Stop Selling Your Checklist. Start Selling Your Risk Management. The New Agent Value Pitch Post-Settlement

Most real estate agents are selling the wrong thing. They pitch their checklist — the showings, the marketing, the open houses. But in a post-settlement market, the agents who win are selling something buyers and sellers actually care about: risk management.

In this episode, Gary Pickren delivers the new agent value pitch for South Carolina real estate agents operating after the NAR settlement. This is a fundamental mindset and messaging shift — from task-based to outcome-driven — and it directly affects whether buyers sign representation agreements and whether sellers justify your commission.

What's covered:

• Why the traditional real estate commission pitch fails post-settlement — and what buyers and sellers are actually paying for
• How to reframe your value around risk management, liability protection, and transaction outcomes instead of activities
• Practical scripts for explaining your value to both buyers and sellers in South Carolina's new compensation environment
• The mindset shift from "here's what I do" to "here's what goes wrong without me" — and why it's more persuasive

South Carolina real estate agents who can articulate outcome-based value will close more buyer agreements and hold their commission. Those still selling the checklist will keep having the wrong conversation.

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Gary

* Gary serves on the South Carolina Real Estate Commission as a Commissioner. The opinions expressed herein are his opinions and are not necessarily the opinions of the SC Real Estate Commission. This podcast is not to be considered legal advice. Please consult an attorney in your area.    

