Did you know that half the listings in America aren’t selling? Yes—half.

That takes us back to the old-school days. When I first started in real estate with Century 21, I proudly wore the gold coat. I had to buy it myself, so it was a big accomplishment. Back then, I attended a class called the Two-to-One Class. The theory was simple: for every two listings you took, only one would sell. A 50% sales rate.

Now, imagine meeting with a seller and saying:

“Good news—I’ll do my best to get your home sold. Bad news—I’m only successful about half the time.”

How do you think they’d respond? Probably not too excited. I realized quickly I didn’t want a 50% failure rate—I wanted 100% success. That meant changing the conversation.

Here’s the script I used:

“Mr. Seller, you may not realize this, but in today’s market only about 50% of listings are selling. That’s unacceptable to me. I want to sell 100% of the listings I take. But that requires us to have a different kind of conversation. I ca...