Some people think cold calling for real estate is outdated. But if it is, why does it still work?
In a world where we’re glued to our devices and encounter AI bots daily, having a conversation with an actual human being has become a luxury.
Leveraging the lost art of human connection can help you stand out in today’s market, especially with buyers who didn’t grow up with ChatGPT – the ones who actually hold the most acquisition power.
In this article, real estate’s top experts break down the best cold calling scripts to help you acquire loyal buyers and sellers by standing out in a sea of automation-obsessed agents.
Tricking Your Brain to Love Real Estate Cold Calling
The biggest hurdle for most agents when they decide to give cold calling a chance is fear.
After all, there’s no hiding on a cold call. You’re there, with another person on the other side of the line, who didn’t ask to be called.
The good news is, everyone else is experiencing the same fear. Which means, there are a lot less agents cold calling than there are texting, emailing, or creating content. You know, all the activities that allow you to hide behind your laptop and never actually feel exposed.
If you can nail your real estate cold calling scripts, you’ve got a huge competitive advantage over the rest of the agents in your market.
Brandon Mulrenin breaks down how he was able to trick his brain to love cold calling.
Unsurprisingly, these mind tricks work for anything related to developing good habits:
- think about your future self: “if I don’t miss a day of cold outreach from now until the end of the year, where will my business be on December 31st?”
- measure small wins: you can start by just measuring things that are fully under your control, like how many calls you made, how many times you felt confident on a call, how many times you followed your script. These indicators will give you instant gratification every day, and you’ll be competing against yourself tomorrow to see if you can do better.
As you track these activities and you put them in an analyzer, you will see progress. And this is exactly what your brain needs: proof that you’re moving in the right direction. - make it painful to miss a day: print out a calendar where you mark a huge X every day you went through your cold calling goals. The more you stack these successful days, the more painful it will feel to skip a day in the future.
- “the just do one” trick: there will come days where you just don’t feel like it. In those instances, just do one call. Just one. After you do this tiny effort, you’ll already gain a sense of satisfaction over the fact that you didn’t let yourself be ruled by your emotions.
Then, you can decide to continue, or be happy with this small win. - Parkinson’s Law: this concept proposes that the more time we give ourselves to do a task, the more that task will take. This is why when people only have one day to get all their work done before going on vacation, they do it all without issue (whereas normally, it would’ve taken them all week).
Instead of thinking about how it’s going to take you all day to do these cold calls, challenge yourself to do all your calls in the next 2 hours, and watch how efficient you can be.
While these mind tricks are phenomenal, it might not be laziness what stops you from meeting your cold calling goals, but fear.
Luckily, here are Patrick Dang’s strategies he personally used to overcome cold calling fear:
- Identify what you’re afraid of: is it rejection? is it messing up your script? is it now being able to see the lead’s face while you’re calling them? is it that other agents will judge you if you’re not successful?
When you write down your fears clearly, you’ll actually realize that they’re not as bad as you think. For instance – who cares if you’re not successful? Most agents aren’t good at cold calling, and if they are, perhaps they can help you improve your game! - Visualize the worst-case scenario: truly think about the worst thing that could happen.
Say that you get on a call, the lead has an objection, and you’re not able to navigate it so you lose the deal. That’s it.
Nobody died on your surgery table, no international treaty was ruined, nobody in your family got sick. You just missed out on selling a house to a stranger.
And it’s likely going to help you become a better salesman in the future.
Putting things into perspective is a phenomenal way to shrink your fear. We’re real estate agents, the fate of the world is not in our hands. - Everyone gets rejected: even the greatest agents who are making it rain every year, they still get rejected most times.
That’s part of the game. The only difference between an agent that’s successful with cold calling and one that isn’t is that the first agent didn’t give up after rejection, because they understood that it’s part of the game.
What Makes A Good Cold Call vs. A Bad One?
Before we jump into the best real estate cold calling scripts, let’s understand the overarching context of what makes a cold call good vs bad.
You might be thinking: “Well, a good call will generate leads, and a bad one won’t!”
And you’d be correct. So let’s break down why certain calls won’t generate you nearly as many leads as others, so you can expedite the learning process and start optimizing for success right away.
Remember, there will always be new real estate cold calling scripts, and hundreds of little tweaks you can do to them. But what makes a real estate cold calling approach good or bad will always remain the same.
Brandon Mulreinin, the king of real estate cold calling, shares an example of a really bad cold call he received from an insurance carrier.
As soon as Brandon said “hello”, this is exactly what the caller said:
“The reason for my call today is that [Insurance Company] now offers an excellent health plan package specifically designed for self-employed individuals only, and it offers full coverage, lower co-pays, and deductibles, a PPO network which allows you freedom of choice and income protection, far more benefits and a big savings on premiums compared to any market plan. So, can I go ahead and get your information…”
Does anything immediately jump at you?
