgages, 1 or 2? Okay, awesome. And what are the interest rates on that mortgage, and what is your payment? You also need to make, make sure that you're asking the question, is there any other liens? Did you lease solar, water heaters, pool equipment, any of those things? Because those can be a problem, as we all know. Property, property questions, very important part of this phase. Okay. One part of this phase is that we're looking for distress. We're looking for emotional attachments. We're looking for personal. We're looking to see if there's any hurt in the home that they're trying to avoid talking about. Again, we are not overcoming objections here. I truly want to know where the seller sits so that I can serve them to the best of my ability. They may have said they want to sell the house, but that's not all that's happening. You see, they've either been thinking about it for months or somebody just planted a seed and they want confirmation or somebody to tell them what to do with it. Keep that in mind. They're calling for guidance and they've already been thinking about it. They've already talked to people about it. So the property, as you're walking around, By the way, on the property stuff, if you're super smart about this, you're looking for the things that are causing pain that we turn into pleasure for an investor down the road. And it also is an ability that you start to understand and what you're seeing in properties so you can guide better and build your wealth better. It's how we've done it for years with our rental portfolio, the flips, and the different things that we've done is because of these questions that we've been asked. And find out the answers to, right? So the property, as you're walking through it, you want to be asking questions, and a lot of them. By the way, here's a bonus for you. The best thing that I've learned to do is I use Otter AI, and I tell the seller when I get there, hey, I'm going to turn my note app on so I can record the conversation so that I don't lose any notes and thoughts, and I can really pay attention to what you're saying, and we can have a great conversation. Is that fair? Cool. Most people I've had, nobody tell me no. As you're walking around the property, a lot of sellers get to points where they're emotionally attached. "Well, I remodeled the kitchen a couple years ago. My grandmother did this. My wife painted this." You have emotions all the way through it, which by the way, when you're asking those questions, you're being prepared to know these things, but you also get to share with them. These are really amazing. Can I share something with you? Because I don't want you to take anything personal when we put the house on the market. There's a lot of amazing things here to you, and I think they're great for you, but we're selling your home to somebody else that wants to make it their own. There's potential that you're going to get negative feedback on some of these things that could cause some issues in selling the home. I want to make sure you don't take that personally when we sit down to talk about this. Okay, thanks. Okay, in the property, if you see a roof leak or you see something wrong with the pool, you want to point these things out and ask questions and see if they respond to anything. So let's talk about a pool. What if you notice like, hey, did you realize there's a bunch of plaster missing out of the bottom pool? Yeah, it's been like that for about a decade. Awesome. Do you know how much it costs to replaster a pool? Whatever today's rate is, right? Which I think is about $15,000. They may not know how much it costs to replaster that. They may have had a bid 10 years ago. Like, oh my God, $15,000. Is that gonna be a problem? It could be. Let's keep going, right? We're gathering all this information. The one big question nobody asks: What are your expectations of me as your agent? How do you communicate? How are things going to operate? What do you expect from me? What have you heard? Because I want to make sure and address those things and keep them in the notes so that we can make sure and take care of your expectations. The expectations also are asking questions of, "Hey, what's more important to you? Time or certainty? Ease or pressure?" Because there's a lot of different ways we can do this and I want to make sure that we've covered them all so that when I come back or when you come to my office— another bonus tip, I do properties in 2 phases because a lot of times— and by the way, you're going to find more about this in this next video down here where I break down a property and use these questions. To show you how I get to the bottom of a listing appointment to provide strategies for a seller. It's extremely important to get through this process so that you have all this information, because it comes down to creativity or investing. You're going to need all this information, and it helps you develop a better rapport with your seller. And we're going to go through and we're going to take this in two phases like I was talking about, and we're going to go from the house— we've done all the emotional stuff And then I want to ask them and invite them to my office because I want to go through the financial part of this breakdown in the office away from the emotional stuff. A lot of us are taught to go into the appointment, sit at the kitchen table, get the paperwork signed, deal with the stuff, and then unwind things and set expectations after a contract is signed. And I'm telling you, that's going to get you in trouble if you haven't already experienced it because the amount of times that I've had a seller seller, sit at a table, sign the contract. Yeah, I understand everything, everything's good. And then a week later you're having a freaking fight with the person. Money is different at closing. All the things happen, and now you've spent all this time. Sure, you got paid, you've got a seller that's pissed off at you that's probably not going to refer you. And maybe it's good reputation or bad reputation. Good job getting a check. Some of that could have been avoided at the table by asking more of these questions and really know what the seller is looking to accomplish. You see, this is the difference between sales and strategies. Sales determination is going to the door and making sure you get that listing appointment. You're competing against your buddy or whatever that looks like. In strategies, it's, hey, these are the things that I offer and these are the strategies that we can perform. And if that doesn't work, that's okay, go to the next guy, because we've given truth. We've given truth and money. We've We've been able to get truth through these questions because we know where the seller is going. And now, you are prepared to know exactly where the seller is going, what their money looks like, and what the cost is. And now I want to break all this down in the next video. So I hope you enjoyed these questions and this breakthrough. And I know it is going to make a huge difference in your real estate business. Whether you're investing, whether you're just starting out, Whether you're a buyer's agent, a lot of these questions work the same for buyers as well. You know, we may be talking about a property. What's most important in a property? So these are questions that are so critical to the journey. And you can take all these, you're going to get that PDF. And if you just copy it, use it on every appointment, every phone call, it's the best way to walk them through this process. Thanks for joining me for this seller journey and download this, put it to practice, comment below, subscribe. Click the button if you want some more notices. We got some great stuff that I'm gonna show you because I want you to become a strategist, not a realtor, because strategists build wealth for themselves and their clients in everything that they do. And you're serving, not selling, because we're in the people business, not the housing business.
