What 8 Million Dials Reveal About Beating Call Reluctance

Most agents who avoid the phone don’t think of themselves as afraid. They think of themselves as busy.

There’s a listing presentation to polish. A social post to schedule. A CRM to clean up. And somewhere underneath all of it is the real reason the phone stays face down on the desk: the quiet voice asking, “What do I even say? What if this person yells at me?”

Here’s the surprising part. When one data company looked at the sentiment of roughly 4,000 recorded prospecting calls, the share of conversations that turned negative was really, really low. Lower, in fact, with expired listings than with For Sale By Owners.

In other words, the conversation you’re dreading mostly lives in your head.

In a recent Lab Coat Agents live session, Tristan and Curtis (the self-described “data guy” at REDX) broke down why call reluctance happens, how top producers structure their calling sessions to beat it, and the numbers that should make every agent rethink what a phone call is worth. Here’s what they found.

Call Reluctance Has Two Roots

Root #1: A skill gap that becomes a confidence gap

Call reluctance usually starts with skill. If you don’t know how to respond to what someone says, you lack confidence. And if you lack confidence, you’re afraid of what people will say.

Training helps. Scripts help. But Curtis was blunt about what actually fixes it: exposure therapy.

You make the calls over and over until responding becomes muscle memory. And the good news is that the universe of responses is smaller than it feels. As Curtis put it, there are only about ten things people are ever going to say to you. Once you know how to handle those ten, the fear has very little left to feed on.

Root #2: Legal fear

The second root is newer, and it’s real. TCPA rules, the Do Not Call registry, and brokers telling agents to stay off the phone have all made agents nervous about dialing at all.

Compliance matters, and nobody on the call suggested otherwise. But the answer is to call the right way, not to stop calling. Curtis pointed out that roughly 250 million phone numbers are on the Do Not Call registry, while his company’s database holds about 850 million numbers. That leaves a very large pool of people you can legally call.

The practical lesson: scrub your lists, respect calling hours, and focus your energy on people who can be called rather than avoiding the phone entirely.

People Are Nicer on the Phone Than You Think

The 4,000-call sentiment analysis is worth sitting with. Most agents imagine prospecting as a gauntlet of hang-ups and insults. The data says otherwise.

That doesn’t mean you’ll never get chewed out. A homeowner whose listing expired this morning and has already fielded ten calls before breakfast is not going to be thrilled to hear from an eleventh agent. Tristan and Curtis were clear that much of that hostility is created by agents who call before allowed hours or blow up a seller’s phone with texts. Those agents aren’t doing anyone, including the rest of the industry, any favors.

Call compliantly, call at reasonable times, and the story in your head about getting yelled at stops matching reality.

Build a Lead Stack That Warms You Up

One of the most useful ideas from the session was the lead stack: the order in which you work your leads during a prospecting block.

When Curtis’s team interviews top-producing agents, a pattern keeps showing up. Many of them sandwich their hardest calls between their easiest ones. They call sphere of influence first, then expireds and cancels, then sphere again.

Why? Because if you’re going to take a few punches, you don’t want to take them first and then try to muster the energy for 30 more cold calls. And you don’t want your session to end on a bruise either.

Tristan compared it to working out. You don’t lift cold. Skip the warm-up and you strain something, and then you don’t show up tomorrow. Prospecting works the same way.

A five-layer stack you can copy

After hearing the concept, Tristan rebuilt his own stack on the spot. Here’s the version he landed on:

1. Close friends. People who know and trust you and still do business with you. Easy wins that build momentum.
2. Core past clients. People you enjoy talking to who enjoy talking to you, and who remember that you actually helped them through a transaction.
3. Your colder database or a cold list. Either the contacts in your database you’ve never really spoken with, or a true cold segment: FSBOs, expireds (where you’re allowed to call them), short sales, notice of default, or for rent by owners. Pick one avenue and decide in advance how long you’ll call it.
4. A fixed time block. Decide before you start how long you’ll stay in the cold layer so you don’t quit early or burn out.
5. Sphere again to close. Finish with three or four warm calls so you end the session on a positive note.

