Negotiation Intelligence: They don’t know who to trust anymore

Suze Cumming, founder of The Nature of Real Estate and Canada’s Real Estate Negotiation guru, answers Realtors’ questions on the first Friday of the month about negotiation tactics and working through tricky situations. Have a question for Suze? Send her an email.

A client sits across from you with an automated valuation, a conversation with an AI assistant and advice from a cousin who “knows the market.” None of them agree with each other, and none of them agree with you.

This is becoming an ordinary day in real estate.

Consumers have more information available to them than any generation of buyers and sellers before them. They also have more opinions, predictions and confidently worded advice competing for their attention, often from sources that sound equally credible and reach entirely different conclusions.

More information was supposed to create greater clarity. Instead, it has created a harder problem. When credible-sounding sources disagree, the consumer’s task is no longer just deciding what to do. It is deciding who to believe. The more those sources disagree, the less certain consumers become about anyone, including you.

The other voices have always been there

Outside influence in real estate decisions is nothing new. Agents have long worked alongside the financially savvy uncle, the neighbour who sold last year, the adult child who read one article and the friend who is a Realtor in another market.

These people may care deeply about the client. They usually have limited information and no responsibility for the outcome.

What has changed is the scale and tone of the influence.

Most consumers will consult AI before meeting with an agent. They will ask what their property is worth, how much commission they should pay, which pricing strategy will produce the best result and how they should negotiate.

After meeting with the agent, they may return to AI, share the agent’s recommendations and ask whether the advice is accurate, reasonable or self-serving.

A well-meaning relative offers an opinion. AI offers an answer, delivered with the calm authority of something that appears to have considered every angle. It has not. But it sounds like it has, and that confidence is influencing your client before you ever enter the room.

The opportunity inside the frustration

Some experienced agents describe AI-prepared leads as lower quality. These consumers may arrive guarded, skeptical and equipped with a long list of questions, often similar to those other AI-using consumers are asking. They may also be interviewing several agents on AI’s advice.

But those questions may be telling us something important.

Consumers are trying to protect themselves. They do not know how to assess the quality of an agent’s advice, so they ask AI what questions they should ask. Underneath the questions about pricing, commission and strategy is a quieter one:

Is this person protecting my interests or their own?

They may not be looking for an agent who can simply provide the right answers. They may be searching for someone who gives them a reason to trust those answers.

This creates an extraordinary opportunity for a skilled professional.

Consumers will notice whether the agent becomes impatient, defensive or dismissive. They will also notice whether the agent welcomes their questions, explains the reasoning, acknowledges uncertainty and becomes curious about what matters to them.

A negotiation-trained agent can look beneath the questions to the interests behind them. What is the consumer trying to understand? What are they worried about? What would help them feel confident in both the advice and the person providing it?

Agents who treat the questions as an obstacle may reinforce the consumer’s uncertainty. Agents who recognize them as an invitation to earn trust can distinguish themselves in a way no polished answer or marketing claim can achieve.

Where trust quietly erodes

When a client brings us information that conflicts with our recommendation, there is a natural pull to correct it. We explain what the source got wrong, point out what it could not have known and reassert our reasoning.

The reasoning may be entirely sound. The instinct to lead with it can still cost us something.

When we move too quickly to correct a source the client considers credible, they may experience it as though we are correcting them. The conversation becomes two confident voices competing, with the client caught between them and no closer to clarity.

Trust is not restored by being right faster. It is restored by being curious first.

One question can help us begin differently:

“Before we begin, what have you already heard, read or been advised about this decision?”

Ask it before presenting your analysis.

The answer may reveal an online valuation, AI research, family pressure, advice from another agent or a previous experience shaping the client’s expectations. It also communicates that the client does not have to hide competing information from you.

Your professional value does not depend on controlling the information. It lies in helping the client evaluate it.

The trusted advisor audit

Think of a recent moment when a client questioned your advice or introduced information that contradicted it. Ask yourself:

1. What was influencing the client?
2. Were they seeking information, reassurance, validation, protection or permission?
3. Did I respond with curiosity or correction?
4. Did I understand the assumptions behind the advice before challenging it?
5. Did I distinguish what we knew from what we believed?
6. Did the conversation strengthen the client’s judgment or simply promote my conclusion?
7. Did the client retain ownership of the decision?
8. What did I do that actually earned trust?

The question that makes you least comfortable may be the one most worth examining.

The advantage that remains

Consumers do not need another confident voice. They already have several. They need someone who can help them examine competing information, identify what is missing and understand why each source reached its conclusion.

This requires genuine negotiation intelligence: the ability to look beneath stated positions to uncover interests and emotional motivators, assess power and influence, test assumptions, distinguish facts from interpretations, and recognize when collaborative or competitive behaviours are shaping the conversation. It also means responding without creating unnecessary resistance or compromising the client’s autonomy.

These are learned negotiation skills. They require sound theory, deliberate practice and thoughtful feedback. They cannot be replaced by more data, a firmer tone, a well-worded script or a collection of AI prompts.

Here is the final question:

If your client repeated your last conversation to AI and asked whether your advice deserved their trust, what would you want that conversation to reveal?

When consumers do not know who to trust, a remarkable opportunity emerges for professionals with the skill to earn it.

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