New Reason Prospects Ghost You In 2026

Why is it that real estate agents can get leads, but they can't convert them into deals? Even though they're doing everything right, everything the broker told them, everything that they've been taught, you know, they're following all the scripts and setting appointments, while other agents, like the ones I coach, can close deals almost automatically. Well, it's because you're missing one core principle. And this principle was the single biggest turning point in my entire career. If you haven't met me yet, I'm Ricky Carruth. I closed over a thousand deals as a solo agent in Alabama, and I've coached 10,000 agents over the last decade, and I can tell you uh the way that people choose real estate agents, the way that uh agents sell themselves to prospects has shifted dramatically. Your prospects have already heard every sales tactic. They know the scripts. They've seen the closing techniques. They're immune to urgency and pressure and all these things that were taught as real estate agents. So, the agents who are still using that old playbook, they're getting ghosted. They're losing deals. They're doing everything their broker told them, you know, but the the the prospects are just not doing business with them, and they're wondering why their conversion rate is tanking. Here's what's interesting. The agents who actually close deals, who are like crushing it right now, they're not using better tactics than you. They're actually using the opposite. And the reason it works is because it's the only approach your prospects aren't expecting anymore. You see, you have to come in with something completely different. So, in this video, I want to show you exactly what's changed, why your old approach just doesn't work anymore, and what's actually converting in today's market. And at the end, I'm going to give you a simple exercise, some homework, if you will, that you can use on your next call that will immediately show you the difference. All right. So, for this to make sense, you have to understand first why everything has changed. What I'm going to do is I'm going to show you the exact difference between what you're probably doing and what top producers are currently doing, and then you can decide if this changes how you approach every conversation. So, I've coached this exact scenario with hundreds of agents before. You might be experiencing this right now. If you are, just stick with me. I'll explain exactly why this is happening and how to fix it. Now, I discovered this the hard way. And the And the reason I'm telling you this and even making this video so that you don't have to lose everything like I did to learn it. When I first got in real estate in 2002, I used all the old tactics, scripts, closing techniques, you know, aggressive, pushiness. I was trying to close every prospect. And you know what happened? I made some money. I made over a million bucks in my early 20s, but when the market crashed, I lost everything. I was sleeping in my car, completely broke, homeless, bankrupt, eating out of friends' refrigerators. I was roofing houses, working on oil rigs, serving tables. I had absolutely nothing. I actually had negative. Like I owed money. And I'm telling you right now, the reason I lost everything wasn't the market. Like Like it wasn't even just the market. It wasn't the market at all, because now I realize I could have sold, continued to sell homes through that entire thing. It was because I had built my entire business on tactics that changed with the wind. And And And And And trying to just close people, not on relationships, not on understanding prospects' situations. So, when things got hard, I had nobody. The market crashed, I had no relationships to fall back on. So, not only does what I'm going to teach you today help you convert more now, like immediately, it also helps you actually build a seven-figure business. When I came back in 2008, I did something completely different. I stopped using the old playbook. I met with a potential seller. I remember this like it was yesterday. They were super nervous about listing, right? I and I walked in with my old mentality because it's hard to go cold turkey. It's hard to just say, "Okay, I'm going to flip it off and just quit caring about the deal and just focus on the person." No, no, no. Like this is a process you have to go through. Right? And so I walked in with this this old mentality around, you know, get the listing, you know, you know, get them to sign. Uh but they kept hesitating. They kept saying no. So, I paused and instead of just pushing harder, I asked them a real question. I said, "Tell me what's really going on with you guys?" And the husband and wife, they look at each other and they said, "You know what? Nobody's ever asked us that before." And like the tension in the room completely evaporated. Right? And there was this sense of just comfort. Right? There was a sense of comfort. And what what I came to find out through just continuing to talk to them about their situation, their daughter was moving overseas and they wanted to be closer to her. They were terrified of making the wrong decision. That changed all the energy, right? All the energy. And I stopped trying to close them. My frustration for them, like I was frustrated, right? Sitting there trying to convince them to do something or why they should do something. Like all their reasons lined up to to they should sell. But when they told me this, all my frustration for them vanished. And I stopped trying to close them. I started trying to help them. And that's when I realized something that changed my entire career cuz it was that exact moment that I realized our job is not to sell homes. Our job is to help people do whatever it is that they already want to do. The trick is to get them to tell you what they want to do. Because something is going on in their life that has nothing to do with the house itself. And if you