NLP in Real Estate: The Art of Persuasion Through Better Communication

Communication is at the heart of real estate success. Marketing, sales, negotiation — it all relies on great communication skills.

Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) offers real estate agents a way to communicate more effectively by building rapport, being a better listener, and using non-verbal cues.

This week on The Walkthrough, Jesse Zagorsky shares a handful of specific NLP sales techniques that you can use to be a better communicator and make deeper connections with your clients.

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Links and Show Notes

• Jesse Zagorsky – agent profile on HomeLight
• Live. Love. San Diego Homes – Jesse’s team’s website
• AgentPowerHuddle.com – Jesse’s live stream podcast, weekdays at 8:00 AM PT (this link will open up the Zoom meeting space where you can listen)
• Join our Facebook community for The Walkthrough listeners
• HomeLight’s Agent Resource Center
• Subscribe and listen to The Walkthrough: Apple Podcasts/iTunes | Spotify | Google Podcasts | YouTube

Full Transcript

(SPEAKER: Matt McGee, Host)

We talk a lot on “The Walkthrough” about what you say when you’re communicating with leads and clients. We talk about scripts, and role play, and making sure you know what to say in any situation — because that’s important.

You know what else matters? How you say things. Because you might have the right words, but if you’re not saying them in a way that connects with your client, well, you might end up sounding like the grownups in “Charlie Brown.”

[sound effect: inaudible voice]

Telemarketers, car dealers, I mean, a lot of salespeople sound like that, don’t they? In real estate, we all want to avoid sounding like that.

Great communication is about building rapport, about developing a real connection with the person you’re talking to. It’s about what you say and how you say it.

All of that comes together in what’s called neuro-linguistic programming, NLP for short. It’s about the language of the brain. It’s something that you can use every day in real estate to better connect with your clients. My guest today is gonna teach us how.

This is “The Walkthrough.”

(INTRO MUSIC)

Hey everybody. How are you doing? My name’s Matt McGee. I’m the editor of HomeLight’s Agent Resource Center. Welcome to “The Walkthrough.” This is a weekly podcast. We have new episodes coming out every Monday. This is the show where you’ll learn what’s working right now from the best real estate agents and industry experts in the country.

At HomeLight, we believe in real estate agents. We’re on a journey to find out how great agents grow their business, stand out from the crowd, and become irreplaceable. Do you wanna get involved in the show? There are a few different ways you can do that. First, find me in our Facebook listener community. Just go to Facebook, do a search for Homelite Walkthrough and the group should come right up. You can also leave a voicemail or send me a text. The number is 415-322-3328. If you prefer email, just get in touch by sending it to walkthrough [at] homelight.com.

Speaking of our Facebook listener community, about a month ago, I ran a simple poll with this question: What’s the number one most important skill to be a successful real estate agent? Let me say that again: What’s the number one most important skill to be a successful real estate agent?

I put about, I don’t know, 5 or 6 or 7 options out there, got almost 50 replies and more than 75% of the votes said communication skills are the most important. It makes sense if you think about it. Communication is the bedrock of marketing, negotiation, sales, and so much of what you do.

My guest today knows this all too well. Jesse Zagorsky is a master communicator. I first encountered him several years ago at one of Tom Ferry’s big conferences. Jesse is a podcaster, he makes videos, he really gets content and communication. Jesse is also a successful real estate agent. He’s been in the business for 16 years. He’s the team leader at Live Love San Diego Homes. They have 7 agents and 2 admins, and they do about $50 million in volume every year.

On today’s show, Jesse is gonna talk about neuro-linguistic programming, NLP. So, listen for him to talk about what NLP is, the importance of building rapport and being an active listener, and specific, NLP techniques that you can start practicing today to improve your communication skills.

You may wanna grab a pen or maybe have your laptop handy, something where you can take notes because we’re gonna get into techniques and some specific phrases that you can use in different real estate situations.

Let’s get started by making sure we’re all on the same page. The first thing I asked Jesse was to explain what NLP is and what role it plays in real estate.