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

This is Dish and Dirt with Gary Pickering, South Carolina's only podcast dedicated to the real estate agent craft. And now the host of Dish and Dirt, Gary Picker. And Greens, welcome back, everyone, to another episode of Dish and Dirt. I'm your often opinionated but rarely wrong host, Gary Picker, coming to you from the beautiful downtown Columbia, South Carolina offices of Blair, Cato, Picker, and Castellan, this, the second week of February 2026. We all know what the second week of February 2026 means. It means the Real Estate Success Summit. That's right, on February 11th, the Real Estate Success Summit. What that also means is the Success Summit has probably already come and gone before you've had a chance to listen to this podcast, which comes out on February 12th. But the reason I'm mentioning the Success Summit to you, even though the time has come and gone for it, is that today I've got to get the podcast recorded, cut, edited, and posted, as well as get ready for my summit. So today's podcast might be just a smidge bit shorter. I'm not sure. It might go the full 25 or 30 minutes, but if it is a little bit shorter, please bear with me. I'll be back next week with a longer episode. But I do have a lot to get done today. So I want to go ahead and get this podcast posted for you as soon as possible. Now, on today's show, what we're going to talk about and we're going to address is that age-old client question that goes to the heart of what is your value add proposition. As we move further and further away from the Sitzer and Burnett settlement, and as broker-to-broker compensation continues to die in South Carolina, you are going to have to be able to answer this question for your consumer. What is the value you bring to this proposition? And one of the things that I will be able to announce at the real estate success summit with permission of Nick Cromitis and South Carolina Realtors Association is that the South Carolina Realtors Association listing agreement will no longer have broker-to-broker compensation in it. It is going to be straight compensation between the listing broker and the seller. Buyer compensation will be handled outside of that, either through a Form 120 or the contract. An absolute monumental change in how we do business. It is a needed change, and it's going to happen whether you like it or not. So as broker-to-broker continues to erode in South Carolina and across the country, it is going to be paramount that you learn how to explain what your value proposition is. We spend so much time and effort going over listing agreements and listing presentations. In fact, anytime you go to any type of seminar, they will spend a whole class teaching you how to do listing presentations. Very little time is spent on how to do a buyer presentation, how to overcome buyer objections as it relates to compensation. That is something you're absolutely going to have to learn. Now, before we begin today, let me give you a quick word about our MCE and CE classes. A lot of telephone calls are already coming in asking when Blair Cato is teaching. We need to clarify something. I teach the classes for Central Carolina Realtors Association. In order to sign up for any classes that I'm teaching, you need to do a couple things. You can either go to CCRA's website and see when the classes are being offered. You can look on their calendar, and it should have the classes. They continue to add classes all throughout time. We're starting here in February. We'll run right up until early June with the classes. I think right now all they're doing is putting a couple classes on for February and March, and they'll continue to add as we schedule more classes. If you cannot find information there, go look at their social media. And then last resort, you can reach out to CCRA. Grace should be able to help you there. But all the classes that we've taught in the past are always being taught through CCRA, and I'll be one of the teachers there. We will offer the core classes, we'll offer all of your electives, as well as the broker in charge class that you're required to take as a broker. So all of that will be offered through Central Carolina. Go check their website, their calendar, the social media to get more times and dates on that. All right, let's roll into our subject today. I'm going to ask you a question that pretty much every real estate agent that's listening today has probably heard at some time. And the question is this When you sold my$100,000 house, you made a 3% or a$3,000 commission. Now that my house is worth$300,000 and you want that 3% commission, that's going to be$9,000 in commission. What exactly are you doing that requires me to pay you$6,000 more doll than when you represented me the last time? And then the second question that tends to relate to that is perhaps this question. When you helped me buy my house, it was$200,000 and you got paid. Now that I'm selling my house some years later, it's worth$300,000, but you're wanting to get paid again. But now not only are you getting paid twice, you're going to make even more money the second time. That's my equity. That doesn't seem fair. So these are questions that probably a lot of real estate agents get, and it's probably questions that you struggle to answer. But these are questions that you need to learn how to navigate through because as we move from broker to broker compensation, I expect these questions will be asked more and more. They're not really bad questions. In fact, I don't think they're rude questions. I actually think they're logical questions from a consumer standpoint. After the Sitzer Burnett settlement and what we believe now is going to be the end to broker-broker compensation, agents who can't answer these questions clearly and with confidence and ethically, I think are going to struggle. In fact, I've asked this question for years, probably going on 20 years now of teaching continual education. I would ask this question: how do you explain to somebody that selling a$300,000 house results in a$9,000 commission, but selling a$500,000 house equates to a$15,000 commission? What did you do differently to earn$6,000 more? A house is a house. Makes no sense, right? And that's a question I've asked, looking for what real estate agents would say in response to