A seller fixed on one number is not being difficult about the number, they have simply never been shown that the number is only part of what they walk away with. Rather than arguing the price down, she puts a slightly lower offer with a much faster close beside it and asks a question that makes the seller do the arithmetic out loud.
The episode is about spotting client red flags early, and the second one is the client who chooses price over everything. Her example of where the number comes from is the neighbor's story: the house down the street sold for $420, except "they sold it for $420, but they gave $30,000 in seller concession, so it wasn't really $420." That is the figure your seller is now anchored to.
So she does not tell them they are wrong. She asks: "how would you feel if someone came in with 419 and they could close in 2 weeks?"
Then she gives the reason inside the same breath, because the arithmetic is the whole point — "you're now saving 2 and 1/2 months mortgage, 2 and 1/2 months utility, 2 and 1/2 months of uncertainty and risk." One thousand dollars against ten weeks of carrying costs.
She names the technique plainly: "painting the picture and then asking a question to allow them to get to the place that you want them to be without telling them that they're wrong."
Her partner adds the pair of follow-ups that get underneath the number, asked back and forth until it runs out: "what is important about selling at 420" and then "the follow-up question is what does that do for you".
And the frame that keeps you on their side of the table: "the market if anything should be the enemy, not you, not the bearer of data." With a warning attached — show the data and "you will lose the listing to other agents that will fold." Some of those come back when the listing expires.
“how would you feel if someone came in with 419 and they could close in 2 weeks?”
Arguing price is a losing format because it makes you the obstacle. The seller has one number, you have a different number, and now there are two opinions in the room and only one of them is being paid. Nothing about that conversation makes them feel understood.
A comparison question does something else. It keeps their number intact and adds a variable they had not priced — time, certainty, a buyer who does not need three months — and lets them decide whether their own number is worth ten weeks of payments. You are not asking them to come down. You are asking what they would trade, and their answer tells you whether the price is a belief or a requirement.