How to choose a role-play practice tool for real estate
Agents choosing a practice tool are usually looking at four kinds of product. Each one is built for a different job. This page sets out what each kind does well, who it suits, and the questions worth asking any of them before you pay.
Four kinds of tool
| Real-call grading | Suites and dialers with a role-play button | Practice partners | General AI chat assistants | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it does | Records your live calls and scores them | Runs your business (CRM, dialing, content, scripts) and includes a practice feature | Rehearses the call before you make it, against a prospect who answers back | Plays a seller when you describe one in a chat |
| Who it suits | Managers who want every live call heard and scored | Agents who want one app for calling, marketing and practice | Agents who want daily reps before the phone session | Agents rehearsing one conversation, once |
| Listens to your real calls | Yes, by design | Varies by product | Usually not | No |
| How it is usually priced | Per seat or by quote, sized for teams | A monthly plan, with practice included | A monthly or yearly plan | Free, or a chat plan you already pay for |
| How practice is usually measured | Often hours of live calls a month | Included, often with a time limit on each practice call | Often a set number of minutes or sessions a month | The chat plan's own limits |
| Ask before you buy | What your state requires before a call is recorded, and what you tell prospects | How many practice sessions the plan allows, and how long each call can run | How real the prospect sounds and what the feedback grades | Who writes the seller, the objections and the grading, each time |
Seven questions to ask any tool
- Does the prospect behave like a real seller, or read objections from a list?
- What does the feedback grade: what you did, or how closely you matched a script?
- Is practice capped by minutes, sessions or the length of a call?
- Can your team install its own scripts and dialogs?
- Does it work in Spanish, written in Spanish from the start?
- Is there an app for your phone?
- Can you try a full session free before you pay?
Where 10before10™ fits
10before10™ is a practice partner. It never listens to a real call, on purpose. Here are its answers to the seven questions.
| Question | 10before10™ |
|---|---|
| The prospect | Behaves like a seller: an adult decision maker who raises the objections agents hear every week. Thirty situations, including the listing table, price adjustment, recruiting, multifamily and selling to agents |
| The feedback | A scorecard after every call that grades what you did, in your own words: the ten habits, the ten rules, a close or the next question at every opening. Never script match |
| Caps | No session caps on any plan |
| Your team's scripts | Installed and checked against ten rules that would survive the prospect reading the transcript |
| Spanish | English and Spanish, written natively |
| Phone | Web, iPhone and Android |
| Free to try | One full call with the full card, no account |
| Price | $49 a month or $490 a year; teams of three to nine $39 an agent a month; ten seats or more $29 a seat a month |
Three more questions for a team or a brokerage
Every unrehearsed call uses a lead your office paid for as a drill, and you find out who was ready only after the call.
- Does it practice your own dialogs and forms, and do they stay yours when an agent leaves?
- What does the leader see: who is ready to call, or private numbers like commission?
- Does it record prospects, and what does your state require before it does?
Here are its answers. The leader's tools start at ten seats. Three to nine agents are billed on the leader's card, and each agent gets the full practice.
| For your team | 10before10™ |
|---|---|
| Your dialogs and forms | Your scripts and handlers become the practice bank, and your blank forms are walked and quizzed. When an agent leaves, the seat returns to you and your material stays with you |
| New agents | A thirty-day onboarding track, gated by scored calls, the forms quizzes and your own checklist. It ends in a cleared mark you and the agent both see |
| What the leader sees | Who is practicing, who passed which form and who is cleared to call, with a weekly one-on-one sheet per agent. Activity counts, never commission figures |
| Recording | Never. It does not listen to real calls, so no prospect is ever recorded |
| Every seat | The same practice a solo agent gets: no session caps, every situation, a card after every call, in English and Spanish |
| Price | Three to nine agents: $39 an agent a month on the leader's card, 7 days free. Ten seats or more: $29 a seat a month, or $290 a seat a year by card or invoice |
| Try it first | Ten seats or more: a free fourteen-day pilot, with a progress report by email at day 7 and day 14 |
What it does not do
It does not record or grade your real calls, and it does not run your CRM or your marketing. If you want those, a real-call grading tool or a suite is the right fit. This product is the ten minutes before ten and the card that follows.
What a morning with it looks like
- A morning, not a session. The 52-week plan, one action and one close a day, a streak with a rest day, and a daily line. The habit is the product.
- Graded on behavior, in your own words. The card quotes your call back to you and names the one thing to change, against a method written by two brokers and published in full.
- Handle the objection, then close, or ask the next question. Every opening the prospect gave you, and whether a close or the next question followed. After a no, the card looks for the answer and the new close.
- Live Cues. Before a real call, the objections that call produces are one tap away, with the move in bold and your own line first. Without listening to the call.
- The handler ladder. The objection that beat you, practiced in four rungs until it is yours, and raised by tomorrow's prospect.
How to choose
If you want your real calls recorded and scored, choose a tool that does that and say so to your prospects. If you already pay for a suite or a dialer with a practice button, try the button first. If you want to practice every morning against a prospect who behaves like a seller and get a card that changes one thing at a time, make one free call here and read the card.
That takes about ten minutes and costs nothing.
If you lead a team or a brokerage, put it on your own dialogs first: for teams, for brokerages.
Questions
Why don't you name other tools? Features and prices change every month, and a page that ranks its own product first helps no one decide. The questions above work on any tool, including this one.
Is $49 a month more than other tools? It depends on the kind of tool.
A suite or a dialer may cost less and include a practice button; real-call grading is often priced for teams. Practice partners often sell a set number of minutes a month, and this plan sets none.
Do you ever plan to grade real calls? No. The method says the app never listens to a real call, and Live Cues exists so it does not have to.
Can't I practice with a general AI chat assistant? You can, if you write the seller, the objections and the grading rules each time, and grade yourself.
A practice partner brings a seller who sounds real, the lead card, a card that grades what you did and a plan, in English and Spanish. Your only job is the call.