With a heavy heart, I pull into the car park of another bland hotel just off a motorway junction. As I hobble into the spartan reception area, back aching from the drive, I’m greeted by a Polish accent from behind the desk.

When I tell the receptionist what I’m doing here, she gives me the kind of disapproving look I would expect if I had asked for directions to an SS reunion, rather than to an estate-agency training course.

“Welcome to the Selling in a Changed Marketplace workshop,” announces the young woman in charge of the event as we all take a seat. I’m already tetchy at having to attend, especially as the trainer was probably more familiar with children’s television than repossessions when I was last changing locks at this rate. My demeanour fails to improve when she introduces herself as a “facilitator”.

Being urged to reveal how long I have been in the business doesn’t better my mood, and neither does the fact that I’m the most mature delegate in the room. I tell everyone - tongue in cheek - that my hobby is collecting business cards from failed estate-agency operations. I quickly realise I’ve made a mistake, as my fellow attendees now think I’m odd as well as old.

“So, you want us to write our ideas on Postit Notes and stick them round the walls?” I ask incredulously. I am still numbed from the trust and communication exercise, in which some poor lad was made to kneel blindfolded and lob those soft juggling balls into a wastepaper basket, directed and cajoled by his able-bodied peers. I should have taken the sight-impaired role and sued later at a tribunal.

“So, how many of you have experienced a static or falling market?” asks our facilitator, reading from a prompt card after her laptop fails to switch to the next overhead slide again. As nearly everyone frowns, she fiddles with the keyboard before turning to look pointedly at me. I have no alternative but to share my years of experience.

I am still in a foul mood when I make it back to the office several hours later. “Good course?” asks T, the assistant manager, as I stomp through the door, briefcase full of juvenile handouts I could have written more concisely myself. In lieu of a response, I snap open the locks and show him the paperwork. T skim-reads the contents, then holds up a stray lemon-coloured sticky paper square, attached to the back of the last sheet of A4, which reads “Just drop the f***ing price”.

“I’m not sure it’s a good time to sell,” says the owner at my next valuation. I search my mental box of replies for a suitable riposte, but all I can visualise is an overheated room with every inch of wall-space covered in fluttering yellow geometric shapes, each bearing the earlier expletive-laced advice.

Equilibrium regained, I set about using an old ploy I thought I’d consigned to history. As with most good sales pitches, the key to the deal is a kernel of truth wrapped inside a glossy presentation.

Moving up the ladder in a falling market can cost you less than in a rising one, I tell him. Even with my rudimentary maths, I manage to explain that a 10% drop on the £500,000 home he wants to buy means a bigger discount than the similar percentage hit he is going to have to take on his £350,000 pad.

“So the price gap closes?” he stumbles eventually, looking at me suspiciously. And I confirm that it’s a good time to upscale if you can afford it. “There must be a catch,” he continues. “There’s always a catch.”

“So, did you get it on the market?” demands T on my return. I tell him that, unfortunately, realism on price doesn’t always extend to the owner’s own property.

“He told you to stick it, then?” T asks with a chuckle. I nod in acknowledgement.

You live and learn.

www.agentsdiary.blogspot.com

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