Why ending warm matters

That last layer was the piece Tristan admitted he had never included, and it may be the most important. Ending on a good conversation is what makes you willing to sit down and do it again tomorrow.

Curtis shared that one agent who had been on the podcast before regularly calls her mom after a rough half hour of prospecting. Tristan laughed and admitted that for his first two years in the business, straight out of college with no network, his mom was his first call every day. (She sent him referrals, too.)

It sounds like a small thing. It isn’t. Momentum is a real asset, and the order of your calls either builds it or drains it.

Know the One Pain Point Before You Dial

A lot of call reluctance comes from improvising. You jump into a list, you don’t know what to lead with, the first few calls go sideways, and you decide that prospecting “never works.”

Tristan’s fix is simple: before each calling block, decide exactly who you’re calling and put their number one pain point in front of you, literally on the desk or screen.

For most FSBOs, that pain point is saving money. That’s usually why they’re trying it themselves. Once you know that, you know exactly what the conversation is about, and you won’t get distracted.

The overlooked cold list: for rent by owners

Curtis singled out for rent by owners, especially vacant rentals, as a strong cold segment. Landlords treat their properties as a business, so the conversations are less emotional. He knows agents whose very first call reached someone with 32 properties to sell over the next year.

Every FRBO call offers three opportunities:

• List the property if the owner is ready to sell.
• Add them to your investor pool. If they don’t want to sell, they might want to buy more.
• Refer them to a property manager. Everyone on that list is renting without professional management. A property management partner you send business to is likely to send tenants who want to buy and landlords who want to sell back to you.

The Numbers That Should Change Your Mind

Curtis made a point that applies far beyond prospecting: why would you ever guess if you can know? Part of call reluctance is simply not knowing what the opportunity is. Here’s what the data showed as of early October.

Expireds and cancels: the six-week window

In just the first week of October, there were 114,430 expired and canceled listings nationally. That isn’t even a peak expired period like January or July.

Over the trailing twelve months, 42.5% of expired and canceled listings came back on the MLS, and the average time to relist was 44 days. In the first half of the year, that relist rate climbs closer to 50%. Right now more sellers are saying they’ll wait for spring, which pulls the number down slightly.

State-level numbers varied:

• California: 46.3% relisted, in an average of 40 days.
• Florida: almost 14,000 cancels and expires in the first week of October alone, with a 43.2% relist rate.
• Texas: 37% relisted, but faster, in an average of 39 days.

Run the math on that one national week and roughly 48,000 of those homes are likely to come back on the market over the next six weeks or so. And according to Curtis, in most cases about half of relisting sellers choose a new agent.

Timing matters here too. If sellers relist around day 44, and your market needs a couple of weeks to get a home from signed agreement to live listing, then the real sweet spot for winning the listing is earlier. Tristan and Curtis landed on roughly day 20 after expiration, adjusted for your market and price point.

Two more insights help explain why patience pays off. Tristan noted that an expired seller’s number one emotion is often embarrassment, which takes time to get past. And in markets like Florida, many listings are expiring because they were priced for the summer and never adjusted, often by newer agents who weren’t comfortable having the pricing conversation.

FSBOs: the 8-out-of-10 stat needs context

Most agents have heard the NAR figure that eight out of ten FSBOs end up using an agent. Curtis shared a different, more specific number: over the last twelve months, 25.6% of FSBOs nationally ended up listed on the MLS with an agent. That’s roughly one in four.

That figure includes plenty of dabblers who post a “make me move” price for a few weeks and pull it down, so the true rate among serious sellers is likely higher. More importantly, the average time from first online ad to MLS listing was 48 days.

That changes how you should think about follow-up. Six weeks is not a long journey. Calling a FSBO once a week for six weeks, just to check in and offer help, puts you in position to be the agent they choose when they decide they need one.

