I recently realized that our approach to using AI with our clients is all wrong. Virtually everyone in the industry is starting with prompts that ask the AI to write a post, an email or perform some other task.
Why is this a problem? Essentially, we are placing the cart before the horse. What we should be doing instead is starting with our clients’ wants and needs, then using AI to customize its output to fit those needs.
How can we begin to solve for x? In my book, it means good old-fashioned buyer and seller interviews to determine what matters most to them first. Here’s how to navigate the interview process and how I personally coach AI, using the data I collect to create better prompts that foster deeper relationships with my clients.
Part 1: Start with you
Preparing for a great personal interview with your clients requires minimal preparation, but a thorough interview will yield maximum results for your business. Taking the time to speak with your clients shows that you value what they have to say and that personal details matter.
1. Listen before you list
For sellers, conduct a “listening consultation” where you interview them about what matters most to them. If you’re not already using one, you can adapt the version in this article.
2. Ask better questions
For buyers, ask about their household, pets, any special needs they may have, their motivation to sell, financial details and the price range, and do a deep dive into their lifestyle at home and when away.
3. Identify client type
Determine what type of client they are — first-time buyer, right-sizing boomer, growing family, etc. Each type has different priorities and emotional triggers.
4. Review their social media posts yourself
This will give you additional clues about what matters most to them. While most AIs will tell you they can read social media posts, don’t trust them to do so.
Even if they can read the posts, the way that generative AI works is that it must first “recreate” the post it found on a social media site when it responds to you. The estimated error rate with AI has a wide range.
Do this yourself, since you will pick up nuances that AIs aren’t trained to find, and you’re less likely to make an error.
Part 2: Use AI to customize what you have found
Using the information you have collected about your clients, you will build a prompt around their personal interest and preferences.
1. Create your master prompt
This process begins with writing a very detailed “master prompt” for your business. This is a single “master” document that provides the AI with a detailed profile of your business, which the AI will use in all future work you do with it.
2. Add meta prompts for specific clients
Once your master prompt is in place, write a meta prompt for your specific buyers or sellers that describes each client in detail (without names or confidential data). This allows you to customize AI outputs to a specific client. For example:
Using my master prompt, I’m working with a single woman in her mid-40s who’s in the high-tech business. She’s an avid runner and hiker, loves being near great restaurants and a lively arts scene. She travels frequently for work and wants something low-maintenance. She prefers a house to a condo because of all the HOA insurance issues in her area. Make the case with pros and cons for buying a house vs. a condo in (the zip code or general market area).
That single instruction gives AI everything it needs to customize your response to fit your voice and approach, as well as your client’s specific lifestyle.
You can use meta prompts like this in dozens of everyday situations:
- Writing follow-up messages that sound personal, not templated
- Summarizing inspection reports in plain language
- Drafting scripts for open-house videos or community spotlights
- Creating client-intake forms or checklists tailored to your market
Each meta prompt helps you train the AI to work the specific way you do with your clients.
Part 3: Use AI to deepen your client relationships
When you combine a detailed master prompt with specific meta prompts, you create a practical framework for running your business using AI support that feels natural and personal. Instead of producing generic marketing language, you generate communication that resembles how you would speak in a one-on-one consultation.
This approach transforms AI from a generic tool into a way to deepen your client relationships by making the AI’s responses about your clients. In fact, the better the information you feed the AI, the deeper your understanding of your clients’ personalities, motivations and lifestyle priorities will be. In other words, you stop sounding like every other agent online and start sounding like you are “their agent.”
To illustrate this point, an AI that understands you work primarily with tech professionals will naturally emphasize commute times, bandwidth reliability and nearby innovation hubs.
Another agent’s AI, tuned for boomers right-sizing, will highlight privacy, ADU compliance and access to medical care. Both agents use AI, but each communicates through a lens of personal insight because you taught it to do so.
Part 4: Appeal to humans first
Every successful prompt begins with empathy. Your personal emotional intelligence cannot be recreated with AI. Before you open a chat window, remind yourself that AI doesn’t know your clients — you do. It can’t read a pause in their voice, sense uncertainty about timing or recognize that “being closer to my grandkids” is shaping their move.
Your role is to translate those human details into structured language that the AI can use. That’s the real beauty of this approach: human insight enhancing digital communication. When you approach AI this way, the technology does the heavy lifting on drafts and data, while you focus on interpretation, nuance and connection, things no algorithm can replicate.
Start teaching AI who you and your clients are
When you take the time to build the human foundation first, every message, script and marketing piece will feel tailored, rather than templated. This is precisely the type of connection today’s clients want and need from us.
AI can help you work faster, but only you can make your business feel personal. In a world that’s becoming more digital by the day, the agents who master the balance between empathy and technology will be the ones who own the future of real estate.
Bernice Ross is president and CEO of BrokerageUP and RealEstateCoach.com, the founder of Profit.RealEstate and a national speaker, author and trainer with over 1,500 published articles.