(BEGIN CONVERSATION)

Jesse: So, NLP is learning the language of the brain, right? And I had a friend who described it that way to me recently and I just love that description. It’s the language of the brain. So, NLP is a technique, neuro-linguistic programming, that came from therapy, right, people who are doing psychotherapy and we’ve borrowed pieces of it to use in a sales context that real estate agents and other salespeople have been using for years. And it really helps people get out of their own way either oftentimes for yourself, the things you wanna do, or with your clients and language patterns and the ways you can connect to really communicate more effectively and it gives you, kind of, some control over the process.

Matt: Is it a matter of the words that you say or is it how you say it?

Jesse: That’s a really good question. It is far beyond the words you say and a lot more into how you say it. They’ve done studies that say about 80% of all communication is non-verbal, right? So, people who are just listening to this podcast are missing some of the wonder of my hands flying around in circles, but [inaudible 00:05:23]. But this is part of what to know as a salesperson intuitively is the way you communicate. So, not only the words, but the rate of speech, the tone of voice, the body language. There’s so many parts of communication that’s nonverbal that all ties into NLP.

Matt: Is this something that I, as a general consumer, a shopper, or somebody who has, you know, purchased cars in the past, encountered salespeople outside of real estate, is this something that I’ve probably come across before, but maybe didn’t know that there was a term for it?

Jesse: Absolutely. I’m sure you’ve had salespeople who were “doing it to you,” but the idea is you’re not doing it to manipulate someone, right? That’s the whole idea of sales. It’s about persuasion, not manipulation. If your goals and their goals are in line and it’s persuasion, right, they’re helping you achieve your goals, but yes, you probably have encountered people doing this. And there are so many techniques that have come out of NLP that are taught by sales trainers that aren’t even labeled as NLP, but that’s where a lot of this stuff comes from, from straight-up brain psychology and how to basically tap into that part of the brain.

Matt: If I’ve been to the car dealer…and they have a bad reputation, so I don’t mean to keep using that as an example. But I’ve been to the car dealer and they come out and they say, “How can we get you in this car today? What’s it gonna take to get you in this car today?” Is that the sort of thing, or is that just being a pushy salesperson?

Jesse: It’s just being a pushy salesperson. However, you can technically say the way you are saying the word today could fall into this world of NLP because the word today is one of those trigger words that attaches to a certain portion, but the problem is when it’s done really badly out of rapport, none of this stuff works. It just feels the energy is wrong. It just feels bad. And so, you’re probably more aware of it in the context of a car dealer, however, when it’s done well, if someone were to drop in the word today into a conversation, it would trigger that part of your brain and not trigger such red alerts going off in your head. Does that make sense, Matt?

Matt: Yeah, yeah. That does. I think you make the point there that rapport is the important part, and hopefully, you as an agent have that rapport with the clients that you’re working with and can help them as they’re going through the buying process, going through the selling process. You already have that established. So, what you’re doing doesn’t sound like pushy salesperson. It sounds like you’re helping them reach their goals.

Jesse: You have to have rapport or else don’t even bother trying any of this. Like, that rapport is the foundation of NLP and any sales technique for that matter, but that’s part of what you learn when studying NLP is how to create that rapport quickly, whether it’s just, you know, face to face, whether it’s over digital conversations, but through, you know, effective listening techniques and through specific ways you can create rapport, that is at the heart of everything we’ll go over today for NLP.

Matt: Gotcha. Does NLP come into play through all parts of the real estate process, like beginning all the way back at lead generation, then lead conversion, all the way through negotiation and closing or is it something you just do more frequently maybe at the beginning?

Jesse: I mean, once…if it’s something that people get really deep into doing practice because it has to do with a lot of language patterns and ways you communicate, it’s gonna come up over and over again throughout the process because it’s a way that you learn to communicate. So, whether it’s in written word, you know, removing pressure to allow people to create rapport. There’s phrases you are gonna say, even when it comes to the end of the transaction, generating referrals, I think NLP plays into all of this. I mean, I learned it early on in my career and I think I apply it everywhere without really thinking about it much, without thinking, “Okay, I’m gonna do some NLP now. Okay. I’m gonna do some of this now,” versus early on, you know what I was learning it, I did just really awkward, clunky things that were pretty…looking back to make me laugh at myself, to try to learn it, but it’s like learning a new language in a way.