don't know what that is, you cannot help them. And if we're not helping them, then what are we doing? But if you do know what that is, what's going on in their life that's causing them to make the decision to buy or sell this home, the sale literally closes itself. Now, let me show you what's changed, right? And I've noticed this. This is happening more and more and more every single year. Every single year your prospects are getting smarter. They're more advanced. Like they're they're they're hip to like what's going on and and the terminology of sales in general, okay? The old way, right? And this is what has just stopped working in in my opinion. Like my like from what I can tell with my coaching students, okay? The old way is you walk in with a goal. Close the prospect, get the deal, sign the listing, sell the home. You ask qualifying questions. Got to qualify them. Timeline, budget criteria. Push for the appointment, right? Get the signature. If they hesitate, push harder. If they ghost you, move on. Right? And the results are this. Most prospects disappear. So not only do you lose that deal right there, but you lose all the future business that you would have got from that prospect, right? And that's your million-dollar business walking out the door. The new way, and this is what's actually working and what will continue to work more and more and more as time goes on. You walk in without like a goal. You walk in with a question. What is this person trying to accomplish? You ask discovery questions, not qualifying questions, discovery. What's happening in your life? What does the next chapter look like? If this house doesn't sell, what are you going to do? Right? Listen more than you talk and ask more questions than you talk about yourself. If they hesitate, you already know why. You haven't made them feel comfortable yet. If they ghost you, it's because you haven't asked real questions. But if you do this right, guess what happens? Prospects open up, trust you, and they close themselves. That's the difference, right? And the difference is one is about getting what you want, and the other is about understanding what they want. And I'm just telling you, in today's market with prospects who have heard every tactic, only one of these actually works at a high level, at scale, enough for you to build your business to the level, to the size that you want. Here's the thing about prospects. They don't resist you when you're trying to understand their situation. They resist you when you're trying to close them. They resist you when you're trying to get their signature. And they can smell the intention a mile away. You can't fake care. You can't script genuine interest. The second they feel like you're more interested in in in your commission than them, they check out. That's when they start ghosting you. It's not when you're asking deeper questions that they run away. It's when you're pushing to close without ever really understanding what it is they're trying to do and why. Cuz the moment they realize that you only care about the sale and not them, they're gone. They'll go find somebody else. Or they'll keep shopping. They'll disappear for months. You'll never know why, but I'm telling you right now it's because you never asked them what's really going on. And here's the real disconnect for agents. Most agents want what's best for their prospects. Like they're great people who want the best for their prop but for for for for others. But the way that they communicate using all the mainstream scripts and objection handlers and all the things gives them commission breath. And so the prospect runs for the hills, and the agent just doesn't understand why. They're doing everything that they were told to do, but it's just not quite working. Well, I'm telling you right now. Here's how you flip the entire thing. Think of your prospects the same way you think about AI. Like Claude, like ChatGPT, think about your prospects like they are the AI. When you go to AI, what do you do? You prompt it with questions because there's information you need. You create prompts to get the answers you need. You ask it the right questions in the right way and it opens up and gives you everything. That's exactly how you should think about your prospects. They are the AI, you are the prompter. You're there to ask questions to get answers. Your job is to create the right prompts to get them to tell you the information you need to help them. If you don't have all the information, you can't help them. You don't know what they're trying to do. And this is where prospects feel like they're you know they're they're you the agent is not on their team, not on the same page cuz you're trying to push for a result. You're trying to push for the next step when that next step doesn't line up with what the prospect wants to do. Right? Questions that you should prompt them with. Like tell me what's happening in your life. Like what's what's causing you to make the decision to do this. This is a beautiful home. I would never sell this home. Why in the world would you sell this amazing place? Like what's making you want to move? What's happening? Did somebody die? Did somebody have a baby? Did somebody lose a job? What's going on? These are all prompts. What does the next chapter look like for you? Why do you want to move there? Why do you want to be on the water? Do you like jet skiing? Do you like fishing? Oh, your daughter's going going to college, so you have an extra bedroom, so you want to downgrade. You don't need the extra bedroom. You don't want to have to clean up that much house and and you'd like to be in in this area. Where's your daughter going to go to college? What is she going to study? I'm interested in these things. Right? What keeps you up at night about this situation? It's a prompt. You're not being nosy. You're not invading privacy. You're being pro This is called professionalism. And you're prompting them to