80% of Sellers Contact Just One Agent. Kati Spaniak Wants to Help You Become That Agent.
The nine-time ICON says listings are often won before the appointment begins. At eXpcon Salt Lake City, she and Bryon Ellington will break down how agents can build trust before presenting the CMA.
Imagine waking up at 40 with a fresh divorce and a completely empty bank account.
That was Kati Spaniak’s reality. After spending her career taking care of her daughters as a stay-at-home mom, Kati had no other work history. So, she threw herself into real estate out of pure necessity.
Her first year resulted in $3 million in sales. The next, she hit $11 million. By year three, she jumped to $24 million.
Today, she has personally sold nearly half a billion dollars in local real estate across 700 transactions and has referred over $2 billion to top agents nationwide. But getting to those massive numbers required brutal self-accountability.
Turning a Massive YouTube Failure Into a $2 Billion Referral Network
Early in her career, Kati noticed a gap between how important a home sale was and how little many sellers understood about the process. Smart, capable people were making one of the largest financial decisions of their lives based largely on the advice of whichever agent happened to be standing in front of them.
She wanted sellers to have access to honest information before they reached that point. So, Kati went all in on YouTube, expecting educational videos to establish her as the local expert and bring more listings into her business.
However, it didn’t work out the way she planned.
The channel grew past 85,000 subscribers and logged more than 1 million hours watched. HousingWire named it one of the top 10 real estate YouTube channels in the country. Meanwhile, the local business the channel was created to support was suffering. Her videos were reaching sellers, just not sellers who lived close enough to hire her.
“While the YouTube channel had great success, if I could do it all over again, I would make sure my content was aimed at the local, not the national market,” Kati says. “I was building a real following, but it wasn’t a following that couldn’t pay me.”
Those sellers still wanted help. They sent Kati questions, joined her private Facebook group, downloaded her resources, and asked whether she knew an agent in their area who approached the business the way she did.
She brought in her daughter Lisa, an eXp agent in Chicago, and began building Truth in Real Estate®, a national referral network that connects educated sellers with top-performing agents across the country.
Creating that network was harder than building the audience. Kati was no longer responsible only for the advice she gave. She was also placing sellers with agents who would represent her standards in markets she could not personally serve.
“It has been the hardest thing I have ever done,” she says. “And that’s why I am so passionate about teaching agents, to make sure they know the path they are going down before they go down it.”
The YouTube strategy failed at its original job, but it showed Kati how sellers choose an agent.
Most Sellers Are Choosing Before the Appointment
According to the National Association of REALTORS®, 80% of recent sellers contacted only one agent before choosing who would sell their home.
Kati believes those sellers are calling the person they already feel most comfortable trusting.
“They don’t know for sure whether that agent is real, truthful, and honest,” she says. “They’re guessing.”
Today’s sellers often arrive with more information than ever. Kati calls them “amateur professionals” because many spend hours following listings, studying home values, and consuming real estate advice online.
“When I started, sellers came to the table with a lack of information and hired an agent to fill it,” she says. “Now they arrive with more information than ever, but what they lack is trust.”
That gives agents two opportunities: Become the person sellers already know before they need help, then confirm that trust during the appointment.
“You cannot build trust in an hour,” Kati says. “You can demonstrate trust in an hour, if it already exists.”
Before the Appointment
Kati recommends giving sellers enough evidence to form an opinion of you before they are ready to hire an agent – Youtube being her favorite tool for this.
Answer questions for people who are not your clients yet. Put out local, seller content that brings trust to the conversation before you sit down. You can do this by creating videos, guides, posts, or other resources around the questions sellers are already asking. Provide useful information without attaching every answer to a sales pitch.
Talk about the subjects other agents avoid. Pricing mistakes, preparation costs, commissions, cancellation policies, and conflicts of interest show sellers how you will approach difficult conversations.
Show accountability alongside experience. Production numbers and awards demonstrate success. Admitting when you have been wrong shows sellers how you will respond when something goes wrong.
Center your message on the seller. Kati believes agents rely too heavily on claims about being No. 1. Sellers also want evidence that the agent understands their concerns and will protect their interests. Kati created the Protect The Seller Circle™ to give agents a way to put that commitment in writing. Members formally agree to lead with truth, transparency, and the consumer’s interests.
Remember this: “If you are going to use YouTube, make sure that every single video is titled with the agent's local market and the content is local. You would rather have a video that has 500 views in your subdivision than 500,000 across the country of people who can't hire or pay you,” Kati explains.
Last Year, Kati Made Herself a Promise
While sitting in the audience at eXpcon last year, Kati noticed how many stage conversations focused on generating more business. She wrote down a goal: The following year, she would be onstage talking about how agents could become better at serving the people behind that business.
Now, Kati will join eXp Realty Chief Learning Officer Bryon Ellington for Win Before You Walk In at eXpcon Salt Lake City.
The fireside chat is designed for agents who keep losing listings, want to earn more seller business, or are tired of hearing that the answer is another script.
Kati and Bryon will go deeper into what agents can do before, during, and after the listing appointment to become the person sellers trust with one of their biggest financial decisions.
