What You Say When You Do Not Know the Answer

It happens in most appointments eventually. A client asks something specific, about a clause, a tax position, a building, a timeline, and you do not know the answer.

What you do in the next five seconds will be remembered longer than the answer would have been.

The three usual responses

There are three well worn paths out of that moment. The first is a guess dressed as an answer, delivered with enough confidence that the question closes. The second is deflection, where the subject is moved on smoothly and the client notices that it was moved. The third is over explanation, where a great deal is said around the question without the question being touched.

All three come from the same place, which is a belief that an agent who does not know something has lost ground. That belief is worth examining, because clients rarely behave as though it were true.

What is actually being tested

A client asking a technical question is usually not auditing your knowledge. Most of them know perfectly well that an agent is not a surveyor, a solicitor or an accountant. What they are testing is nearer to this. What will this person do when something comes up that they cannot handle themselves, which it will, because it does in almost every transaction.

Seen that way, the moment is not a hole in your expertise. It is a free demonstration of how you behave under uncertainty, and it arrives before they have committed to anything.

The cost of a confident wrong answer

A guess that turns out to be right costs nothing and teaches the client nothing. A guess that turns out to be wrong is expensive in a way that is hard to recover from, because it surfaces later, usually through a third party, often at the worst point in the transaction.

At that moment the client learns two things at once. That the information was wrong, and that you were willing to sound certain about something you did not know. The second is far more damaging than the first, and it quietly puts everything else you told them under review.

Saying it plainly and then doing something

The alternative is not an apology. It is a short, unembarrassed sentence that says you do not know, followed by something specific. Who you will ask, and by when you will come back. Then the part that decides whether any of this was worth anything, which is coming back by that time whether or not you have the full answer.

That sequence does something a correct answer could not have done. It shows the client what happens when the transaction throws up a problem, which is the thing they were really asking about. An agent who says they will find out and then does is demonstrating the service rather than describing it.

Worth noticing in your own appointments

Most of us have a default here and have never identified it. The way to find yours is not to think about it in the abstract but to catch it in the moment. The next time a question lands that you cannot answer, notice what your mouth does before you have decided anything. That is the habit, and it is the only one worth working on.

A question to sit with this week

Think of the last time a client asked you something you could not answer. Which of the three did you reach for, and if you had simply said that you did not know and would find out by Tuesday, what would it actually have cost you?

If you want to work on these moments

If you would like to look at the moments in your appointments that you handle on instinct, you can book a discovery call.