that. Unfortunately, what I got back most of the time was either blank stares or mumbling under their breath. And sometimes people say, well, that's just the way the system is, and that's what it is when you pay commission through a percentage. But the problem is if you can't answer this simple question to the satisfaction of your consumer, then how can you defend your comp to that consumer? If you can't answer this question, I believe it just opens the door for them to start asking for lower and lower commission rates. And then it makes me really wonder if you can't even defend your comp, why am I trusting you to negotiate on my behalf a real estate contract that will result in my financial well-being? So in today's episode, what we're going to do is we're going to go straight to that heart of that matter, that real estate compensation problem, and most importantly, how agents should be answering it. Now, I want to be really clear on this. This episode is not at all about defending compensation in any form or fashion. We're not sitting here trying to say this percentage is what everybody should make. This is a standard commissioner. In fact, we don't ever use those terms. Rather, what we're trying to do today is discuss how you explain value. Once you can explain value, then compensation seems to be an afterthought. But in a post-sitzer world and in a post-broker-to-broker compensation world, you must be able to explain your value. Those who already are doing that are excelling and making more money than they've ever made. Those who are struggling with this basic concept and constantly telling me we need to go back to the old system where compensation is under the MLS haven't understood that that ship is sailed. It's never coming back. And either you need to adapt or you're going to be out of business. So why is it that questions about compensation are so difficult for real estate agents to answer? I mean, it's how you get paid. Why is it so uncomfortable for you? It's never uncomfortable for a lawyer to look at a personal injury accident case and say, I get a third. I've never seen a lawyer struggle with saying, I get paid. I don't ever struggle with it either. This is my fee. Pay it or don't hire me, right? But for some reason, it's a very uncomfortable feeling for real estate agents to do it. Now, part of it, I think, is that it always seems a little bit rude discussing money. It's a difficult conversation. Some people might even say it's a little bit uncouth talking about money, particularly here in the South. Those are things that we don't do when we have manners in the South. We don't talk about money. And I get it. It's hard to ask somebody to pay for a service. It's not like we create a product. If we created a product, let's say a widget, you want to buy my widget, this is the price. You pay me and I give you the widget. And at the end of the day, I put the money in my pocket and you walk home with your widget and you can look at your widget. It's tangible. But what lawyers, doctors, accountants, real estate agents do, we don't sell tangible items that they get to take home and put in their hand. You didn't build the house, you didn't make the house, it's not your house. You're not selling them the house. You are selling them your service. You're selling them your time, your knowledge, your expertise in navigating them through a process. And while there is tremendous value in that, I would say in this case, more value than that than if you were creating a widget and giving them a tangible item. It's hard for some people to rectify that in their minds that I'm paying this amount of money, and at the end of the day, you didn't make anything, you didn't produce anything, you didn't give me anything. And that is where the difficulty comes in. So let's be honest about the real problem here. The true problem isn't the fact that we have to ask or explain the compensation. It's the fact that most agents are never trained to explain their commission and conversely, never taught how to explain their worth. And if you can't explain what your commission is based on and the worth that you bring to the transaction, then you're done. You're absolutely done here. As I said earlier, lawyers have never had a problem explaining their wealth or their rates of commission or their rates of attorney fee. It's just something that apparently we're good at doing. But real estate agents struggle with this. And I think a lot of it goes back to a lack of training. For decades, I think the industry has done this. We've had a system set up where it goes on the MLS, and I'm guaranteed as a buyer's agent to get half of that off the MLS, pretty much. And so I really didn't have to explain my words. There's really no reason for me to spend my time trying to figure out to my buyer to explain the words. And we hid behind these comments. That's just how it works, or it's standard, which is a very bad phrase you should never, ever, ever use in real estate. That's when you get sued. Or my favorite one, the seller pays it. Again, don't use that. Oh, it doesn't cost you because the seller pays it. Don't use those phrases. Those are the phrases that get people sued. Those answers no longer work because the system of MLS compensation is gone. In fact, it will get you sued when you use those phrases. Here's why those questions, however, seeing you as a real estate agent. Percentages feel arbitrary to consumers. And that is what these groups are trying to do to real estate agents. They believe that the 3% or the 2.5% or the 3.5% is an arbitrary number that people just pulled out of their ass and there's no reasoning behind it. Therefore, you should be able to charge a whole lot less. Never mind you that the average real estate agent makes in the 30s or 40s and works a 40-hour job, probably don't even make minimum wage when you actually look at the hours that some agent works versus how much they get paid. Secondly, consumers anchor value to time and effort, not to your risk and responsibility. Quite frankly, I think all four of those are based on how you get paid. Your pay rate is based on how much time you have to spend, how much effort you have to spend, but it also is definitely related to how much risk is involved in the transaction and how much responsibility you have in the transaction in terms of fiduciary duties