Why most open house conversations don’t convert — and how top agents fix that

A new agent had a conversation with a married couple at an open house, where several people didn’t even acknowledge him when he introduced himself. The agent is relieved but clueless, “Finally, someone who wasn’t so defensive and actually talked to me.”

The conversation didn’t include a timeline, and the agent thought their openness to talking to him and their action of going to an open house was a signal of their intention, but that married couple likes to hit a few open houses on the way home from the farmer’s market on Saturday, and they love their current house with no plans to move.

In coaching newly licensed teammates, I’d always feel like I was raining on their parade when we would decode the interaction at an open house, and the hope they had of helping the married couple wasn’t a credible, immediate opportunity. Some of these agents would go from coaster to closer, and it was often the ones who found false hope experiences particularly frustrating, so they were motivated to improve.

In dating, it’s called the friend zone. 

Whether in real estate or dating, by definition, the friend zone is a position where it’s more likely that you will languish there than score.

Study the defence

Our society has been trained by the guy in the centre of the mall slinging off-brand skin products to defend against average attempts. Every day, your ideal client profile is inundated with sales calls and even buyers don’t want to be sold.

At the base level, even compliance requires that we determine if someone showing interest in real estate is financially prepared or if they are in a defined business relationship with another agent, but they don’t know that. When we are careless in our questioning, we come across as having an alternative agenda (commission breath), so it really does feel like a vicious cycle with real money on the line.

The perspective of experience

My teammates, going from potential talent to emerging talent, saw the biggest progression boost when they went from looking at things, and top agents are looking for things. They were still curious, but they developed a feel for determining a pre-flight checklist and collecting it in really efficient ways.

As they levelled up from emerging talent to proven talent, we saw it all come together, and they could qualify quickly, deftly, and backwards by comparison to the average. Now they were setting up the takeoff with the landing in sight by eliminating common issues that prevent success. We also saw them drop from showing 25 to 30 houses in each buying experience to averages close to 10 houses per experience. While the clients approached the market like it was a game of selection, our teammate was moving through a game of elimination until only the best option remained.

You can’t manage what you don’t measure — that’s the biggest key. Over the past decade, we’ve seen conversion trendlines sizzle through skills like qualification, leading to teammates having experiences like eight deals in seven days, to some having upwards of 50 transactions per year.

Common gaps that disqualify agents

Appearance

First impressions are the biggest lost potential in potential talent. Mark Cuban wore suits until he didn’t have to care about anyone’s first impression because it became, “Holy cow, that’s Mark Cuban!” If your reputation doesn’t enter the room before you do, then realize how you dress closes conversations. 

The interaction begins before the talking starts. We’re told not to judge a book by its cover, but that’s exactly where you’ll find its price.

Allignment

Just because someone is in your open house does not make them a prospective buyer for that house. If you address them like they are the buyer of that house, you will disassociate yourself from them because you aren’t aligned with their desired outcome. Making statements before questions is a mistake.

Atmosphere

If you haven’t thought about what it feels like to be with you, it’s tough to attract people. Relationships begin when someone gets to know you, learns to like you, and then is open to trusting you. If you can’t land the “like” part, it’s off to the friend zone. Hearing teammates say things like, “My goal is how they feel about me at the end of our time together,” is when we knew that they were about to lift off.

The skills behind qualifying opportunities

Cold read

An understanding of body language is a great asset for those first-time in-person interactions. You can see relationships with how close or far people stand from each other. Decision makers can be revealed by the posture of their spouse, and how tense someone is can be picked up in blink rate before you catch it in how fast they talk. The advantage is that you are much more likely to be “on tone” in your approach. 

Conversation as a martial art

We have similar conversations repeatedly with similar goals. We want to know more about the people we meet and what they are trying to accomplish while gauging their credibility and ability to take action. Almost everything good comes from questions, but mindful inquiries build relationships, and poorly formed direct questions are seen as invasive.

Skilled agents take the edge off questions by being purposely indirect. “This house has five bedrooms, is that enough for everyone?” or “From here, what’s the commute to work like?” so they end up talking about the people through the house.

They also learn to be less direct by taking smaller steps, which is great when asking questions feels risky, like inquiring if they are working with another agent or about their financing situation.

“Have you seen many houses?” followed up by “How have you been viewing those houses?” or, for a pre-approval, “Have you established your budget yet?” “Did someone help you calculate what you’d like to spend, or did you set it up on your own?”
Alternatively, saying mindless things like “So, how much are you looking to spend?” and “Are you working with anybody now?” could be considered effective questions, but they are more effective at a level where there might be three or four digits in the price of the transaction.

Close or coast

Qualifying is the ability to gain intelligence, so you are more likely to present reasonable options to someone who can take action with you in real estate, so it has to be coupled with a close. Once you help the people you meet identify where they are relative to where they want to be, you want to have a menu of targets to close: 

At an open house, the qualification/close combos look like:

1. Referral – You learn that someone set their budget on a website they can’t remember, so you help them by referring to great mortgage lender options.
2. Offer – A young family shares that this is the only house they could find close to grandma’s house, and it has just enough bedrooms, so you help them become informed to take action on this property
3. Buying consultation – First-time buyers who just got pre-approved talk about “just starting out” so you help them by setting up a meeting at your office to show them the frequency of opportunity for the type of properties they like and talk them through the process.
4. Selling consultation – A neighbour stops by and tells you about how they have bathrooms they clean more often than they use, so you help them by coming by after the open house to walk through for an evaluation.
5. Follow up – A guy from across the street stops in and says he’d like to be in the market, but he’s renting with a lease for six more months; you help him by following up and giving him an update on how much the property sells for.

Plan the work then work the plan

Influence looks like magic to the untrained eye, which is why people are naturally defensive. They sense when someone is trying to move them without understanding how or why. The difference between manipulation and mastery isn’t intent — it’s preparation. 

Great magicians will tell you that when an act feels effortless, it’s because of the practice behind the scenes; when it doesn’t, the audience sees the tricks instead of the magic. We applied that same principle to conversation. 

By training our teammates to plan, practice and refine how they qualify and close, and by learning from thinkers like Robert Cialdini, Chris Voss, and Chase Hughes, their interactions stopped feeling like sales and started feeling natural. To the outside world, it looked like magic. In reality, it was disciplined skill at work.