We Are Selling with Lee Woodward

The Auction Reserve Discussion with Danny Grant

• Lee Woodward • Episode 8

Share episode

Send a message directly to Lee ( Include your details )

We break down how to run an effective auction reserve meeting that protects vendors from regret and sets clear expectations before auction day.

This episode walks agents through a calm, structured reserve conversation focused on preparing for the worst—so the best outcome can happen.

• setting the reserve based on what the vendor won’t accept
• preparing vendors mentally for all auction-day scenarios
• protecting the reserve and using it strategically on the day
• using buyer feedback and campaign signals to guide reserve decisions
• understanding where bidding is likely to slow—and why that matters
• avoiding post-auction regret by making decisions early
• handling the “we want more, but we want to sell” conversation

Essential listening for agents who want confident vendors, cleaner auctions, and better on-the-day decisions.






Hosted by Lee Woodward Training Systems

Brought to you by The Complete Salesperson Course & Super Coaching Program

🎓 The Complete Salesperson Course – Australia’s premier real estate training, delivered nationally throughout the year. Build the skills, systems, and mindset to perform at the highest level. Learn more →

📚 The Super Coaching Program – An exclusive membership providing ongoing coaching, resources, and strategies to support sustained growth in real estate. Join today →




Discover more:

Lee Woodward:

Hello and welcome to the podcast We Are Selling. My name's Lee Woodward of Realtair. Realtair is the one platform of choice of real estate professionals allowing you to pitch, sign, and sell real estate. Each week we tackle a challenge or in-depth topic that the agents need entering out in the field. And featured in our last episode, we had the incredible Mr. Danny Grant, and he's going to come back today and discuss how we conduct an auction reserve meeting to best manage expectations. Let's cross to Danny. Let's do the reserve meeting. We'll step into chat mode. We're sitting down, you're chatting to myself. I'm selling the property myself, Danny. I I don't have anybody else involved. I'm going back overseas and the campaign's gone well, it hasn't gone awful. And you're stepping into mode and rolling.

Danny Grant:

Lee, as I mentioned to you a couple of days ago before this meeting about when we set the reserve, setting the reserve is about really thinking about what you won't take, not what you do, what you will take for the property. And what I mean by that is that we've got to prepare for the worst. So our campaign's gone pretty well. However, I've certainly had campaigns that have gone really well, and then on the day we weren't prepared for it and made a mistake on not selling on the day when we should have. So I don't want that to happen. So it might sound funny, but we need to assume the worst here. And part of that is let's go back before we started the campaign. You know, we need to think about what your minimum selling price would have been at that stage. Now, your reserve is between you, me, and the auctioneer. I protect it fiercely. No one will ever know what your reserve is, but I really need to know what that bottom figure is so I don't ruin it for you on auction day. So when I'm sending a vendor bid, when I'm talking with buyers, I know what my minimums are. Now the reality is I'm going to talk much higher than your reserve because it's not about selling at your bottom line. It's about trying to still get you over the reserve. But we need to know, even if it just falls within 5,000 of your reserve, that you definitely won't sell it. I don't want you nervous on the day, I don't want you panicking or taking too much time to think about whether you will or won't sell it. And the reason for that is that the worst thing in the world is when you wake up on Sunday morning with regret. Now that regret will come in two ways. Either I regret that I did sell it and I regret that I didn't sell it on the day. So we want to be absolutely clear what is the very bottom that you will accept on the day. What's your recommendation, Denny? Lee, there's two ways that most of my clients look at this. One is if we've had an offer through the campaign, that's where we set the reserve. Now we haven't had an offer. The next way we look at it is where we've had majority of our feedback. So where would we expect buyers are going to think your reserve is? So we need to think about where it's going to slow at an auction. So every auction will have a certain crescendo and will go quite high, and then it starts to slow. And it's at that point when it starts to slow that if I come and see you, and then when I come back out and it's still not on the market, it normally dies. So we need to think about where that point is that it's going to slow. Now I think most of our feedback has been around 1.8. I think if we got around 1.8 or just over, it would then probably start to slow. And then if it does start to slow and we announce, yep, we're definitely selling, it might be enough to give it a kick. Whereas if we don't announce that it's going to sell at that point, it might just die. So I would recommend something around that 1.8 or just over.

Lee Woodward:

But Danny, you know we want more than that. We'd be disappointed at 1.8.

Danny Grant:

Well, look, if it uh goes for more than that, I'm not going to put up a stop sign and stop buyers from paying more. We're just going to let it go. And the reality is that that's what I'm going to aim for. I really want it to go over reserve so we don't have to worry about it. But we need to prepare for the worst. And the question is, if bidding stopped at 1.75, what would you do? I really don't know. That's really what we need to think about between now and then. We need to think about is it that 1.8 is your reserve? And then we need to think about if it goes within five of that, what would you do? So that's really what you need to think about now. I mean if it did fall somewhere between that one seven five and one point eight, and that was it, you know. I know you may not be quite happy with it, but would you be happy to release it at that?

Lee Woodward:

We want to sell.

Danny Grant:

Yeah. Okay, well I'd recommend we probably set the reserve somewhere between that 1.75, 1.8.

Lee Woodward:

Thank you, Danny. That concludes another edition of We Are Selling. For anything to do with pitch, sign, and sell the Realtair platform of real estate professionals. Call 1300 367 412. I'm Lee Woodward. Thank you for listening.