and things of that nature. Lawyers value our time exactly the same way. It's not always just based on how much time we are going to spend on something. We also have to look at how much risk we have in doing a transaction. If I'm doing a$100 million transaction, you better believe we're going to value my rate on the fact that I am now exposing myself to a hundred million dollar risk. So we're not just going to charge you a couple grand for time. There's going to be a risk and responsibility factor also valued into my fee. Thirdly, appreciation and value makes it look like agents are doing the same work for more money. And that's absolutely not the case. And we'll explain that in a few minutes. But from the client's perspective, it looks like this: same house, same agent, same MLS, same yard sign, same lockbox. So really it's the same agent doing the exact same work. Well, wrong. We know that's wrong. But again, if you can't articulate why that's wrong, then the consumer wins the argument, which means you lose bigly, which means you're cutting commission rates. So let's revisit that first question. Why are you making$6,000 more selling a more expensive house and a less expensive house? So what's the wrong answer? The wrong answer is because this house costs more. Now, technically that is 100% true, but strategically, that's a terrible response. If your response is, well, that$100,000 house is based on 3%, so I got$3,000, the$300,000 house is based on 3%, it's$9,000. That's why it's$6,000 more. That's 100% true. That's just a terrible response. We need to reframe that. And the way you need to reframe that, the real question isn't why are you charging me more? Because technically you aren't. The real question is what changes when house prices change, particularly upward? And so let's talk about some core truths that must be understood by our consumer and we must educate our consumers. Agents are not paid for hours. They are not. They are paid for risk, they are paid for responsibility, and they are paid for outcomes. And here's that framework. The risk in a transaction increases with price. Same thing for real estate lawyers, same thing with anybody really in business. The higher the price, the higher the risk. That's the higher the liability of getting sued. At$100,000, there's a larger buyer pool. There's less competition for selling houses. There's hardly any houses for$100,000. Lower expectation of your client. If you get the client 98%, get within 2%, they're very happy. Not necessarily at the higher levels. It's easier to get a larger percentage of the asking price. People aren't typically going to go on a$100,000 house and low boy at$50,000. At a$300,000 house and up, you're going to have a more sophisticated buyer that's going to want to negotiate a lot more scrutiny of the properties. You have a higher likelihood of appraisal, inspection, and finance issues, greater liability and greater exposure, and you have a much smaller buyer pool. If something goes wrong at a$300,000 house, the consequences are much bigger financially and legally than if that same problem goes wrong at a$100,000 house. Simple economics. Secondly, the strategy changes. Selling a$100,000 house is all about exposure. How many eyes can I get it in front of? But selling a$300,000 house is all about positioning. Pricing precision matters more at$300,000 than it does at$100,000. Marketing mistakes cost much more money at$300,000 than$100,000. Negotiation eras cost the consumer a lot more money at$300,000 than it does at$100,000. Simply look at it this way: a 2% mistake on$100,000 is$2,000. A 2% mistake on a$300,000 house is$6,000, but a 2% mistake on a half a million dollar house is$10,000. So you see how quickly those dollar figures go up when the mistake is on a more expensive house. Thirdly, the agent ceiling is pretty much capped, but the client's upside is not. Here's a powerful line. If you underperform, the consumer's going to lose money forever. But if you overperform and get them more for their house, your percentage doesn't go up, but they get paid a lot more. The agent's compensation, remember, is capped by the agreement and can't ever go up. The client's benefit, however, is uncapped. So how to say this to the client? I'm not charging more because I'm doing the same job for more money. I'm charging based on the level of responsibility, risk, and precision required to protect and maximize a higher value asset. I like that. At this price point, small mistakes cost real money. My job is to prevent those small mistakes. This is the key point here is learning to explain your value. And I think that does a great job of explaining the value. Now let's talk about that second question. Why are you getting paid twice? You represented them for buying the house. Now they're selling the house. The house is worth more money. So you're getting paid twice to sell the same house, but now you're making even more money, but it's their equity. And so that's the famous words they like to say. You're stealing my equity. Well, this question hits very emotionally for a lot of people, particularly the real estate agents, but even the home buyers. Again, I think it's a logical question. The wrong answer here, however, is because I helped you buy it and now I'm helping you sell it. Again, that sounds obvious. Any moron should understand I helped you buy the house, now I'm doing something differently a year or two later. We're now selling it. I got work to do. You know, I don't work for free. That sounds obvious, but that's very unsatisfying to the consumer. So we got to reframe that question again. And here's the answer for us: buying and selling are two completely different fiduciary roles. When I help somebody buy a house, my job is to protect them from overpaying, to identify defects in the property, to help negotiate price in terms downward, reduce risk. Your incentive is aligned with saving them money. But when you help somebody sell the house, your job is exactly the opposite is to maximize price, is to create leverage, is to manage buyer and agent expectations, it's to reduce your legal exposure. Your incentive is aligned with making them more money. Completely different fiduciary roles. And so while the roles are not opposite, they are separate professions inside that same license. The paid twice is nothing more a myth. And