The standard circle prospecting script has a blank in it. “Hi, this is [name] with [brokerage], we just [listed / sold] a home on your street.” The agent fills the blank with whichever event happened, runs the rest of the script unchanged, and wonders why the just-listed version produces more hang-ups than the other one. The reason is that the word in the blank changes what the call is. A just-sold call gives the neighbor something: a closed price on their own street, which is a fact about their house that they did not have. A just-listed call gives the neighbor nothing they cannot see from the sidewalk, and then asks them for something, and a script that pretends otherwise sounds like exactly what it is.
The circle prospecting script on this site is built around the sold event for that reason, and the circle hub treats a market event as the reason to call. This piece is about the other event, the listing, and the honest call it supports once you stop dressing it up as the sold call with one word changed.
What each call has
On the sold call, you hold the price. The neighbor can find the list price online in a minute, but the closed price, the days it took, and whether it went over or under asking are usually yours for a little while before they appear anywhere the neighbor would look. That is the payload. It is why the call can be short, why the single ask is small, and why “would that be useful, or would you rather I didn’t” is a fair question to open with. You are offering something.
On the listed call, you hold nothing. The list price is public. The photos are public. The neighbor drove past the sign this morning. What you have is a house on their street that you are responsible for selling, and a set of things you would like from them: come to the open house, tell someone who has wanted to live here, keep the sidewalk clear on Saturday, be patient with the cars. Every one of those is a request. That does not make the call illegitimate. It makes it a different call, and the first rule of a request is to say that it is one.
The honest just-listed call
Hi, is this [name]? I’m [your name], an agent with [brokerage], and I’ve just listed the house at 14 Alder, four doors down from you. I’m calling to ask a favor rather than to tell you anything, so if you’d rather not, just say and I’ll go. Otherwise: we’re holding it open Saturday from one to three, and the two things that sell a house on a street like yours are the neighbors coming through and the neighbors mentioning it to someone. Would you come by? And when it sells, can I call you with the number, since it’s the closest comparable you’ll have for a while?
Three things are happening. The favor is named as a favor, in the first sentence after the name, which is what makes the rest tolerable. The exit is offered before the ask, same as every script on this site. And the closing question is a request for permission to make the sold call, which is the call that actually starts the relationship. The just-listed call, done honestly, is an appointment to make the just-sold call. The neighbor who says “sure, let me know what it goes for” has opted in to the one piece of information you will have, and the sold call six weeks later opens with “you asked me to call when Alder sold, and it closed Friday,” which is the warmest opener circle prospecting ever gets.
Two things are missing on purpose. There is no “do you know anyone thinking of selling,” which the questions piece retires because it asks the neighbor to inform on their friends. “Tell someone who has wanted to live here” is a different sentence, pointed at buyers rather than sellers, and even that is offered as one of the two things that help rather than put as a question the neighbor has to answer on the spot. And there is no offer to tell the neighbor what their own house is worth, because on a just-listed call that line is heard as the pitch it is.
If the neighbor stays on after the ask, the one question is the street question from the questions piece: “Anything about the street a buyer would want to know?” It gives the neighbor something to contribute besides attendance, the answers feed the open house, and it is the question most likely to produce, unprompted, the sentence about their own plans that the whole cycle is built to wait for.
The two calls side by side
| Just sold | Just listed | |
|---|---|---|
| What you have | The closed price, days on market, over or under asking | A sign the neighbor has already seen |
| What the call is | Information, with one small ask | A request, said as one |
| The opening question | “Would that be useful, or would you rather I didn’t?” | “Can I ask you a favor, or would you rather I didn’t?” |
| The ask | The note every couple of months | Come Saturday; mention it; may I call you with the price when it sells |
| The one street question | Whether the price matched what they would have guessed | What a buyer should know about the street |
| What the record holds | Note yes or no, their words on value, the date | Open house yes or no; permission for the sold call; the street fact |
| What comes next | The next event, or the second call in six to eight weeks | The sold call, opened with their permission |
| Failure mode | Adding a seller question | Running it as the sold script with the word swapped |
The rules that still apply
A just-listed call to a neighbor is a solicitation. It invites the neighbor to an event you are holding to sell a house and it ends by asking for permission to call again, and the do-not-call rules treat it that way. The farm list gets scrubbed before the listed calls the same as before the sold calls, the numbers on the internal list stay off it, and the state hours and caps apply. None of that changes because the call is friendly.
The Code of Ethics, at Article 12, requires that what you say about the listing be true, which on this call means the list price is the list price, the open house is a real open house the seller has agreed to, and there are no multiple offers unless there are. Agents under pressure to make the listed call sound like news sometimes invent urgency, and the neighbor who attends Saturday and finds an empty house remembers who told them otherwise.
And the seller’s permission comes before the neighbors’ phone numbers. The seller agreed to a listing, and most will welcome the neighbors being called, but the call names their address, their price and their Saturday, and asking first costs nothing.
Where the listed call fits in the farm
The hub’s argument against the single just-listed blast is that it treats a listing as an excuse to call the neighborhood once and never again. The honest just-listed call is the opposite. It is the first of two calls, it asks for the second one by name, and it turns a request into an information relationship on a schedule the neighbor agreed to. Inside the farm touch plan, a listing on the street is the best event of the year, because it produces both calls and an open house in between, and the agent who runs the listed call as a favor asked and the sold call as a promise kept has, in about six weeks, done more for their standing on that street than a year of postcards.
Run the two as two. The word in the blank was never the difference. What you have to offer is.