When an expired seller says they are going back to the same agent, the instinct is to explain why that agent failed, which is an argument you cannot win from outside the relationship. This one asks a single question about what that agent actually showed them, and then hands the seller the power to end the call.
The role play is an expired seller who says he is re-listing with his previous agent. There is no pitch anywhere in the response.
The first move is one question, asked twice for honesty. Outside of begging you to lower your price, what did they say they were going to do differently? Then he answers it himself: "They didn't show you anything, did they?" and "Tell me I'm wrong."
The seller: "No, I can't argue."
Then the close, built from the ground up to be refusable. "I'm not asking you to hire me. I'm not asking you to make a decision." Just: what is the worst-case scenario of getting a second opinion, to make sure another agent is not doing something yours is not that would produce a completely different result. And then the line that ends it: "Tell me that's a horrible idea, I will hang up and leave you alone forever."
The seller: "I can't say no to that."
“Tell me that's a horrible idea, I will hang up and leave you alone forever.”
You lose this call by arguing about the other agent, because the seller hears an attack on their own judgment for hiring them in the first place. Nobody defends a decision they were only half sure about until somebody attacks it.
The offer to hang up is what makes everything before it safe to say. You are not asking for a listing, an appointment or a decision, and the only thing on the table is for them to tell you no. Say it in these words or not at all, because the second it becomes can I come by on Thursday, it is a pitch again and the door closes.