I like this. You're not paying me twice for the same work, you're paying me once for two different outcomes, both of which affect your net worth. Why this is important, the appreciation in the property didn't come from the agent. But guess what? Capturing that appreciation absolutely does. Bam, right there. The appreciation, and you can even say that. I recognize the appreciation in your property did not come from me. But me capturing that appreciation absolutely does. Because bad pricing, bad marketing, bad negotiations can erase all of those years of market gain in one single bad transaction. And that's why you need to hire a quality agent like myself, because I'm going to make sure we capture the maximum amount of that appreciation. That is what your job is, and that's why you have value. The real takeaways for agents and for me, really, on this is percentage-based compensation only survives if agents can clearly articulate values. And what this means is we have to break the habit of avoiding commission conversations. Post it to Burnett, post broker to broker. This is a must. You are going to have to now spend time discussing with your buyer what your value is, why they are going to pay you. And with it not being in the buyer listing agreement anymore, that you're guaranteed broker-to-broker comp, you are absolutely going to have to take the time to explain this. But the good news is I have seen in the year and a half that we've had the Sitzer Burnett rules that those brokers who've gone away from broker-to-broker compensation are explaining their values in the buyer situation. And the buyers are making up the difference when the seller doesn't agree to pay the compensation rate that the sell the buyer and the buyer's agent agreed to. So for example, if the seller only agrees to pay 2% and they had a 3% agreement, what we're seeing now is that the buyer's paying that other 1% without argument. Prior to Sitzer Burnett, if somebody had a listing on the multiple listing service and the comp you agreed was as buyer client was 3%, and all they were offering was two under broker broker comp, you took two and you didn't get the other 1%. Even though that was what you entered into an agreement with your buyer on. You and your buyer agreed to 3%, but now you're only getting two. You took it on the chin. No longer does that happen because you have already explained and commissioned, you didn't avoid the conversation. You had that conversation up front with your client. This is what I charge for my service. This is what you owe me. Now we will ask the seller to pay some or all based on what offer you want to make, but regardless of what the seller pays, this is how much I get total, and you'll have to make up the difference. I can't make more than that, but you will pay me up to the total. Explaining outcomes is now paramount, not explaining tasks. This is why I've been saying for at least a year and a half, the Realtor Association put out a list of like 285 things that real estate agents do. Okay, I great list, a nice little document to hand to your clients so they know all the things you do. But if that is what you're using as your value add, that is a terrible way of showing your value because what you're doing now, again, is going back to the task-oriented explanation. And we don't need to be in task-oriented explanations because that feeds right back into what the consumer says, I'll pay you for your time and your task. It doesn't take into account any of the risk, any of the responsibility. Talking about risk, not your time, is what you need to be talking about. So what we need to do is not avoid commissioned conversations, have those up front. We need to talk about outcomes, not task, and we need to talk about the risk, not how long it's going to take you to get this property sold or help help them find a house. Agents who make this shift, pre-negotiate these expectations, offer clear scopes of value and service, tie compensation to responsibility, not tradition, not tradition, will make this work. And they'll do better than they've ever had done. It doesn't matter what we did prior to August 2024. You need to understand that. That ship has sailed. Don't talk about tradition, or this is how we used to do it. Don't talk about how we wish we would go back to the old system. That system is dead and gone. The system is continuing to die. Not only is the MLS aspect of it gone, but broker-to-broker compensation, in my opinion, is pretty much gone as well. Agents who don't do this won't just be replaced by technology. They'll be replaced by agents who can explain themselves better. I cannot stress this enough that your ability to explain these two questions are going to make a tremendous difference for you as we move away from broker to broker compensation. You need to spend some time writing down how you would respond, practicing these responses so that you can handle these objections. It's that simple. Now, if you're an agent today who's listened to this and think, hey, I've never heard it explained like that before, that's great. It means you're paying attention. It means you're learning. It means that the market is ready for you. As I said, the market isn't ending agent compensation. That's not happening. It didn't happen. Compensation didn't go down. But what has ended is unexplained compensation. The days of just saying, this is my compensation is over. You now have to explain compensation, what it's based on, and why you're entitled to it. I can promise you this when you do it and you do it effectively, you get no pushback. I have talked to the biggest agents in Columbia, the biggest agents on the coast, and the biggest agents in the upstate. And every one of them that are the biggest agents tell me, That's not a problem. I just explain what I do and what my value is and why my My commission rate is at, and nobody ever argues. You want to work with the best? This is what they pay. Learn how to answer these questions confidently so you don't just survive, so you thrive. All right. I hope everybody got something out of our show today. If you like it, please subscribe, please share it, and please tell other agents all about it. We'll be back again next week with another episode of Dish and Dirt. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend, and we'll see you again next week.