How long should a prospecting call be?

The script above runs about forty seconds before the homeowner says anything, and a good call that turns into a conversation usually lands between two and four minutes. Anything past five minutes on a first call is rarely a better outcome, it is an agent who has stopped listening for the point at which to stop.

Should I use a script at all, or does it sound robotic?

Use one. Sounding robotic comes from reading, not from having written something down. The agents who sound most natural on the phone are almost always working from a fixed opener and a fixed ask with everything in between improvised, because the two moments that decide the call are the two they have stopped leaving to chance.

What is the best time of day to make these calls?

Late morning is the window the evidence supports. In the Baylor study of real estate cold calls, calls between 10am and 2pm were 31 per cent of the dials and produced 53 per cent of the appointments and referrals, while calls after 5pm were 42 per cent of dials and produced 21 per cent of the outcomes. Most agents prospect at the wrong end of the day because that is when everything else is finished.

Do I have to say the call is being recorded?

Recording obligations vary by state and are separate from the telemarketing rules, so this is one to check for your own jurisdiction rather than to take from an article. As a matter of practice, telling somebody at the start costs a sentence and removes the worst version of the conversation you can have with them afterwards.

What do I do if they ask what their neighbour's place sold for?

Tell them. Sold prices are published and they will find them in ten seconds on a portal anyway, so withholding one only proves that the call was never about giving them information. The homeowner asking that question is the single strongest buying signal in the call, and the answer is what makes the appraisal ask land.

The appraisal call script that does not sound like a pitch

Jason12 August 20269 min read

The short answer

A real estate appraisal script works when it gives the homeowner a specific local reason for the call in the first sentence, asks permission to continue, offers information before it asks for anything, and requests the appraisal once. Scripts fail when they open with a question about selling, because that question invites the sentence that ends the call.

What to take away

Lead with the transaction, not the intention. A sold price two streets away is a reason to call. Wondering whether somebody is thinking of selling is not.
Ask for permission in the first ten seconds. It costs one sentence and it changes the call from an interruption into a conversation.
Give the number before you ask for anything. The information is the entire reason the homeowner stays on the line.
Ask for the appraisal once, plainly, then stop talking. The second ask in the same call is what turns a maybe into a no.

Why does the first sentence decide the call?

Because the homeowner is not listening to your words. They are answering one question, and they answer it in about three seconds.

The question is whether this call is about them or about you. Every opener in this industry falls on one side of that line, and the side it falls on is set by the first clause, before the sentence has finished. A call that opens with a sold price two streets away is about them: it is news about the value of the largest asset they own, delivered by somebody who happens to sell property nearby. A call that opens by asking whether they have thought about selling is about you, because the only person who benefits from that question is the one asking it.

The words after the opener barely matter. By then the homeowner has decided which kind of call this is, and the rest of the script is either a conversation or a countdown.

5:50

Median length of a successful cold call, against 3:14 for an unsuccessful one. The call that works is nearly twice as long, which is what a good first sentence buys you.

Gong Labs, cold calling statistics, 2021, updated March 2026

What does the script actually look like?

Here it is in full, for a just sold call into a farm area. It runs about forty seconds if the homeowner says nothing, and it is written to be interrupted at any point.

The just sold appraisal call

Weekday, inside permitted calling hours, number washed within 30 days. The agency and the street are invented, because a made up transcript should not put words in a real agency's mouth.

Agent: Hi, is that Michael? My name is Sarah, I am from Vale Property here in Blackburn.
Agent: I am ringing because we just sold 42 Vine Street, two doors from you. I will be thirty seconds. Is now alright?
Michael: Yeah, go on.
Agent: It went for one point four two, which was about ninety thousand over what the owners expected. Three of the four bidders were local families who missed out on Warrigal Road last month.
Michael: Right. That is more than I would have thought.
Agent: It surprised us too. That is really why I called: the last valuation most people around here have in their head is a year old, and it is wrong now in both directions depending on the street.
Agent: Would it be useful if I put together what yours would do in this market? It takes me twenty minutes and there is nothing to sign.

Seven lines. Note what is not in it: no how are you today, no do you have a moment to talk about the property market, no question about whether they are thinking of selling, and no second ask.

It is also written to be repeated. Gong Labs, across a dataset of more than 300 million calls, found the average sales caller connects on 5.4 per cent of dials while the top quartile connects on 13.3 per cent, and once connected the average caller books on 4.6 per cent against 16.7 per cent. Neither number is a real estate number, and both say the same thing: the gap between average and good is a gap in what happens on the call.

The other finding worth carrying is about persistence. HubSpot's 2025 survey of 379 sales professionals found 55 per cent give up on a prospect after three to five attempts, which is roughly where the eighth touch that produces most first meetings has not yet arrived.

Line one: the name and the agency, immediately

This is not a technique, it is an obligation. Section 9(2) of the Telecommunications (Telemarketing and Research Calls) Industry Standard 2017 requires the caller's given name, the business details and the purpose of the call, at the start. Identifying yourself immediately also happens to be the fastest way to stop sounding like a scam. The hours, the consent rules and the rest of the obligations are in is cold calling legal in Australia; this article is about the words.

Line two: the reason, then permission

A specific address does the work here. Two doors from you is a fact the homeowner can check, and it explains the call in a way that nothing about the property market can. Gong Labs, which has analysed more than 300 million recorded calls, reports that stating your reason for calling lifts cold call success by 2.1 times, and that is not a real estate finding, it is a finding about people answering phones.