This person is reading, word-by-word, their script. Without allowing for a conversation, without asking questions, being extremely forward, and without knowing anything about the lead (or taking any actions to get to know the lead).
In fact, Brandon shares he only let the caller go for that long because he wanted to record just how bad it was.
And guess what? This is a typical cold call, from a billion dollar insurance company.
This is how they’re training their salespeople. And most real estate agents do the exact same thing.
This is what you’re competing against. Isn’t that comforting to know?
Now, here’s how Brandon would’ve actually approached this call to make it a good cold call.
First, you need to understand that the hardest moment of any cold outreach is going to be the first few seconds. This is where people will provide the most resistance. After all, they don’t know you, and they don’t want to be called.
This is why pitching at the very start of a cold call is the worst possible thing you can do. You’ve built no rapport, and you’re just interrupting their day to sell them something.
This is where most agents get hung up on.
On the other hand, if you’re able to get past this initial resistance, your chances of closing the sale drastically increase.
In fact, the longer the call goes for, the higher your chances of closing the lead.
So the most important thing to keep in mind when cold calling is that you need to get past that initial point of resistance.
And how do you do it? According to Brandon, there are two parts to this:
1) Breaking the Pattern of Behavior
2) Getting their Permission
To break the pattern of behavior, you first need to know what it is. The typical cold call pattern is: a lead picks up the phone, the salesperson starts a sales pitch, and the lead immediately regrets picking up the phone, hoping to get out of it as fast as possible.
We’re all familiar with that, at least from the receiving end.
The first way to break this pattern is by asking a simple question with an upswing:
“[FirstName]?”
That immediately peaks their curiosity. People love hearing their name, and when it’s in the form of a question with an upswing, it feels like it’s coming from a person they already know.
This will probably trigger the lead to ask who’s calling. That’s exactly what we want.
Now, in order to continue breaking the usual pattern of a cold call, you want to say something like:
“[FirstName] this is Brandon, I’m a realtor. And listen, before you hang up…”
You just did two things. First, you repeated her name (which people love hearing), and then, you anticipated their resistance.
This will trigger empathy in some, and some leads might even give you a chuckle.
Now that you have their attention, the next thing is to get their permission. The key here is to let them feel like they’re in control.
Because nothing makes people more resistant than feeling like they’re not in control.
This is how you can follow up:
“I was just hoping to ask you something about your home, and then you can decide if we need to talk further or not. Fair enough?“
This is the anatomy of a good sales call.
Real Estate Cold Calling Dialers
Another crucial element of a good cold call is using a good dialer. Some real estate tools like Follow Up Boss have their own integrated dialers.
While this is a good option if you’re looking to lower your costs, if you can afford it, it’s generally a good idea to connect to a system that specializes in cold call dialing.
Industry-leading CRMs like Real Geeks will seamlessly connect to most third-party dialers. Here are our top picks:
PhoneBurner, a powerful dialer and CRM that allows you to access analytics and real-time reporting, assign leads to team members efficiently, and monitor and coach your sales reps live.
MojoDialer, a triple-line dialer for increased call volume with a lot of marketing and lead management capabilities, such as neighborhood search, a comprehensive CRM and dialing filters.
And JustCall, a dialer designed for cold calling, with powerful features such as call forwarding, intelligent routing, conference calling, and AI-powered insights.
All of these dialers are great choices, and all of them allow you to record your calls – which, as you’ll learn, is the key to success in real estate cold calling.
Real Estate Cold Calling Scripts: The Opener
Going back to Brandon’s graphic, we can clearly see that the way you open a call and what you say in those first 20 seconds is the most important part of the entire process.
Nailing this first part of the call will allow you to continue talking to the lead, thus increasing their chances of converting.
Following this principle, we wanted to give you a few different options for that opening line, from a variety of different real estate experts.
Sales Feed made things easy for us, since they interviewed 8 professionals from different industries to ask them about their favorite call openers.
Let’s see how we can take some of these and apply them to real estate, and let’s use Will for our lead’s name.
Gabrielle Blackwell of Airtable says that openers should not go for longer than 20 seconds, and they should open the door for the leads to speak. She personally loves: “Hey Will, saw on your profile you’re involved in X, the way we do things makes this process faster. Just curious, though, how’s that going for you?”
Here’s how to adapt this to real estate:
“Hey Will, I was driving through your neighborhood yesterday and drove past your home. I’m a realtor, and was just curious how you liked the neighborhood?”.
This is a very non-salesy question to ask, because you’re simply showing interest in the neighborhood rather than their home in particular, and it helps you start a conversation about their plans for moving or staying in the same area.
Belal Batrawy from GTM Buddy hates the approach where salespeople pretend like the lead somehow knows them. He says his favorite opener is:
“Hey Will, I’m Belal. You’re not expecting my call – do you have a moment? I promise to be brief.”
