I walked into a listing appointment completely blindsided. Never again.

I’m going to tell you about the listing appointment that changed how I prepare forever.

I had done everything right. I called ahead. I spoke with the wife — let’s call her Bethany. She was warm, motivated, ready to move. She told me they were downsizing because the kids were grown and the house felt too big. She wanted to be closer to her grandkids. She was excited.

I built my entire presentation around that story. Wouldn’t you? It’s a compelling reason to move.

I walked in, sat down at the kitchen table, and within the first three and a half minutes I realized something was very wrong.

Her husband — let’s call him Brad — had a completely different set of motivations. He hadn’t wanted to move in the first place. He wasn’t ready. He was still attached to the house. He felt like the decision was being made for him. And the moment I started talking about fresh starts and new chapters, I lost him completely.

I spent the next 20 minutes trying to recover. Re-orienting my whole presentation on the fly. Reading the room. Adjusting my language. Trying to find the thing that would make him feel heard. Chris Voss-ing on the fly.

I got the listing. But it was harder than it needed to be.

I would have opened completely differently. I would have addressed his concerns before they became objections. I would have been in rapport with both of them from the first handshake.

It turns out my friend and coaching client Dawn Levy was already doing something about this exact dilemma.

Here’s the idea

Before you ever walk into a listing appointment, you send a short survey to everyone who will be in the room. Not just the person you spoke to on the phone. Everyone.

You ask them about their motivation for selling. Their timeline. Their biggest concern about the process. What they need from their agent. What success looks like to them. What’s most important — price, speed, or certainty.

Then you take their answers and feed them into Claude. And Claude builds you a complete pre-listing brief: a summary of each person’s motivations, where they align, where they might conflict, and how to open your presentation in a way that puts everyone in the room at ease before you’ve even pulled out your CMA.

Questions I get about this one

Won’t a survey feel like homework before we’ve even met? Not if it’s short and it’s warm. Four or five questions on a phone takes two minutes, and sellers read it as an agent who cares what they think — which is exactly the first impression you want.

What if only one of them fills it out? That’s still a signal. The person who didn’t respond is often the person who is least sold on moving. Open the appointment by asking them first.