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Co-authored by the REDX Publishing Team and:
David Van Noy
David is in the top one-percent of REALTORS® in the Kansas City area market, with over 20 years of successful real estate sales experience.
Most agents who aren’t getting listings aren’t lacking leads or tools. They’re lacking a reliable daily structure that actually drives conversations. David Van Noy has sold over 2,000 homes and closed more than $500 million in production over 22 years as a Kansas City realtor. On a recent episode of the REDX podcast, he broke down the specific daily habits that built that track record, and they’re simpler than most agents want to hear.
Key Takeaways
- According to David, the best time to call expired listings is 7:45 to 8:05 AM because there is literally no one else you can reasonably call yet. Use that window every day.
- Tracking five specific market metrics every week makes objection handling easier because you actually know what is happening in your market.
- Scripts are worth memorizing not so you recite them verbatim, but so you can respond naturally under pressure when a conversation goes off-script.
- Protecting your prospecting time as a firm daily boundary is what separates agents who build a listing business from agents who stay perpetually stuck.
The hard part isn’t the information. It’s that agents are working hard at the wrong things. CRM cleanup, researching new AI tools, attending every conference on the circuit, letting the dialer run on a pond they already know is dry. All of it feels productive. None of it is prospecting. David has watched agents do this for over two decades, and the pattern has only gotten easier to hide behind as technology improved.
Here’s what he says actually moves the needle.
Quick Links:
- Why Are So Many Agents Working Hard Without Getting Results?
- What Should Real Estate Agents Actually Be Doing Before 8 AM?
- What Are the Five Market Numbers Every Agent Should Know?
- Do Agents Actually Need to Use a Script?
- How Do Top Producing Agents Protect Their Prospecting Time?
- Where Should an Agent Start If Business Is Slow Right Now?
Why Are So Many Agents Working Hard Without Getting Results?
Because busyness feels safer than rejection, and technology has made it easier than ever to look productive without actually prospecting.
David put it plainly on the podcast:
“What I see people doing is what I’ve always seen them do, which is avoid doing the work that actually gets them the business. And now they just have a really good excuse.”
Before CRMs, agents would stare at their Outlook inbox waiting for a deal to arrive. Now they stare at their CRM instead. The tool changed. The avoidance pattern didn’t.
He described agents who will “let the dialer burn up on numbers that never answer and know it’s a bad source, but they still get to convince themselves that they’re working.”
Staying busy and building a business are two separate activities, and most agents have stopped distinguishing between them.
The antidote isn’t a different tool. It’s a shorter, more honest list of what actually puts you in front of sellers, followed by a commitment to do those things first every single morning.
What Should Real Estate Agents Actually Be Doing Before 8 AM?
Calling expired leads. Between 7:45 and 8:05 AM, there is no one else you can reasonably call. Use that window every single day.
David’s framework is direct: expired listings are “leg day” for your real estate business. They’re not the most glamorous part of your routine, and they may not represent your biggest revenue stream, but skipping them weakens everything else.
His current business runs roughly 50% past clients and referrals, 15% expired and canceled listings, 4-5% FSBO leads, and the rest split across website leads, sign calls, and PPC. But the expireds aren’t only a lead source. They’re daily practice that keeps your scripts sharp, your objection handling calibrated, and your confidence ready for every other conversation that day.
According to REDX research, 45.6% of expired and canceled listings relist on the MLS within an average of 40 days. That window gets even shorter in Q3 and Q4, which means agents who call expireds consistently are always positioned when a seller decides they’re ready to move again. At 7:45 in the morning, there’s no reason not to be in that conversation.
What Are the Five Market Numbers Every Agent Should Know?
Track these five numbers weekly and you’ll be able to answer any market question from a prospect without pausing to guess.
David has carried a short list in his pocket for 22 years. When a market conversation comes up, he wants to know the answer immediately. These are the five he tracks:
- New listings in your market in the last 30 days
- Total active listings right now
- Homes that went under contract in the last 30 days
- Homes that sold in the last 30 days
- Total expired listings in your market since January 1st
That last number is the most underused. If 165 homes have expired in your market since January and you’ve only converted 15, that gap tells you something specific: either your contact volume is too low, your conversion rate needs work, or both.
Agents who don’t study the market give buyers and sellers no reason to lean on their advice, which is exactly why clients keep finding homes on Zillow before their own agent mentions them.
David’s recommendation: block two hours on Sunday to go through every new listing, check absorption rates, and update these five numbers. “This is my profession,” he said on the podcast. “Two hours on a Sunday is not a big investment.”
Do Agents Actually Need to Use a Script?
Yes, but the goal isn’t to recite it verbatim. The goal is to know it well enough that you never have to.
David’s analogy is one of the more memorable ones in the episode. He taught his son how to throw a punch when the kid was getting bullied at school.
A couple of weeks later, the bullying had stopped without a single punch thrown. The son had simply learned the skill well enough that the other kid could sense he wasn’t putting up with it anymore. “When you’re ready to fight,” David said, “you rarely have to.”
Scripts work the same way. An agent who has fully internalized the expired listing script can adapt in real time when a seller goes off script.
David gave a live example: calling an expired last week, the seller asked what they’d do differently. Instead of walking through an 18-point action plan, David said simply,
“I’m going to come out today, give you the answers on why it didn’t sell, and tell you exactly what we’re going to do differently to get it sold.”
The appointment was set for 4 o’clock. That answer came from deep script familiarity, not from reading off a card.
How Do Top Producing Agents Protect Their Prospecting Time?
They treat prospecting as a non-negotiable boundary, not a task to fit in around everything else. That distinction is the whole thing.
David shared that when his triplets were in the ICU as newborns, he still drove to the office every morning to prospect. People in his family had opinions about that. He held the boundary anyway. His reasoning:
“This is my identity. This is who I am. It’s important enough that I need to commit to this every single day.”
He hears agents justify skipping prospecting for an oil change. For getting ready for a wedding on a Friday afternoon. For any friction that feels larger than the commitment in that moment. Without a firm decision about what the minimum looks like every morning, everything gets equal claim on your time. Most agents haven’t actually made that decision, which is why the distractions always win.
The entire world, as David put it on the podcast, “is designed at this point to distract you.” The agents building real businesses are the ones who’ve decided in advance what belongs inside their prospecting window and what doesn’t.
Where Should an Agent Start If Business Is Slow Right Now?
Look at your daily activities before you look at your tools. The CRM doesn’t need to be cleaner. The database doesn’t need a new AI layer to tell you who to call. What most agents need is a shorter list of things they’re actually committed to doing and the discipline to do them before the day gets loud.
Based on what David shared, here’s the minimum viable daily structure:
- Write down 20 people you’re going to call today before you open anything else
- Be at your desk by 7:30 and calling expireds by 7:45
- Block two hours on Sunday to update your five market numbers and review new listings
- Pick one book and read it for understanding, not just to finish it
These aren’t complicated habits. They’re just the ones most agents skip because the CRM always has something more urgent to look at. Start with the 30-day prospecting plan if you need a structured framework to build around. The tools work better when the habits are already in place, and habits are always the faster fix.
