Remove Your Emotion. Create Theirs. (3 Min. Read) Vol. 10

A few weeks back, we sat down with a seller in Pacific Grove. Beautiful home. One sticking point: every wall was turquoise.

You might love turquoise. You might also associate it with the most awkward dinner party of your life. Either way, you're feeling something about it right now. Even if that something is, "How much would it cost to paint over that?"

That's the problem.

Love it or hate it, turquoise is a polarizing color. As fiduciaries, our job is to clear out anything that pulls a buyer's attention away from the home itself. Our seller had one goal: sell for the highest price in the shortest time. Those walls were standing in her way.

So we told her the truth. Spend the $2,500. Roll on a neutral color. Move on.

That's when the real enemy showed up. Not the paint. Her emotion.

Here's how emotion works in a negotiation. It never sits evenly on both sides. One party leans into feeling. The other party leans back into logic as a counterweight. The logical side has the leverage every single time.

The emotional party loses.

Easy enough to say. Almost impossible to do. Especially when the asset on the table is your house, your memories, the kitchen where you raised your kids. So what happens? Turquoise walls. A solvable problem turns into an immovable one because the seller can't separate herself from her preference.

We get it. Empathy is everything in our business. If we genuinely want to help people, we have to meet them where they are. This seller didn't need a critic. Her home was her baby. She needed to know we weren't judging her taste, because we weren't. The property was stunning. We knew exactly how valuable it was on the market.

That's the whole point. We had to get this right. Not for us. For her.

When you own something this rare and this central to your financial life, it would be reckless for us to skip the prep work that helps the right buyer fall in love within 90 seconds of walking through your door. That's the window. 90 seconds. First impression. Done.

We want you, as our seller, to take your emotion off the table for one reason. So the buyer has to carry it for both of you.

An emotional buyer pays more. They stretch on price. They drop contingencies. They write the letter. They imagine their life unfolding in your living room. That is how you walk away with more money.

And helping you walk away with more money, for your life, your goals, your family, your future, is the highest expression of care we can offer you as your agents. Even when it means risking your feelings over a paint color.

No matter what business you're in, the kindest thing you can do for someone you want to see win is help them set their emotion aside. Just for a moment. Just long enough to let logic make the call. The emotional reward shows up later, in the result.

Because when the right buyer walks into that Pacific Grove home, sees the soft neutral walls, and feels, in those first 90 seconds, that she has found her place, there's almost nothing she won't do to keep that feeling. She'll pay more. She'll move faster. She'll outbid the room.

Our seller created all of that. Not by feeling more. By feeling less, on purpose, at exactly the right moment.

Your Homework: This week, find one situation in your work or personal life where your own emotion might be quietly costing you. You don't have to act on it yet. Sometimes naming it is the hardest part. It's also the most important one.

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THE RUIZ GROUP
of Keller Williams Realty

Led by Pete Ruiz, REALTOR®​
DRE: 01974535