Julian Mather
When uncertainty goes up, action goes down. Many of you will be seeing it in your businesses now with fewer enquiries, and more “We’ll wait and see.”
Your clients haven’t stopped wanting to buy. They’ve just stopped wanting to decide. And that’s a very different problem, one that calls for a very different response from you.
Your job hasn’t changed, but your role in the room has. Right now, you need to be less hard-nosed and more of a trusted guide.
Here are four ways to help them move.
1. Choose informed optimism
Right now, your clients are being fed a relentless diet of worst-case scenarios. Headlines designed to alarm, not to inform. Rates. Conflicts. Economic forecasts wrapped in dramatic language.
But here’s the thing: if you don’t offer a counterbalance, who will?
Your clients need someone in their corner who can look at the full picture, not just the scary bits.
Informed optimism isn’t “it’ll all be fine.” It’s “Let’s look at this properly.” It’s about bringing data, context, and perspective to a conversation that’s been dominated by anxiety. After all, the market hasn’t stopped. Properties are still transacting, and opportunities are still out there.
You’re not there to predict the future, you’re there to stop the fear from writing it.
2. Walk into the cave
There’s an old idea that the treasure you seek is in the cave you fear to enter. Every hesitant client has a cave.
They’ll say, “What if prices drop after we buy?”, or “What if we overpay in this market?”, or “What if we get it wrong?”
Most people avoid answering these questions because they’re uncomfortable ones to answer. So, they get talked around, minimised, or left to fester… which is exactly the wrong approach.
As their trusted expert, you should walk straight in and ask the question they’re not voicing. Name the fear before they do, not to dismiss it, but to unpack it. Because vague fear keeps people frozen, while clear, specific, named fear can be examined, tested, and planned for.
Once a client can articulate exactly what they’re afraid of, you can work with it together, and that’s when people start moving again.
3. Dismantle the myth of the perfect decision
Here’s a trap your clients fall into, and sometimes you might too: the belief that there’s a right moment, a perfect set of conditions, a time when all the uncertainty has cleared, and the decision becomes obvious.
In reality, that moment rarely exists.
Buy now? There’s risk. Wait six months? There’s risk. Do nothing? That’s a risky decision too, it just feels safer because its consequences are invisible. Sitting on the sidelines in a rising or shifting market carries its own very real cost, like opportunity lost, stamp duty thresholds crossed, and borrowing capacity eroded.
When you help clients see that waiting isn’t actually the safe option, it’s just a different kind of risk, something shifts in their thinking. They stop searching for certainty that will never come, and start focusing on making the best decision available to them right now, with what they know.
4. Remind them why they’re not doing this alone
In uncertain markets, people often feel like they’re out on a limb all alone and swaying in the breeze.
But that isn’t the case with your clients. The people who navigate change well aren’t the ones who white-knuckle it solo. They’re the ones who get good advice, build a good team, and move with more confidence because they’re not carrying the weight of the decision entirely by themselves.
Your role isn’t just to find a property. It’s to help your clients play a bigger game than they could play without you. To see more options, negotiate a better deal and make decisions with confidence. In a noisy, uncertain market, remind them they aren’t in the dark and wandering, but rather have, in you, an expert guide lighting the way.
Fear from uncertainty isn’t new. Markets have always had their scary chapters. What changes is the headline, not the human wiring underneath it. People freeze when the stakes feel high, and the path forward feels unclear. Your job, more than ever, is to be the person in the room who hears the fear without being consumed by it. You can’t remove uncertainty from the market, but you can stop it from removing your clients from their future.
Julian Mather is a keynote speaker and change specialist with a background spanning army sniper, ABC TV cameraman, professional magician, and published author. He helps individuals and organisations navigate uncertainty and lead through change.
Julian will be presenting at the REBAA National Conference, 3-4 August at Noosa Peppers Resort, Noosa Heads, QLD.
