Want to Charge a Full Fee in 2025? Here Are 3 Things You MUST Do

by Laurie Gilmore

It was wonderful to have the chance to see so many of you live and in-person in LA for Game Plan 2025 this week.

We’re hearing a lot of feedback as to how energizing the event was, and I certainly share that feeling. What a great community we have! 

My presentation was focused on how to charge a full fee with every client on every transaction without fail, and how to do so by employing Tactical Empathy.

I focused on 3 concepts that help us to achieve that outcome:

• Setting Standards
• Building trust 
• Being Curious

What was interesting to me was how those 3 concepts resurfaced throughout the day with all of our speakers and panelists as they shared their road to success.

Here are some key thoughts…

➡️ Setting Standards:

Standards, not goals. This time of year we are all peer pressured into setting goals.

But goals are often pulled out of thin air, and they’re generally based on somebody else’s ideas of success, some standard measure of expectation. And whether or not you hit that goal is dependent on many things–outside of your circle of control.

A goal is something you chase after…and that fits perfectly with how most agents operate. Chasing deal after deal. Chasing to attain a goal.

You might hit that goal sometimes but not by design—by many factors, outside of your control, aligning in your favor. 

But a standard is YOURS.

It’s yours from the moment you commit to it. It is 100% within your circle of control.

And the only measure of success is whether or not that standard satisfies you and whether or not you stick to it.

It only fails you when you fail to implement it.

Because a standard is only a standard if it is a constant for every deal and every client. A standard is not a standard if it is sometimes, if it is negotiable, if there is any maybe about it.

Charging a full fee is not a goal, it’s a standard.

It’s not something you chase, it’s something you do.

➡️  Building Trust:

All of our coaching is designed to help you grow a repeat and referral business in which you maintain your standards and work only in exclusive relationships with clients–both sellers and buyers–who view you and value you as their trusted advisor.

So you’ve got to make the shift from being a commodity, which is one of many, interchangeable with the next agent on the list, to becoming a Trusted Advisor for your client–which is one of one and irreplaceable.

And, for that, we have the powerhouse communication skill set of Tactical Empathy.

It is, essentially, the art and science of making people feel understood.

Why is it so important to make people feel understood?

That’s how you build trust. 

People crave trust and they will pay you for it.

Trust is your competitive advantage.

It’s how you survive in this business long term.

Communicating with Tactical Empathy, you enter every conversation with a prospective client completely focused on the other person–listening deeply with genuine curiosity. 

You make the interaction all about them and not about you.

This establishes rapport, builds trust and creates trust-based influence.

That’s where your real value lies–in the fact that you’re in sales, and you’re approaching the other person not sounding like any other salesperson.

This is how you differentiate yourself.

It’s how you earn the right to the standards you keep.

➡️ Being Curious:

Coming from a place of curiosity rather than a place of fear.

When we think about curiosity, it’s important to do so with an understanding of what stands in the way of our curiosity, and that’s our FEAR.

Remember that the fear of loss is the single most important driver of human decision-making and behavior. 

Our fear of losing a deal stifles our curiosity. It makes us fearful of discovering and confronting negative issues. We’re afraid to be curious enough to discover the truth.

And it makes us so paranoid that we see negatives even where they don’t exist. It makes it very difficult for us to distinguish between questions and objections.

If you are tapped into your fear, you will hear every question—or observation—as an objection. You will feel it as push-back. You will become immediately uncomfortable. 

And when you are uncomfortable, your instinct is just to get comfortable again as quickly as possible. So you tend to start giving things away—so that you can just make the “objections” stop, and you can feel comfortable again.

Ironically, what you give away may not even be what that person actually wants or needs.

That’s what we see happening with agents. They let go of their standards at the drop of a hat.

But if you are tapped into your curiosity, you will hear every question as a question.

You’ll be able to listen at a higher level, and hear what is truly being asked, so that you can respond from a place of empathy, and provide the information or the understanding that the person actually wants and needs in order to move forward.

Without your fear clouding your judgement, you’ll be able to truly understand whether or not what the prospective client wants and needs is in alignment with your standards.

You’ll be able to move forward together on a solid foundation of collaboration and respect, or you’ll be able to send them off in a limo, and get back to your real work.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you can’t afford to have standards because you think you’ll do less business.

That’s your fear talking.

Don’t listen to anyone else who tells you that you can’t set whatever standard you want.

That’s their fear talking—and their envy.

If you have standards, you do better business.

Better business allows you to work less, earn more and enjoy your life while you’re doing it.

So forget about setting goals for 2025. 

Set your standards. Stick to them. Deliver them with confidence. Deliver them with Tactical Empathy.