Matt: Well, when you started out learning this, what was the hardest part about learning NLP?

Jesse: Not sounding like a dork. [laughs] Which I still sound like a dork all the time, but it’s like, no, but when you’re really aware of something…It was like when you said a few minutes ago you were walking into a car dealership and someone says to you, you know, “Hey, what can we do to get you in the car today?” That pause before the word today, it’s so clearly obvious as salespeople, you and I talking, we can hear it and you talk about it. The average consumer probably wouldn’t pick up on it, but you’re so self-aware that it’s practicing it over and over that you are no longer self-aware because if you’re thinking about your own words, you’re no longer in the moment and actually paying attention and present to your client. And that really kills the magic of it.

Matt: Jesse just made a key point right there. You have to work on this. Practice it over and over until it’s just a natural way that you talk to your clients. Jesse says NLP is something that you will mainly use when you’re speaking with a client, but it could also be used in your written communication like emails, texts, maybe even in the headlines of your blog posts.

NLP has been around for decades. If you go to Amazon and just search the letters NLP, you’ll find more books than any one person can read. And some of them seem, like, really thick. There’s one that promises to teach 350 NLP techniques.

Now, we don’t have time on “The Walkthrough” to cover 350 techniques, but I did ask Jesse to share a handful with us, some of the NLP techniques that he uses most often as a real estate agent. So, let’s get back to the conversation. Jesse is talking about one of those techniques called active listening.

Jesse: There a few different names for active listening, authentic listening, effective listening. They all have little different nuances. For the sake of this discussion, let’s just all say that if you don’t develop your skills as a listener, it’s very difficult to do anything else in the sales process. And most salespeople will say, “I’m a really good listener. I’m good at it.” When it comes down to it, some of them might be, and a lot of people still have some work to do. And it’s something that after 16 years in real estate, I’m still working on my listening skills on a daily basis. I’m always going back to this, it’s something that is the basic building blocks that I go back to time and time again.

And I was taught six elements for active listening that come from NLP. These six elements, I go back to over and over because you forget over time, you deviate. They’re not natural for the way most of us listen. So, the first one is honesty. Very straightforward, super easy. If you’re gonna be in a listening state, you’re coming from a, really, place of honesty and integrity. That one doesn’t need much explanation, right?

Matt: Right.

Jesse: Okay. Next one. Second one is remaining neutral. So, listening in a way where you are not listening as the judge, you are truly neutral. And the way this comes up in a real estate context are…I love to give the example of someone who’s, for example, getting divorced. It’s a really polarizing thing when a client tells you, “Yeah, I’m making a move because I’m looking at getting divorced.” The natural response when someone tells you they’re gonna get divorced would be…what would your response be? Someone says, “I’m moving because I think I’m getting divorced,” you would say what?

Matt: Oh, that’s so sad.

Jesse: That’s so sad. And you can take it either way or another. It just depends on your own personal associations with it. But immediately when say “that’s so sad,” you’ve left the world of neutrality and you’re gonna see how that could shut down where they’re going. What if this particular person was thrilled about getting divorced?

Matt: Right. No, you’re right. You don’t think about it that way, but you’re right.

Jesse: And I’m not saying it’s a good thing or a bad thing. I’m saying we have no idea in the world because for some people, divorce is the best thing that happened to them. They were truly unhappy. This is about opening them up to the next stage. For some people, it’s devastating and it’s terrible. And you don’t know. So, this is part of this effective listening, remaining neutral is a really difficult thing for some people because our natural response is to step out of that neutrality immediately, but you’ll never find out the details. If you say, “I’m so sorry you’re getting divorced,” and they actually think it’s fantastic, they ain’t never gonna tell you that now.

Matt: Right. And I say that…I would say, “That’s so sad,” because I feel like that’s a way for me to make a connection with the other person, right, but what I might be doing is making the wrong kind of connection.

Jesse: Correct. And I’m not saying to never share your opinion. I’m not saying to never share about yourself. And you’ll see one more here, the last one, that’ll tie into this when we get to the last of the six steps.

