Stop Showing Homes Until You Do This

By Katie Taylor & James Goodman

With a combined 30 years of experience in the real estate industry, Katie and James lead the Goodman Taylor Team, one of the top-performing teams in the Greater Phoenix area.

If you’re a buyer’s agent right now, let us ask you something. How many hours have you spent in the last six months showing homes to people who never bought? People who ghosted you, went with another agent, or turned out not to be financially qualified in the first place?

If that number is higher than you’d like to admit, you’re not alone. But here’s the reality: with existing-home sales down 3.6% month-over-month, every deal matters. You can’t afford to give your time away to people who aren’t serious.

The agents who are consistently getting paid right now aren’t the ones showing the most homes. They’re the ones who qualify before they show. Here’s the process we use and teach to every agent on our team.

1. Are they financially ready? Before you show a single home, you need to know if this person can actually buy one. That means asking directly: Have you been pre-approved by a lender? Not pre-qualified. Pre-approved. A pre-approval means a lender has reviewed their income, credit, and assets and confirmed what they can borrow. A pre-qualification is just a preliminary conversation.

If they haven’t talked to a lender yet, that’s the first step. Connect them with one before you do anything else. Sellers frequently require a pre-approval letter before accepting an offer. If your buyer doesn’t have one, you’re not just wasting your time. You’re wasting theirs, too. And you’re setting yourself up for a deal that falls apart at the worst possible moment.

2. Are they actually serious? This is the part most agents skip because it feels uncomfortable. But you need to ask: what’s your timeline? Are you working with any other agents right now? Have you been looking for a while? What’s driving this move?

You’re not interrogating them. You’re having a professional conversation to understand where they are in the process. A buyer who says “we’re just starting to look and we’re not in a rush” is a very different situation from “our lease is up in 60 days, and we need to be in a home by then.” Both are valid, but they require very different levels of your time and energy.

The agents who qualify their leads upfront can be selective about where they invest their time, and that’s what keeps their business profitable instead of just busy.

3. Will they commit to you? Once you know they’re financially ready and genuinely motivated, the buyer agreement becomes a natural next step, not an awkward ask. You’ve already demonstrated value by asking the right questions, connecting them with a lender, and showing them you have a professional process.

Now you’re saying: here’s how we work together, here’s what we do for you, here’s what it costs, and here’s what we need from you in return.

The buyer agreement is now required before you can even tour a home together. But the agents who struggle with it are the ones who try to get it signed before they’ve built any trust. If you’ve done the first two steps right, the agreement is just the natural conclusion of a professional conversation, not a sales pitch.

The bottom line. The agents who are getting paid consistently aren’t doing anything magical. They’re just not skipping steps. They verify financial readiness, assess motivation and timeline, and get a commitment before they invest their time. That’s it. Three questions, asked in the right order, before you ever open a front door.

If your current brokerage isn’t giving you a system for this, or if you’re figuring it out on your own and it’s not working, let’s talk. We train our agents on exactly how to have this conversation so they’re never working for free.

Call us at (480) 382-8093 or email us at james@theeverydayagent.com. You can also visit theeverydayagent.com to learn more about how we support our agents.