This one can easily be applied to real estate as is, and we especially like the “promise” approach here. You’re asking them to trust you, and if they do, they’re already establishing a closer connection from the get go.
Belal goes on to say that he likes to follow up with an informed statement rather than a question. For example, we could use something like:
“Reason I’m calling is because the prices of homes in your neighborhood are up by 26%, and as you might know two of them recently sold for X$. I was wondering if you were thinking of profiting from this opportunity, given that prices will probably stabilize again.”
Jason Bay from Blissful Prospecting knows the basics have always worked for him. Old-fashioned permission-based prospecting is his favorite approach:
“Hey Will, this is Jason from Blissful Prospecting. I know I’m probably catching you in the middle of something, but do you have a minute to tell you why I’m calling, and you’ll let me know if you want to keep chatting?”
Jason believes that more important than the actual words you say in your intro is your tone, your pace, and how to sound like a peer.
Now, Kyle Coleman from Clari believes there’s no such thing as an objectively good cold call opener, and he believes each person will perform best with a unique cold call opener that feels good for them. This is because we all have different preferences, a different tone of voice, a different sense of humor, etc.
So try all of these suggestions out, and figure out which one you can say with most ease, feeling comfortable, and without feeling like you’re annoying your leads. Because you’ll never sound confident if you feel like you’re being annoying.
For example, he specifically likes being a little cheeky. He knows most people don’t want to receive cold calls, so he wants to disarm them when he starts talking, to relieve the tension.
“Hey Will. This is Kyle from Clari. This is 100% a cold call. Do you wanna roll the dice with me and see where this takes us?”
This is a hilarious and very effective approach, if done right. But as you can imagine, it is not the best approach for every realtor. Not everyone can deliver this line in a genuinely funny way.
Aaron Evans from Flow State likes to start the calls with value.
“Hey Will, I’m Aaron from Flow State. I know you weren’t expecting my call, but I was wondering if we could talk about these two trends we’re seeing in the market, which is something fascinating that I think you should definitely profit from.”
In our case, we can swap “market” for “your neighborhood”, and make it more appealing for someone who could consider selling their home.
Now, going back to the world of real estate, Matt Macnamara recently spoke to Ronen Pessar, who is in his opinion, the best cold caller he knows.
He asked Ronen what was his favorite cold call opener, and this is what he had to say:
“Any time you cold call someone, it’s important to look at the science of human behavior.”
He likes to use the concept of the two brain systems from Daniel Kahneman’s book: Thinking, fast and slow.
System 1 runs on intuition and instinct. It is fast, it is unconscious, and it works on autopilot. For example, you’re not thinking about brushing your teeth every morning – you do it automatically (hopefully!).
Out of survival, our brains developed this automated system that’s responsible for 95% of our behaviors. The way it works is that it’s triggered by specific cues.
When an unknown number with an unknown voice calls you, our automated response is to be on the defensive. That’s the learned behavior we’ve acquired after so many times that it’s happened.
On the other hand, System 2 is not automatic. It requires consideration, focused thought, decision-making. This is what we call Rational Thinking, and it’s much more careful and slow-working.
Our goal as realtors – and really, anyone making cold calls – is to activate our prospect’s System 2 of thinking, where they can consider our call, and consider the decision of working with us, as opposed to automatically telling us that they’re not thinking (or any less diplomatic variation of this).
So here’s how Ronen does it, and here’s the exact conversation script:
*Phone rings*
Will: Hello?
Ronen: Hey, Will!
Will: Hey, who’s this?
Ronen: Will, it’s Ronen Pessar from RP Advisory here. How’ve you been?
Will: Been alright. Ronen, what’s this about?
Ronen: Yeah, Will. Look, I know nobody likes getting a cold call. Especially not on a Friday afternoon! So if you want, I can make this super brief, tell you exactly why I’m calling, and then you can decide if you want to hang up or me (or worse!).
Will: Sounds good, you got 30 seconds.
We absolutely recommend you check Matt’s video to see exactly how Ronen does this in a very charismatic way, smiling and laughing as he acknowledges how annoying getting a cold call can be.
But, as you can see, what he did here is he broke the automatic System 1 from firing by breaking the typical pattern of “Hey, I’m Ronen. I’m a realtor and I was wondering if you were looking to sell your home anytime soon?”, and gave Will the possibility to make a decision, triggering System 2 of thinking.
Real Estate Cold Calling Scripts: The Structure
Now, even though we’ve established that the most important part of a cold call is the first few seconds, because those will determine how long the call goes for, and therefore, your chances of success, it is also important to look at the rest of the call.
Stefanie Kebede goes for a very low-pressure approach from Ricky Carruth called the Geo-prospecting script.