The third one is having no agenda. This is a really interesting one for salespeople because typically when we’re on a phone call with a new lead or sitting face to face, we do have an agenda, we wanna set an appointment, we wanna get hired. But if you’re truly listening to them, you gotta park the agenda to the side for a minute and this is a good reminder because you’re not gonna forget where you’re going in the conversation. I promise you. If you’re listening to this as an agent, you will not forget to book an appointment, but it’s really easy to get focused on, “Okay, book an appointment, book an appointment,” and not actually listen to the client, which is where the magic happens is in that building rapport. That make sense?

Matt: That makes total sense. Yeah.

Jesse: Okay. Next one is to stay in context. This is the secret to being conversational and something you are really, really good at because I’ve listened to other podcasts episodes and you’re a great interviewer. But that’s what makes an interviewer versus an interrogator. If you rapid-fire questions at someone and you’re bouncing around from subject to subject, it comes off like an interrogation. If you listen to what they say and you ask your next question based in context, that’s what makes someone a good interviewer is also what makes people a good buyer’s agent because they’re staying in context and it helps get all those details from the client. Make sense?

Matt: Yeah. That does make sense and I’d never thought the way that I might conduct an interview might help in the way you or some other agent conducts an interview or a conversation with a potential client, but it is so important to pay attention to what the person is saying and not start thinking about the next thing you wanna ask.

Jesse: It’s so important. And that’s why when I’m trying to teach salespeople how to do this, I tell them to go listen to their favorite interviewers, right? Whether it be a podcast, whether it be a TV show, whatever, go listen to people that you think do a good job of interviewing and see how they weave the conversation, right? In a 5 to 10-minute conversation, you can learn an awful lot about someone just asking questions based in context. And these are all part of the basic building blocks of NLP.

So, the two more, we’ve got ask questions as opposed to making comments. Making comments stops the flow, asking questions continues it going. Makes sense, right, a period versus a question mark.

And this is the last one that I always put a little star by. If someone’s taking notes, write this down. This is the big one for most real estate agents, for most human beings: Listen, don’t relate. Listen, don’t relate. So, when you said earlier that divorce example, “Oh, that’s so sad,” you said that was your way of, kind of, building a connection. Picture the same thing, if you’re walking through a house with a client and you see on the wall…like, I think I did this the first time I talked to you. People can’t see your wall right now, but I’m gonna describe to them what I’m seeing, right, because we’re on Zoom. I can see you. You’ve got on your wall behind you an amazing picture of the band U2.

Matt: Right.

Jesse: And you and I talked about this offline. I happen to also like U2, but when I first started talking to you, I didn’t tell you that I liked U2. I didn’t make any comments about myself because my whole idea was I wanted to learn about you. And so, I didn’t make any comments. I didn’t relate my own actions. I’m asking about you. It’s the shared energy that I’m excited about something that you’re excited about. That’s what builds connection. Not the fact that we both like the same band.

Matt: That’s such a thing that I notice when I’m involved in my own conversations or I’m listening in other conversations. At some point, you know, person A will ask the question, person B will start to answer it, and then person A is like, “Oh, yes. I’m the same way too,” and they make it all about themselves, right? That’s what you’re saying. Like, avoid that.

Jesse: Avoid it. And I’m not saying you can’t ever, ever, ever tell them that yourself. You can. They just don’t care. I’m serious. Like, when you go to sit down, it’s like…they will care at some point because you’ll become friends throughout the transaction. They might care, but really at first, they really don’t care about your life. They’re all wrapped up in their own head. And so, if you focus on listening to them, they could literally know nothing about you. You just keep asking them questions and they’re gonna think you’re the most professional real estate agent on the planet. That’s really part of the secret is you just want to keep your clients talking and learn about them. That’s the basic building block to building rapport.

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Matt: Okay. Jesse just went six levels deep on the idea of active listening. Another foundational element of NLP is building rapport. As we get back to the conversation, Jesse is explaining that this is about mirroring and matching, about behaving the way that the other person behaves.

Jesse: The idea that mirroring and matching everything is not unique to NLP. However, it’s part of those building blocks where you’re gonna match someone’s rate of speech. You’re gonna match their tone of voice. You’re gonna match their inflection, their choice of words, their diction. There’s so many things you can match. And I could spend time breaking down each one of those, but just at a high level, that’s the things you wanna do. So, when I talked to you, Matt, I’m gonna have a conversation in a different way than I would talking to someone who speaks really quietly and slowly and like this, or somebody talks super fast like this, I’m gonna start talking this way too. I can talk really fast all the time because that’s how we talk, right? That’s the basic idea behind a lot of rapport.