give you the information that will allow you to actually help them. The moment you start thinking about it this way, I'm telling you right now, everything in your world will completely 180. It will completely flip. You stop being scared. You start You stop apologizing for asking questions. You stop hedging your questions. You just ask them clearly and directly, "Tell me what's really going on." And guess what happens? They tell you. They will tell you. And when you experience I'm telling you right now, I've coached so many agents. When they experience this for the first time where they they they, you know, they conquered their fears of asking these deeper questions, and the prospect opens up to them, like I've had so many agents come to me and say, "Oh my goodness. Like, the prospect told me all this stuff." And I'm like, "Yeah. Like, how does that feel?" And they're like, "It feels amazing. I'm going to do this to every single prospect." This is the game changer, right here, when it comes to converting leads. This is the difference between getting a lot of leads and converting a lot of leads. Now, here's the thing that actually makes it work. Now, what I want you to get this. It's not just about asking the right questions. It's about making them comfortable enough to actually answer honestly. And this is the number one skill, I believe, to make people feel comfortable with you. Comfortable enough to tell you everything they want to do and why, so you can help them do it. But if you don't develop this skill of making people feel comfortable with you, like think about it like this. If somebody feels comfortable with you, is there a chance they're going to do business with you? Yep. If they're uncomfortable with you, is there any chance in the world they're going to do business with you? Absolutely not. So, right then and there, the goal with any conversation with any prospect, like the very first step is make them feel comfortable with you, right? They've got to feel safe or they're not going to tell you the truth and they'll start to give you surface level answers. They'll tell you what they think you want to hear. This is when you hear like, "Oh, I'll sell in 6 months. Call me back then." And the agent's like, "Oh, yeah, I'll I'll call you in 6 months." And that prospect knows cuz they've used that line over and over and over and over again. They've used that line and it makes agents run for the hills and like they call back in 6 months and they just ghost them, right? They know what to say to make you go away. Um and it's like, "Wait a minute. You want to sell in 6 months? Well, tell me this. What's going on in your life in 6 months that's causing you to want to sell in 6 months?" Like keep the conversation going because here's the thing. It's like, "Okay, do you want to close in 6 months or do you want to start the process in 6 months?" You see that is two completely different servicing needs. And if I don't understand what the entire situation, how can I help this person? If they're just like, "Call me back in 6 months." You call back in 6 months like, "Oh, yeah, we sold. We closed last week." And you're like, "Wait a minute. You said you want to sell in 6 months." And the seller's like, "Yeah, we want to sell in 6 months. We just It's 6 months and we just sold." Like it's 6 months. We sold. Guys, you got You have to ask the questions to understand their situation, their timelines, like what's going on in their life. Otherwise, they're just going to tell you what they think you want to hear so that you go away. And you'll never really know what's going on. So, how do you make someone feel extremely comfortable? It's way more simple than you think, right? Number one, stop performing. Number two, stop trying to be the expert. Stop trying to be perfect, know everything. No, no, no. They do not care what you know, they just want to know that you care. Stop trying to close them. And here's what you do, just become genuinely curious about their situation as if they're your mother or father, best friend from high school, brother, cousin. That's it. Genuine curiosity is what makes people comfortable. Not your track record, not your credentials. Nobody I'm telling you right Nobody cares how many deals you've closed. Right? Not your closing techniques, just real, authentic interest and understanding what they what they're going through. When somebody feels like you actually care about their life, not their signature, everything changes. Their shoulders relax. You'll see it. You'll see it. They'll like when I had that, you know, listening appointment and I said, "What's really going on with you guys?" Like you could see them like they just completely relaxed. Right? They leaned in. They start telling you things that weren't they weren't planning to tell you. Right? That That's what we have to master here. And that comfort is what opens them up to actually listening to you and working with you. I'm telling you, this is it, man. Um here's the truth. And I'm going to say it like this. You, right now, agent watching this, are everything someone wants in a real estate agent. Like you are the perfect You have everything that they want. Like if when people talk to you, they they they love you and want to work with you. You're hardworking, you're kind, you're dependable, you're honest, you want the best for people. But here's the problem, the way you've been taught to communicate doesn't line up with those things. It doesn't line up with who you actually are. So when you talk to prospects, they never see the real you. They see they see this version of you that is basically a robot of like the the the product of the mainstream coaching and training. They don't see the person they would love to work with even though you're there. They just see another commission hungry agent, which is the opposite of who you are. The trick is to line up who you are with how you're communicating with your