So back to the art dealer, he rang me three or four times one evening, while I was doing appointments. I’d just started the business. I was out there showing houses to people.

Yet this guy kept ringing, and I kept putting my phone away only for it to ring again. After the viewing, I phoned him. After we exchanged the usual pleasantries, he said: “Matthew, Matthew, Matthew, I need to talk to you. I've got a client for you.”

“Brilliant”, I said, “Thank you so much. Really appreciate you sharing this with me. Tell me who it is.” He did – the client was in America and was looking to buy in London. Well, he's in America. Okay, that's a good start, brilliant. Okay, and yeah, they're looking in London, while I’m in St Neots in Cambridgeshire – it’s a bit of a distance, but not insurmountable.

The art dealer went on, “Well look Matt, I need to tell you a little bit about his budget. He's looking in these postcodes”, and he was dishing out these central West London postcodes, “and the budget is £4 to £8 million”.

So I'm in St Neots, a nice market town with an average house price at the time of about £260,000. I had five properties on my website, all under £350,000.

So there's me thinking, ‘What the heck do I do?’ Right?

You know they say that if you’re given a ticket to the rocketship, just get on, you. And I'm on this rocketship with this guy who wants to buy a house for £4 to £8 million. Brilliant.

The art dealer is going to introduce me to the guy’s manager. He manages this American’s estate, affairs, etc. This is where it gets tricky.

First he wants to send the manager my email address, but if he does that, the manager will see that my company doesn’t operate in this market. So that’s out. Next he asks if he can send my website. No, no, no, even worse, right? If he looks on my website, he will see that this is not something that we're used to handling.

So I settled on giving him a Gmail address to give to the manager. The guy emails me, I email back. We arrange an appointment, and I talk to him about the fact that I can probably help him to meet his client's needs.

Next thing, who do I know that can help me? So my father-in-law worked for Knight Frank in London many, many, many, many, many, many, many years ago. I ring him up and say, “Daryl, how do I find someone that can help me? Give me a recommendation.”

Daryl comes through and introduces me to a guy called Richard, brilliant guy, a buying agent, wow, sounds great to me. Daryl passes me his details.

I ring Richard up and say, “I've got a client for you, here he is. He's looking between £4 and £8 million.” And he said, “That's not really my price range. My price range is more £20 to £30 million. But because you're Daryl's son-in-law, let me see if I can help you.” Okay, brilliant.

Next, I arranged a conference call with Richard and the American. It was nearly 12 years ago, but I’ll never forget it. This guy is so intelligent, so bright. He's investing in London. He wants to come and view on the weekend of the Jubilee, right? In 2012.

Great! No one's open, hardly anywhere you can get in, but that's when he wants, that's when it's going to happen. Richard did a fab job, getting all the information, answering all the questions, fantastic.

Jubilee weekend arrives, the guy comes, comes, views, buys, exchanges for six weeks down the line, done, completion. Fee, fee, fee, thank you very much. So there's a story there.

What does that story tell you? Likely the first thing that goes through your mind is big jump. Taking on this client was a big jump for me. Completing that sale was a massive, massive, massive achievement, right?

It also tells you that I achieved that outcome because of my desire to focus on someone else's needs and finding them solutions, right? That's all I did. I managed to get the right people around me to help.

So if you were thinking of selling your house through me, is that the kind of agent that you want to work with? Yes. That's the difference between a story and a statistic.

The statistic of me bragging about the fact that I've just sold a house for £11 million or whatever is irrelevant. What my new client wants to know is who they're going to work with.

One of the best stories that we share with people these days is about the difference we actually make. When you're selling a house, you have what's called equity. That equity is yours until someone comes and negotiates it down.

If you give it to an estate agent that's negotiating their own equity down, aka their fee, what are they likely to do with your equity? Instead, you need to demonstrate the tangible value you bring to your clients – show them how you negotiate their equity up.

As an estate agent, use stories that represent what the seller needs, and you’ll build that stronger connection. Rather than you just going out there, trying to win a listing by trying to cut someone's price, cut someone's fee, valuing it too high, or whatever those dirty, crappy little tactics are.

Go out there and have a meaningful conversation. Find out what the client needs, like I did with the American. I never even got to speak to the guy properly, right? But I got to his needs, and we found the solutions and achieved his desired outcome.

When you use stories, make sure you’re demonstrating to, not presenting at, your client. That will make such an incredible difference.

How many estate agents are going to sit there in an appointment and start presenting at someone? And what they're presenting disconnects them from the client and the client's needs.

Rather than a presentation, say: “Let me share with you this story about my last client, Ed. We put his property on the market and the first offer we got was £330,000. The house was on the market for £340,000 and actually we managed to achieve £345,000 by doing this, this, and this. Let me tell you about how we did that.”

Then I’d go on to talk about how we talked to the buyer about why they needed to buy, what they were looking at, the market, and how to compare it. So they got all of the data and the information that they needed to increase their offer to still feel like they were winning.

Now, if you're selling your home, would you rather someone like that, or someone that goes, “Yeah, well, you know, we'll get you sold. And look, here's the best price guy from RightMove, which everybody else will show you. And hopefully we could be in the region of £350, £340, you never know.”

No, no no no. Statistics, if you've got the market share, great. That's just a statistic. But what does that actually mean? How do you bring that to life?

Let's say you've got the most property views. What does that actually mean? What's the story that you can link to that statistic to bring it to life?

Stories use emotion. Stories are emotive. People can relate to stories because they'll see the character in your story and connect to them. If you're a sales person going out there just using statistics and data, you're going to fall by the sword of those relationships because you're not building them.

What you're building is data and business, which is fine. But actually you want to build connections and relationships. Trust is the currency to win in every single conversation that you can have as an estate agent. And that's the currency that people don't invest enough in who work within this industry.

They want the quick win, the easy route. Presenting is a lot easier than demonstrating. Instead of presenting a load of statistics, say to the client, “Let’s walk around your house, and I'm going to show you how I would show it to a buyer.”

Then, make it clear that’s how you’ll do all of their viewings. That’s going to be more compelling than a bunch of stats and talk about RightMove.

So what you’re learning here is don't present, demonstrate. Stats versus stories, bring them both to life. The credibility comes in the statistic. The relatability and the connection comes in the story.

So there you go, stats and stories. How to present your statistics with emotion and connection. I want you guys to be building relationships and trust, not just businesses.

You don't just go and build a business. You build people. How you build people is you build trust.

Go out and build trust, guys. You'll have a lot more fun and a lot more success.

If you want some more great training and advice, head over to my YouTube channel. While you’re there, be sure to ring the bell so you’ll find out about new videos. Also, use the comments section on the videos tell me what you want to hear, what you want me to do training on moving forward. This is just for you in my community. Thanks for coming on this journey to help you become an even better real estate agent.