Matt: But how do you do that without…I mean, I understand the idea of mirroring body language, mirroring tone of voice or whatever, but how do you do that without making it look like you’re, like, mocking the other person or, you know, copycat, that kinda thing?

Jesse: Because they won’t even notice that you’re copycatting them. You only notice when you’re out of rapport. You don’t notice when you’re in rapport. It just works, right? I sat in a listing appointment today and I’m naturally a fairly quick talker and I was watching this gentleman’s face as I was talking and I was seeing, and it was hard because we had masks on and I’m sitting there with him and I’m like, something’s not feeling right. And I realized I was talking too fast. I was excited and I started listening and he was talking a lot more slowly than I was. And as I slowed down and I started to breathe when he breathed, I was getting our breath in sync, that’s another one of NLP, right? You’re gonna breathe and get in sync with the other person. I watched his body visibly relaxed. His shoulders came down. I watched him start to come there just by changing my rate I was speaking. I don’t think he thought I was making fun of him or copying. I think it was helping to actually put him at ease.

Matt: That’s fascinating. So, just trying to be deliberate about matching your body language, your tone of voice, your speed to what the other person is doing.

Jesse: A hundred percent. And practice it because if you are self-conscious about doing it, that’s probably when it does come off as weird, awkward, and creepy. You got to do it without feeling self-conscious. I think that’s the key.

Matt: All right. That makes sense. Let’s move on to the next one. For listeners who don’t know, Jesse and I have a list of things that we’re gonna pick from. Why don’t we cover future pacing? This sounds very interesting to me.

Jesse: Future pacing. Yes. Future pacing is where you tell someone what is going to happen before it actually happens. So, let’s take, for example…it helps them not only feel more comfortable, but it also sets up a scenario of what they can expect and also how they’re gonna navigate that. It helps you avoid future objections before they even come up, right? So, let’s take, for example, one of the HomeLight programs, which I love. I’m in love with the HomeLight Trade-In program. Okay. I’m sure guests have talked about that on the show. This is not like an advertisement. I think it’s a really cool program. And so, I know though, because it’s a little different than what most sellers are used to, with the HomeLight Trade-In program, I’m gonna set up this future pace scenario, right?

If they’re gonna go forward, and they’re gonna either do the program or they’re gonna have a conversation about it, I’m gonna let them know, “Hey, so, you know, once we go forward and once we, you know, get started in the HomeLight Trade-In program, you may wake up tomorrow and start thinking like, “Is this really the best fit for me? That’s totally normal. Most of my clients have a thought like that. I just wanted to remind you, here’s the reasons why we’re doing it because you want X, Y, and Z, right?” Whatever it was for them. Whatever their values were. And I’m gonna tell them in advance. So, before they even ever have that thought.

Same thing goes with writing an offer for a client, right? Client’s gonna write an offer, especially in this market right now, super low inventory, super low inventory. People are writing offers well above list price in most markets in the country. Okay. When you have a buyer who writes an offer well above list, even if they know it’s competitive, do you think the next day they often wake up or sometimes an hour later and think, “Did I make a bad decision?”

Matt: What did I just do?

Jesse: “What did I just do? This is scary.” And if you don’t future pace it, you’re setting up a scenario where you could still talk them off the ledge because they’ll talk to it, but it’s so much more powerful if you future pace it and you tell them what’s gonna happen, right? “Hey, I’m gonna send the offer now. Just so you know, you may wake up tomorrow morning, even a couple hours from now and you may think, ‘Oh, my goodness. What have I done?’ Okay? Totally normal when you write an offer well above list price. The reason we’re writing above list price, remember, is because you lost the last six offers because we kept coming in under list, you kept getting outbid. And that feeling of like, ‘Uh, I really just don’t wanna be outbid anymore,’ it was starting to get really, kinda, frustrating and a bit sad. That’s why we wrote the offer so high over list price. So, I just wanna remind you and you can call me, I’ll remind you again, but when you have that feeling, that’s why we’re writing this offer for this price.”