Dials: the 1% rule

Here’s the number that discourages some agents before it motivates them. Across about 8 million dials over the last six months, including FSBOs, FRBOs, expireds and circle prospecting (and excluding Do Not Call numbers), the rate of positive outcomes like appointments was 0.94%.

That’s about one appointment per 100 dials. And that’s counting every number dialed, including the many people who never answered.

Now reframe it the way Curtis did. With the right tools and some grit, 100 dials is roughly an hour of work. If you knew that one hour would produce a conversation with someone who has a real chance of listing, would you do it?

Tristan’s answer: for sure. That’s not motivation. It’s math.

Bring Value, Not Just a Script

Tristan shared a reason for his early reluctance to call FSBOs that many agents will recognize. It wasn’t that he didn’t know what to say. It was that he didn’t know what to give them.

FSBO conversations can be the hardest in the business. Many other agents are calling too. If you show up with nothing of value, you won’t make an impact. The same goes for expireds. When the seller asks, “What are you going to do differently?” you need an answer. Tristan’s advice: know your marketing plan cold, share one or two pieces on the phone, and save the rest for the appointment.

Use AI to build your value in advance

Two practical workflows came out of the conversation.

The quick version. Ask an AI assistant like ChatGPT or Claude for six or seven useful resources you could give a FSBO in your city, and have it help you turn them into simple PDFs. You walk into every call with something to offer.

The deeper version. Curtis took it a step further:

1. Export all sales from the FSBO’s neighborhood over the last six months.
2. Upload that data along with the FSBO’s address and listing description to an AI tool.
3. Ask it to compare the home to everything that sold and identify what it needs to sell.

The result works like a quick CMA, but richer. Beyond pricing, it might notice that most of the homes that sold had far more robust listing descriptions or stronger photography. That gives you specific, credible things to talk about.

The “don’t give it away” fallacy

Many agents hesitate here because they feel this is their expertise and they shouldn’t hand it out for free. Curtis called that a fallacy. Give it away.

If the seller uses your advice and finds a buyer, great. That’s often when the call comes anyway: “I have a buyer, but I have no idea how to do the paperwork. What do I do next?” Generosity puts you first in line when they realize they need help.

Jump Off the Bridge

Curtis closed with a story from a summer trip to Montana, where he grew up. He took his kids to a bridge he used to jump from as a kid. They stood at the edge and didn’t want to do it. So, he admitted, he bribed them. Five bucks. Then twenty, if they jumped in the next ten seconds.

They jumped. They loved it. And then they ran back up and kept jumping.

Prospecting works the same way. Scripts and training are valuable, but the fastest way to learn what to say is to fumble through a handful of real conversations. The first jump is the hardest one. After that, the fear shrinks and the skill grows.

You now know the opportunity is real. You know the order that makes it easier. You know what to bring. The only thing left is to pick up the phone and make those statistics your statistics.

Key Takeaways

• Call reluctance is mostly a skill and exposure problem. Repetition turns the roughly ten common objections into muscle memory.
• Compliance is a reason to call correctly, not a reason to avoid calling. Scrub lists and respect calling hours.
• Sequence your calls. Start warm, do your cold block for a set time, then end warm with three or four sphere calls.
• Write down your list’s number one pain point before each session.
• Time your expired follow-up. Relisting averages about 44 days, so aim to win the listing around day 20.
• Stay with FSBOs for six weeks. The average path to MLS takes about 48 days.
• Expect about one positive outcome per 100 dials, and treat that hour as an investment, not a gamble.
• Lead with value. Use AI and neighborhood sales data to give sellers something genuinely useful.

Recap and next step

Name the two causes of reluctance, warm up with a smart call stack, learn the numbers, time your outreach, and bring something useful. To hear the full conversation, watch the replay here: 

If you want data and dialing tools for expireds and FSBOs, REDX has a page for Labcoat Agents. Whatever you use, make sure you’re calling people you’re allowed to call.