When you’re a broker negotiating on commercial real estate transactions, things can become very complex, and the egos of your principals negotiating together can definitely become quite challenging. With this in mind, when working with my coaching clients, it’s quite normal for them to come to me for help with specific situations within their negotiations, and I’ll give them sentences, phrases, and/or questions for them to then ask their principals, to help move the transaction forward, which then gets my clients excited about utilizing what I’ve now recommended to them, and they’ll take notes and write down everything I’ve mentioned.
Each situation that these brokers are dealing with is unique, requiring its own unique response, and there is no “one size fits all” response that will work in every single situation. But here is one simple question you can ask your clients, when they have slowed down with their interest in moving forward:
“What will it now take for you to move forward with this transaction?”
What’s really good about this question, is that it presupposes that there really is something that will have your client want to move forward with the transaction, and now you’re just asking them to tell you what it is. At the same time, your client may still come back to you with something that you don’t believe the other side will accept, but you’ll never know until you ask this kind of question.
Sometimes asking a simple question like this one can help to move your client off of their current position, and have them move towards thinking that maybe there still really is a way to make this deal happen.