Matt: So far, we’ve talked about three aspects, three ways that you can use NLP to improve your communication with clients. We have a couple more to share before we wrap things up.

You heard Jesse say earlier that NLP is not just about what you say, but it’s also about how you say things. This next technique is a great example of that. It’s all about the tone and inflection of your voice. When you make a statement, your voice usually goes down at the end. You might say something like, “I loved that movie.” You hear how my voice dropped at the end. But when you ask a question, your voice usually goes up at the end. You might say, “Did I love that movie?” That’s how we normally talk. But this next NLP technique flips that upside down.

Jesse: That’s your baseline. You go down for statements, up for questions. You can start to say things that are questions with the inflection or the ending of a statement. So, when you’re gonna ask someone a question, what’s one of the most common questions Realtors ask on the phone? Like, give me a question a Realtor would ask someone when trying to book an appointment.

Matt: When you’re trying to book appointment, you would say, “Are you free on Thursday at 2:00 p.m.?”

Jesse: Right. “Are you free on Thursday at 2:00 p.m.?” And most people if you ask the question would say, “Are you free Thursday at 2:00 p.m.?” [voice goes up] They kinda toss it out there. And it has that feeling of like, free on Thursday, 2:00 p.m., yeah,” whereas if you say, “Are you free Thursday, 2:00 p.m.? Are you free Thursday, 2:00 p.m.?” [voice goes down] Now I’m going down at the end. I’m saying it like a statement, which has a lot more power and authority behind what I’m saying, and the way to learn this is to take your fist and put it up by your head, right? No one can see you right now. It’s a podcast. Don’t worry. Take your fist, put it up by your head, and as you say that whatever question you wanna say, right, I like to use something called an alternative choice question where you give two answers that are equally accessible, right? Do you wanna talk at 2:00 or 3:00? You’re gonna take your fist that’s up by your head and you’re gonna lower it down towards your waist as you say your question. Do you wanna meet at 2:00 or 3:00? Are evenings or weekends better for you?

Matt: That’s fascinating to me. The mental calisthenics that are going on here when you don’t go up at the end with the question, it sounds like it’s a done deal.

Jesse: Once you do it, it becomes ingrained in you and it’s just such a really easy way to throw out your questions like statements.

Matt: Let’s go on to storytelling techniques.

Jesse: Here, I use the phrase “has there ever been a time?” So, let’s say you’re sitting with someone and they are looking to do something totally illogical, crazy. Like, let’s say they wanna list with an agent that’s gonna charge almost nothing, right? And all of us as agents, that’s one of our least favorite things, right? You’re handling that commission objection which comes up over and over and more often, or it’s gonna happen. So, we wanna leverage their own past experience. When it’s talking about storytelling, you’re almost having them tell their own story. You’re gonna leverage their own experience to help them avoid making the same mistake twice because no one likes to make the same mistake.

And again, all these things, I’m not saying these are magic bullets, you use them when you list every house, but knowing where to use them and what makes it a lot of fun. So, if someone says they’re gonna list with this kinda agent, I’m gonna say, “Totally respect that. First of all, I want you to work with whoever you feel comfortable with. Let me ask you that. Has there ever been a time when you purchased something solely based on price and it didn’t work out the way you were hoping?”

Matt: Everyone will answer yes to that question.

Jesse: Correct. And that’s part of the key is you have to ask this question. “Has there ever been a time when” — something so generic that they can see themselves in it and they can relate? Don’t say, “Has there ever been a time when you bought a really crappy piece of junk from some foreign country over eBay and it showed up and it broke within minutes of arriving at your house?” Don’t say that, right, because that’s too hard to relate to, but if you say, “Has there been a time when you bought some just based on price, it didn’t work out the way you’re hoping?” And when they say, “Yeah,” then go deeper and ask them, “What was it? Tell me about it.” Make sure they get really present to that memory or else this won’t work. They have to really feel that pain of what happened when they made the mistake the first time. From there on you’re gonna handle the objection the way you would normally illustrate your own value, remove the threat, illustrate value, remove threat. It’s just the way to frame up the context of that discussion.

