You have been taught to answer "another agent will do it for less" with your value, your marketing plan, and your track record. BAM's argument is that the conversation was lost half a second earlier, in your face, and the repair is a question that never mentions your number at all.
BAM ran a piece on seven things agents do in conversations that quietly tell a client not to hire them. The author says he role-plays with more than 2,400 agents every week, inside his training group and on his own team, and can spot these in the first 60 seconds of a call.
Mistake number three is the one worth stealing. Money comes up. They say another agent will do it for less, or that your fee feels expensive. "And your body reacts before your brain does. Your eyes shift. You lean back. Your jaw tightens." It lasts half a second, he writes, but they see it — and if you are uncomfortable with your own pricing, they wonder why they should be comfortable paying it.
You cannot suppress a flinch, so he replaces it. Lean in instead of back, and ask instead of defend. The reply is ten words: "Tell me about that. What did their full plan include?"
Now the seller is the one describing the cheaper agent's plan out loud, item by item, while you say nothing. He says that most of the time, they talk themselves out of the comparison.
“Tell me about that. What did their full plan include?”
Defending your fee makes your fee the thing that needs defending. You bring out the marketing deck, the sold list, the days-on-market number, and every sentence hands them something new to push against. Meanwhile the flinch already told them you were nervous about it.
One question flips who is carrying the burden of proof. The seller has to say what the other plan actually includes, and the gaps show up in their own voice, not yours. Two sentences, no numbers, and then you stop talking — the silence is doing the same work the question is.