The Altman Close

Chapter 7FRESH EYES ON THE PRIZE

You’re not the same agent you were when you first picked up this book. Your mentality, your sense of urgency, your approach, your look – it’s now baller. You’re a killer. An animal. Your heart beats for the deal. You are on your way to being “Hollywood” in the Altman sense of the word. So let’s look at the basics, a refresher of the job format – open, work, close.

This is Los Angeles, the home of film and television, the land of scripts. The traditional storytelling and screenplay format – beginning, middle, and end – applies to the work of a real estate agent. You don’t need to be Shakespeare, James Cameron, or even Josh Altman to get this one down. We’re not reinventing the wheel. We’re setting up to close in three acts.

For the agent, Act I is the open, the get-the-listing moment when you learn about the owners and the house’s history or the house shopper’s dreams. The open creates opportunity so that action can happen. You enter the scene. You analyze the set-up. You break it all down, considering every angle based on the client: who they are, how they are, what they want, what you can do for them. If it’s the property you engage first, you size that up in the same manner.

You need to prove that you’re the agent for the job. You have to open, to present clients with a course of action. You have to give them what they want. This can be a pain. We humans are demanding creatures. We are skeptical, full of doubt. We constantly think someone ...