Matt: What you’re doing is you’re showing them, “Hey, you’ve made a decision like this in the past, totally unrelated to real estate. It didn’t work out then for you. Don’t make the same mistake this time.”

Jesse: Correct. And that is straight-up an NLP technique, one of these 367 in those really thick books. I don’t know what technique number that is, but that’s…but you have to practice these things so they get comfortable. If you feel really awkward, it’s not gonna go well. So, practice this. Use it, joke around with it. You have to have fun with these things. You absolutely have to have fun with them.

Matt: Jesse, this has been fantastic. I think when I think about successful real estate agents, I think of, right, you need good sales skills, you need good marketing skills, you have to be a good negotiator, but I think communication skills might be at about the top of the list. And that’s what this is really about, how you communicate with your leads and with your clients.

Jesse: A hundred percent, communication. And National Association of Realtors, the number one complaint that people have about their agents over and over is communication. And typically, I always read that as not communicating enough or not the right stuff, but it’s the way you communicate. It’s the way you make people feel in that communication. That’s the reason why they’re either gonna do business with you or not. It’s the reason why they’re gonna refer clients to you or not. And all these things we talked about, it allows you to build that sense of comfort with your client and allows you to take that relationship that much deeper. It absolutely is all about communication.

(Speaker: Matt McGee, Host)

As we were saying goodbye, Jesse pointed out that it’s possible to take NLP a bit too far. He asked me to emphasize to you that this is not about manipulation. It’s about communicating better so that you can serve your clients’ interests, not yours. This can be, like, really powerful stuff and with great power — I mean, you’ve heard the phrase before — comes great responsibility. Thank you, Peter Parker.

Hey, if you wanna connect with Jesse, he said, there’s a couple of things to do. Look him up by name on Facebook or Instagram. It’s Jesse Zagorsky. You can also catch him every weekday at 8:00 a.m. Pacific Time for his live podcast. It streams on Zoom. Just go to agentpowerhuddle.com. I’ll have that and some more links in today’s show notes.

Let’s do our takeaways segment. I’m always fascinated by things that involve psychology and the brain. Here’s what stood out to me from today’s conversation.

Takeaway number one. Jesse and I talked about five NLP techniques. You heard him explain active listening. He went deep into the six steps of that. Things like staying neutral, staying in context, keeping your clients talking about themselves.

Rapport building. Another foundational piece of NLP. That’s using things like mirroring and matching.

We talked about future pacing. That’s where you tell the client what’s gonna happen in advance. It puts them at ease. It helps you handle objections before they happen.

We talked about tone of voice and inflection. That was the part about how our voice goes up or down. So, you ask your questions like statements. Do you wanna meet at 2:00 p.m. or 3:00 p.m.?

And we also talked about storytelling techniques. Jesse mentioned the phrase, “Has there ever been a time…?” where you use their own experiences as an objection handler. So, that’s all takeaway number one.

Takeaway number two, when it’s done badly, when it’s done out of rapport, NLP does not work. Don’t even bother trying NLP, Jesse said, if you don’t already have a good rapport with your client.

Takeaway number three. The hardest part about this is not being self-aware. You don’t wanna approach it as, “I’m gonna go do some NLP now.” Now instead, you have to practice this over and over so that it comes naturally at any stage of the transaction. It’s all about good communication. And remember, you don’t wanna sound like the adults in Charlie Brown.

Okay. If you have questions or feedback for myself or Jesse, you can leave a voicemail or send a text. The number is 415-322-3328. You can send an email to walkthrough [at] homelight.com, or find me in our Facebook listener community. You just go to Facebook, do a search for HomeLight Walkthrough and the group should come right up. Love to see you join us in there.

That’s all for this week. Thanks so much to Jesse Zagorsky for joining me. Thank you for listening. If you like what you hear, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. That would mean a lot to me. Be sure to hit that subscribe button too so that you get all of our future shows automatically.

My name is Matt McGee. You’ve been listening to “The Walkthrough.” At HomeLight, we believe in real estate agents. We’re on a journey to find out how great agents grow their business, stand out from the crowd, and become irreplaceable.

Go out and safely sell some homes. I’ll talk to you again next week, everyone. Bye-bye.

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