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A new lead just came in: a name, a phone number and the listing they clicked. They filled out a Facebook lead form, so they may barely recall doing so. Their phone is in hand and other agents could already be calling. What happens next often determines whether you win the business.
Taylor Hack recently walked through an end-to-end method for converting a cold Facebook lead into a booked appointment on a weekly sales and marketing show. This wasn’t theoretical—he shared exact language, the call structure and specific techniques that move someone from stranger to client.
The text before the call
The first outreach should be a text, not a voicemail. The text’s objective is not to book a meeting; it’s to get a reply that confirms their phone is active.
Hack advises watching for engagement signals. When someone responds in a text thread, their phone is active and that’s the cue to call.
“I miss 100 percent of the opportunities I don’t get to a phone call,” he says. “I look for the earliest point where there’s a reasonable chance of a positive result.”
Andrew Fogliato suggests an alternative for agents who prefer asking permission before they call: after a couple of text exchanges, try “Hey, we can solve this way faster on a quick call—do you have one minute?” Hack prefers to call as soon as he sees the opportunity, framing it as a natural next step because their phone is already in their hand.
The opening line that does not make them hang up
The most common mistake on cold calls from Facebook leads is the opener. “Hey, how are you doing today?” signals a sales script and puts people on guard.
“In the first breath they need to know who you are and why you’re calling,” Hack says.
He borrows a three-part formula from Phil Jones: a polite greeting, a mutually agreeable fact and a simple, easy-to-answer question. For a Facebook ‘coming soon’ lead he uses: “Hey Andrew, it’s Taylor from Remax. That property on social—it’s not on Realtor.ca until Thursday, but I have more details. Was there something you couldn’t see in the pictures?”
The mutually agreeable fact links the call to what they were already viewing. The closing question is low-pressure and focused on the property, not the agent—an easier route to engagement.
Fogliato adds that newer agents should lean on their brokerage or team name to build credibility. As a team’s reputation grows, the team name becomes a stronger anchor in the opener.
What to do when they say they were just browsing
Many leads respond with something like “I was just looking, not really ready to act.” Hack uses a statement-correction technique from interrogation methods: make a slightly wrong statement and let them correct it.
For example: “So if you found a great property, you wouldn’t want to go see it.” It’s not a direct question, and most people instinctively correct a false statement about themselves.
Their correction reveals true motivations and constraints: “No, we’d want to see it, we just need to stay in this school zone.” That single exchange can reveal timeline, family context and priorities—much more than direct questions often do.
Going deep with FORD
Once you’ve opened the conversation, Hack recommends digging deeper using a pattern he calls “going too deep”: whenever they mention something, ask two follow-up questions before moving on.
He frames the conversation around FORD—family, occupation, recreation, dreams—not as a checklist but as a map to learn who they are. He focuses on people, not just property criteria.
“Relationships are measured by how much you know about each other,” he says. “I want to be someone they trust.”
If they mention a daughter starting school in September, Hack matches that with his own family experiences and naturally pivots to timeline. If they say they’re moving up from a starter home, he mirrors their language and asks what’s changing. The aim is to reach what he calls “bringing it to a boil,” where the lead talks freely, real motivations surface and the conversation feels genuine rather than sales-driven.
Closing on the appointment
When the real situation is clear, the appointment close is simple and tied to what they’ve shared. For example: “It sounds like you need to understand how often the right property comes up in that school zone. If the right house appears once a week, you can wait for the perfect kitchen; if it appears every four months, you need to be ready when it does. I can show you that history—does tomorrow at four work or is Saturday at three better?”
Offer two concrete options, not an open-ended question. That forces a choice between two yes answers and increases the chance of booking the meeting.
“You’re not selling them a house,” Fogliato says. “You’re solving the problem of what they don’t yet know.”
Why Facebook ads require a different mindset than Google leads
Hack and Fogliato also explain a crucial difference between Facebook lead forms and other lead sources. Google leads often sit at the bottom of the funnel: people searching terms like “best realtor” or “sell my house fast” are further along, costly to acquire and often jaded from prior agent experiences. They’re focused on agents and transactions.
Facebook leads for coming-soon campaigns are top-of-funnel: people are interested in a property, not necessarily ready to move. These leads are cheaper and demand a nurture-first approach rather than an immediate push to close.
Fogliato referenced Dean Jackson’s “lead futures” concept to illustrate value. Jackson generated low-cost top-of-funnel leads and monetized the pipeline by nurturing and then selling warmed leads at a premium when they became transactional. The lesson: agents who build a reliable nurture process can own the pipeline and reduce acquisition costs for appointments.
“What agents really want is appointments,” Hack says. “But many don’t want to pay the true cost of generating them. Those who build a nurture system control the pipeline.”
The full episode also covers how to set up Facebook lead form ads properly, why boosting posts is usually ineffective, and how to balance curiosity and clarity when crafting coming-soon ad copy.
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