The permission question then hands them control of a call they did not choose to be in, which is why almost nobody uses it and why it works. Ask for it plainly. In the same dataset, opening with the anxious version, did I catch you at a bad time, made the caller 40 per cent less likely to book the meeting.

Line four: the number, before the ask

The price is the whole trade. The homeowner gave you thirty seconds; the number is what they get for it, and giving it away without conditions is what earns the right to ask anything at all. An agent who holds the price back until the appraisal is booked has turned a piece of news into a hostage, and homeowners hear that immediately.

Which openers get you hung up on?

Four of them. None of what follows is measured, so treat it as a view from the desk rather than a finding.

The opener	What it sounds like	Use instead
Have you thought about selling?	A stranger asking about my money	A sold price on a named street
How are you today?	A call centre reading a card	Your name, my name, my agency
I have buyers looking in your area	The line every agent uses, usually untrue	Three of four bidders were local, and here is where they missed out
Do you have a few minutes?	This will not be a few minutes	I will be thirty seconds. Is now alright?

The four openers this desk sees fail most often, what the homeowner hears, and what to use instead. Judgement, not measurement: we have published no sample behind this table.

The third one deserves a note. I have buyers looking in your area is not a bad line because it is pushy. It is a bad line because it is usually false, homeowners know it is usually false, and a claim that everybody has heard and nobody believes costs you the only thing you had, which was the benefit of the doubt.

What do you say when they tell you they are not selling?

You agree with them. Then you make the appraisal about something other than selling, because for this homeowner, today, it genuinely is.

We are not selling

Michael: We are not selling, mate.
Agent: No, I did not think you were. Almost nobody I call is.
Agent: The reason I still do the appraisal is that most people find out what their place is worth at the worst possible time, when they have to move quickly. Twenty minutes now, and you have a number you can ignore for three years.
Michael: And there is no obligation?
Agent: None. If you list in 2029 and you use somebody else, that is fine. I would still rather you had the number.

The move is in the second line. Almost nobody I call is concedes the point completely and removes the thing the homeowner was braced for, which was an argument. What follows is not a rebuttal, it is a different reason to say yes, and it is a true one.

How does this change when an AI reads it?

Three things break, and they are worth knowing whether or not you ever use one.

Anything that depends on tone stops working. A human can carry a weak line on warmth. Written down, a weak line is just a weak line, which is why writing for an AI is a good way to find out which of your lines were ever any good.
Long sentences become unusable. The homeowner interrupts and the agent has to stop mid clause, so every sentence has to be able to end early without becoming nonsense.
The script has to survive being answered in the wrong order. Real homeowners answer the third question first, and a script that only works in sequence falls apart on the first real call.

ListingLine is an AI voice agent that calls an Australian real estate agent's farm area in the agent's name, at A$2.00 per connected call. This is the script we teach, and our agent runs a variant of it. We publish it rather than treating it as the product because the script was never the hard part. Making four hundred of these calls a week, inside the hours, on a list that is still clean, is the hard part, and that is the part we built the checks for.

Common questions

How long should a prospecting call be?: The script above runs about forty seconds before the homeowner says anything, and a good call that turns into a conversation usually lands between two and four minutes. Anything past five minutes on a first call is rarely a better outcome, it is an agent who has stopped listening for the point at which to stop.
Should I use a script at all, or does it sound robotic?: Use one. Sounding robotic comes from reading, not from having written something down. The agents who sound most natural on the phone are almost always working from a fixed opener and a fixed ask with everything in between improvised, because the two moments that decide the call are the two they have stopped leaving to chance.
What is the best time of day to make these calls?: Late morning is the window the evidence supports. In the Baylor study of real estate cold calls, calls between 10am and 2pm were 31 per cent of the dials and produced 53 per cent of the appointments and referrals, while calls after 5pm were 42 per cent of dials and produced 21 per cent of the outcomes. Most agents prospect at the wrong end of the day because that is when everything else is finished.
Do I have to say the call is being recorded?: Recording obligations vary by state and are separate from the telemarketing rules, so this is one to check for your own jurisdiction rather than to take from an article. As a matter of practice, telling somebody at the start costs a sentence and removes the worst version of the conversation you can have with them afterwards.
What do I do if they ask what their neighbour's place sold for?: Tell them. Sold prices are published and they will find them in ten seconds on a portal anyway, so withholding one only proves that the call was never about giving them information. The homeowner asking that question is the single strongest buying signal in the call, and the answer is what makes the appraisal ask land.

Sources

1Key cold calling statistics. Gong Labs, Published 2021, updated March 2026.
22025 State of Cold Calling Report. HubSpot, survey of 379 sales professionals, Fieldwork 2025.
3Has Cold Calling Gone Cold?. Keller Center for Research, Baylor University, Calls placed November 2011.
4Telecommunications (Telemarketing and Research Calls) Industry Standard 2017. Federal Register of Legislation, Made 2017, in force 2026.
5The hidden power of cold calling: insights from 300M calls. Gong Labs, July 2024.

Written by

Jason

Founder, ListingLine

Builds the AI voice agent that ListingLine customers point at their farm area. Spends most of his week reading call transcripts, which is an unusual and fairly grim way to learn what Australian homeowners will and will not talk about on the phone.