This script is based on questions, and it goes as follows:
“Hey Will, I’m Stefanie from Homesale Realty, how are you doing today?”
[Lead answers]
“The reason I’m calling is because of the recent home that was sold for $X on your neighborhood. I was wondering if you were interested in selling as well?”
[Lead answers – most likely “no”]
“Got it. Well, if you were interested in selling in the future, do you have an agent you would work with?”
[Lead answers – most likely “no”]
“Well, look. I’m someone who likes to think ahead, five, ten years in the future. Would it be okay if I stayed in contact just in case you’d like to sell your home in the future?”
[Lead answers – most likely “yes”]
“Awesome. Well, what’s a good email I can use to send over my contact information?”
As you can see, this script is super low-pressure, and it gives you an opportunity to show that you’re not a pushy salesperson, so that next time you contact them (after you’ve asked them for their permission, like Stefanie shows), you’ll have a better chance since you’ve already built some rapport.
This is a basic example, because each realtor will have their own call structure based on what they’re offering, the type of lead they’re contacting, and what the opening line was.
For example, if we go back to the different call openers we laid out before, if you were to choose Aaron’s approach were he gives the lead value by explaining some trends going on in the market, it’s likely that if the lead stays on the call with you, you’ll spend some time chatting about these trends rather than going into a question-based script.
This is why it makes more sense to get good at cold call openers, and then practice being able to continue the call naturally in a way that makes sense in each specific situation.
Because it wouldn’t make sense to start the call in a very conversational way only to then change your tone and drill your lead with questions about their property. It’s crucial to be able to read the room, and check the lead’s temperature before you move forward.
Let’s break down how to improve your conversational skills for cold calling.
How to Get One Listing a Day with These Real Estate Cold Calling Scripts
So far, we’ve given you scripts and strategies on how to improve your cold calling efforts.
But equally important is to learn from the cold calls that don’t go well (which, even if you’re a phenomenal cold caller, you’ll still experience!).
Jackie Kravitz explains the system she uses to improve after each call.
The first step is, perhaps unsurprisingly, to record and listen to your calls. As we explained before, a good dialer is one that allows you to record your cold calls.
You can’t change what you don’t acknowledge. “Listen to yourself,” says Jackie, “It might be brutal at first, but you have to do it. Acknowledge what you’re doing that sounds terrible.”
Then, what Jackie does is she rates herself in the following 10 items from 1-5 (one being terrible, five being great):
- How well did you mimic and match the prospect’s emotion, rate of speech and volume. Mimicking their energy is the best way to build rapport with someone you don’t know in the first 20 seconds.
- Downswings. Instead of your tonality going up, sounding flustered and anxious is the worst thing you can do on a call, because you don’t sound serious. Downswings, on the other hand, sound confident. A great way to force a downswing, which portrays authority, over the phone, is to lower your head.
- Conversational Tone – do you sound scripted and robotic, or like a human being? We all sound scripted at the beginning, and the only way to improve is to do more calls and listen to them.
- Confidence. Do you sound confident in what you’re saying, or do you second-guess yourself and mumble? Fake it till you make it.
- High Energy and Enthusiasm. After the initial few seconds of the call where you’re mimicking the prospect, you should be excited about the possibility of working with this person. The goal is to then have the prospect match your high energy, because they should be excited about the possibility of buying their dream home.
- Interesting. Do you sound interesting, or are you speaking in monotone?
- Sound Interested. You need to be interested in your prospect. Does it sound like you care about this person, and their dreams and desires?
- Are your prospects feeling heard and understood? It doesn’t matter how great of a closer or objection-handler you are if your prospects don’t feel like you’re listening to them. Repeat what they’re telling you. This solidifies what they’re saying, and is a great way to build rapport.
- Do you use appropriate pauses? Agents sometimes get stressed and start speaking really fast because they feel like they’ll lose the prospect otherwise, but it’s the opposite. Appropriate pauses are fantastic.
- Are you giving them a reason to meet with you? When you hear yourself, are you using a script that conveys why they should meet with you?
By learning from her own cold calls and optimizing her skills is how Jackie was able to get one listing appointment a day (in her case, one listing appointment per 30 calls), through cold calling.
Final Thoughts
Now that you understand how to a) not be afraid of cold calling, b) the anatomy of a good cold call, c) how to open a cold call effectively, and d) how to improve at cold calling every time you do it, it’s important to remember one thing:
Cold calling is, and will always be, a numbers game.
Even the best cold callers in the world get rejected. Nobody has a 100% strike rate because of the nature of this activity: the people you’re calling ultimately don’t know you, and it makes sense that they’d get defensive (just like you probably do when you get cold called!).
So don’t give up, and continue to optimize. Learn from your recordings, try out the different openers that you feel most comfortable with, and keep going. The more you call, the better you’ll get, and the more you’ll understand that rejection is just part of the game.
