Alexis Bolin directly addresses camera: How many times have sellers ask you to charge less for the services that you provide? Do you stumble through an answer? I'm Alexis Bolon. I'm a broker associate with Keller Williams Realty Gulf Coast in Pensacola. Let's take five minutes to talk about preparing scripts and dialogs to answer any objections your buyers and sellers may have.

Nearly every one of us have been in a conversation with someone where hours later you thought, oh, no, I should have said it's like replaying a movie in your head and changing the dialog to what you should have said at the moment when dealing with objections to your commission.

The key to minimizing them is to prepare your response ahead of time. Here's how I answer it. Well, Mr. Mrs. Sellar, I don't work that way. I don't charge a commission. I charge a professional fee, much like the accountants charge for their services.

But I want you to know that my company won't send you a bill and you won't be charged a thing until we close the House. I'm taking all the risk to make sure that your house gets the marketing it deserves.

And I'm willing to spend my money to advertise your home. Hire a stager, pay a professional photographer. I'll make fliers, get the for sale sign in the yard, put the property in multiple listing. Ar closing, when we close with the price and terms you're happy with, then and only then have I done my job and earn my professional fee. Now, most of the time the seller will say, OK, and move on. But sometimes they come up with the reason why you should consider cutting your fee. That's when I start my next conversation like this. Imagine you go to work tomorrow and your employer says you've done a great job.

We really like the work you've done and you're an asset to the company. But we'd like you to work for less money. Do more work. Take less money. How would you feel about that? No. Sellers will say they don't feel good about that.

Then I reaffirm with them, you're asking me to do that and it's something you wouldn't do. Anybody can write an offer in today's market, but not anybody can get to closing. So I get paid for what I know.

I'm a professional. So is there anything else you want to ask me about? The services I provide. I then get out a pie chart that I've designed, which shows the commission split broke down. I explain that while the commission number seems to be a large number, all that money doesn't come to me.

So what I say in a realistic transaction, in most cases, you have the listening brokerage, the listing agent, the selling brokerage and the selling agent. So there's really four pieces to the pie when it gets sliced up. So is your real estate agent.

I'm only getting one quarter of the pie. And out of that quarter, I have to pay income tax. Social Security, car expenses, gasoline, computers, multiple listing everything associated with my business. And that's before any costs come out related to marketing your home.

So if I give up the percentage you're asking for, that means the resulting amount won't be enough to pay all those expenses once they see the chart and the list of my expenses. The seller will normally drop the conversation and see the value I provide.

The key to this conversation is to have a physical paper showing them how the commissions cut up and list your expenses. Some people merely think the brokerage is paying all your expenses. So educating them on the process is all they need to understand the value you bring.

You can also talk about past transactions where your expertize allowed the transaction to close. So my suggestion is you write these scripts down and of course, you won't read them when you're in front of the seller, but you can practice them and commit them to memory.

You know, sellers are smart once you give them the facts about what you offer and how you're paid and the expenses involved. They'll understand why you charge what you charge and that it's fair.