prospects. Ooh, when you master that, game over. Your conversion will shoot through the roof. Your business will take off like a rocket ship. Okay? Here's why most agents don't do this, by the way. They're scared. And not scared in the way that you think. They're scared that asking deeper questions is too private. Right? They're scared that if they ask them about what's really going on in their life, they're going to get upset that you're digging. That They're They're scared that like they're you're invading their privacy. Right? Um that they're going to think you're being nosy. So, you stick to the safe questions, right? And And And questions about timelines and budgets and closing dates and you know, criteria. The questions that have nothing to do with their actual situation. Okay? But here's the truth that's going to change it all. The questions you're scared to ask are not private at all. Your prospects want to tell you what's going on. When you do I'm telling you every time when agent finally does this, the first time they come back and they're like, "Game changer." Like once you experience this one time, okay? Your prospects want to tell you what's going on. They're actually hoping someone will ask these things. They're sitting there waiting for someone to care enough to ask what's really happening because guess what? Nobody ever does. Nobody ever does and this is what's going to differentiate you. Most agents are too afraid. You're So, your prospects sit in silence feeling unheard, feeling like you don't actually care about them. And you know what happens next? They ghost you. And when you start going deeper with your prospects and spending more time talking about their life than you do about their house, something massive shifts. Your new clients start to see how different you are from every other agent because you're the only one who who are who's actually showing them that you care about them more than any any other other agents. Now, here's an exercise that that you can use. And you can start doing this today. All right? Next time you talk to someone you're genuinely comfortable with, and I'm talking about that you're close with, your mom, your dad, your best friend from high school, your cousin, I want you to take a mental snapshot of that moment that you're in this conversation with them. And I want you to notice everything. The tone of your voice, the speed you're talking, your body language, how relaxed you are, the energy between the two of you. Like how comfortable they are with you and how comfortable you are with them. That's what you want to emulate with your prospects. How the natural, right? The na- how natural the conversation flows. Just observe it. Like like pay attention to it. Be conscious when you're talking to someone that you care about immensely. I want you to I want you to think about the difference in the way you communicate with people you're really close to and your prospects. Right? Really unders- like understand the difference. Okay? And I want you to feel how comfortable like the two of you are. And I want you to notice the ease. Notice the trust. Right? How natural it is, right? That is the baseline. That's what you're aiming for in every prospecting conversation. Now, when you're when you're on a prospecting call, I want you to think back to that moment. Think back to that person. Try to like emulate that exact feeling. Same tone, same speed, same relaxation, same naturalness, same energy. The moment you become comfortable, they become comfortable cuz they can sense it. Right? When when they realize that when they're like, "Whoa, like you're throwing some red flags because you're not comfortable." And it's because you're you're you're hiding your confidence behind the wrong thing. You're hiding your confidence behind your credibility in the market, how many houses you sold, how much you know about properties versus what you should actually be hiding your confidence behind, which is who you are as a person, that you want the best for people. That's what That's what should give you the most confidence. Like you don't have to know anything about a property. You don't have to have sold uh any houses. The fact that you walk in there with this this this energy, this this sense of confidence that's unmatched because you know you're there for them, that you're there to help them. You know that you're willing to go above and beyond for anything that they need. And that as soon as you hear what it is they're trying to do, you're going to help them do it. That's where your confidence should come from. That's the reason why you should be comfortable in these situations. It's really that simple. There's no script, there's no technique. It's just you being you, baby. It's you being authentically you. Your prospects don't trust scripted agents. I'm going to tell you right now. They don't trust techniques. And and and again, the more time goes by, the more this video is going to be more and more and more true. Right? They trust real people. And the most real version of you is how you are with people you genuinely care about. So, just be that person with your prospects. Your prospects, they don't need a perfect agent. They they they they need a real agent who cares. And the way to show you care is to be comfortable enough to actually listen. When you do this, you'll notice something immediately. Right? That like this like you can you can see massive strides in your business today if you just implement what I'm talking about. And your prospects, guess what they going to do? They going to start volunteering like like such important information. Information, by the way, you never had to ask for. They going to You going to ask a question and then they're going to tell you like three answers. Hey, if you want to see me interview three agents who use this exact conversion system to make over a hundred thousand dollars per month, click this video right now before it goes away.