I’ve sold three homes in my life. Each time, I chose not to mention to the agents sitting across from me that I’d spent my career in property marketing.
It gave me the opportunity to hear the presentation exactly as any other vendor would.
The fee. The comparable sales. The promise of exposure. Marketing barely entered any of those conversations.
But I wasn’t sitting there wondering who would charge me the least. I was asking myself a different question:
Which of you is going to show me how the marketing investment I make will deliver buyers and present the home in the best way to get the best result?
When a vendor doesn’t get a clear answer to that question, they’re left comparing the most obvious difference on paper: the fee.
I say this respectfully because it isn’t a question of effort. Agents are time-poor, under pressure to win the listing and often working from scripts that naturally prioritise fees, experience and past sales. When there’s a risk of losing the business, marketing can feel like the easiest part of the proposal to reduce.
However, new consumer research shows many vendors are waiting for a different conversation.
What vendors told us
We recently partnered with Stone Real Estate to survey buyers and vendors who had bought or sold within the previous six months – fresh enough in their minds that they were recalling the experience rather than reconstructing a distant memory.
We asked what genuinely mattered when they selected an agent.
Nearly half of the vendors surveyed did not consider fees to be the most important factor in their decision. Furthermore, 58 per cent indicated that an agent’s marketing plan played a critical role in determining who secured the listing.
Another 41 per cent said richer marketing – including video, virtual tours, quality photography and a considered strategy – directly influenced the agent they selected.
And 57% said they would pay extra for a marketing strategy when they believe it will create a better outcome.
Those findings point to an important mismatch.
Many agents enter a listing presentation prepared to defend fees.
Like me, it turns out most vendors actually want to hear how the agent will market their property to attract buyers.
Commission pressure is a differentiation problem in disguise
When agents look the same, vendors compare fees. When agents demonstrate different levels of value, vendors can compare potential outcomes.
That pattern appears in the research and matches what I’ve experienced on both sides of the table.
If the only visible difference among three agents is half a percentage point in commission, it’s reasonable for a vendor to negotiate that difference.
The research also found that vendors place more weight on marketing strategy than on sales volume or years of experience.
Past sales get you in the conversation. Strategy wins the listing.
The biggest mistake agents make is selling a marketing package instead of a marketing strategy.
Every element of the plan should have a purpose. Explain how each element helps move buyers from discovery to enquiry, why it gives their property an advantage over competing listings. Now you’ve given them a more useful basis for comparison than fees alone.
When sellers understand the strategy behind the investment, commission becomes just one part of the conversation, not the only one.
The ten-minute audit
Before your next appraisal, open your current listing presentation and look at it through the eyes of a vendor comparing several agents.
Here are some easy ways to identify where your value may be present but not yet visible to the vendor:
- Would your difference still be clear without your logo? If your name and branding were removed, would the vendor recognise what makes your proposal meaningfully different from the two agents they saw last week?
- How soon do we reach the marketing strategy? Most vendors have researched you before you arrive. They likely have a price and a fee range in their minds – what they’re waiting to hear is the process. Does the presentation get there early, or is it buried behind credentials and comparable sales?
- Does the plan feel specific to their property? Are you explaining a tailored strategy for their home, or presenting a standard list of marketing products?
- Do you show the vendor options? Give vendors three options, not one. You could even download and use the research insights to demonstrate how a layered marketing campaign drives stronger engagement than a simple campaign of photos and floor plans. If you clearly articulate the ROI of each option, you might be surprised how many vendors don’t go with the cheapest.
- Can you demonstrate the strategy in your current listings? If the vendor reviews your last five campaigns, will they see evidence of the quality and approach you’re describing? You attract the standard you market.
Once you can see the gaps, changing the order and emphasis of the presentation can make a significant difference. Marketing becomes part of your value proposition rather than a collection of items discussed after the main pitch.
The results suggest that consumer expectations have shifted faster than some of the standard scripts and conventions used across the industry. That is useful information for any agent prepared to act on it.
The fee myth is only the beginning
Commission is just one of the many common assumptions examined in the research.
The findings also explore virtual tours, the practice of withholding information to generate enquiries, and what actually motivates a buyer to get into the car and attend an inspection on a Saturday morning.
The full Diakrit Consumer Research 2026 report is free to download. Use it to pressure-test your next listing presentation and see where consumer expectations have outpaced conventional industry thinking.
Download the Diakrit Consumer Research 2026 report here.