Skip to content Most agents give up on an expired listing lead the moment it goes quiet. One hang-up, one unanswered call, and the file gets pushed to the bottom of the list or dropped for good.
Central Florida agent Cherry Bryant almost did the same thing with a lead sitting in her database. Instead, a follow up call she nearly skipped turned into a same-day listing appointment inside a nail salon and, within days, 12 more listings from the same seller. Her expired listing follow up strategy is a cadence anyone can copy, built on treating a hang-up as information about timing.
This post breaks down that expired listing follow up cadence: how long to keep working an expired lead, what to do when someone hangs up, and how to build the daily habit that makes follow up automatic.
Co-authored by the REDX Publishing Team and:
Cherry Bryant
Cherry Bryant is a Central Florida real estate agent with eXp Realty and a featured guest on the REDX Podcast, known for turning one reconnected expired listing call into 12 signed listings.
Quick Links:
- What Does It Mean to Get Outscripted on a Cold Call?
- How Long Should You Follow Up With an Expired Listing Lead?
- What Actually Happened When One Reconnected Call Turned into 12 Listings?
- How Do You Build a Daily Follow Up Habit That Sticks?
- How Do You Follow Up Without Sounding Pushy?
- What Should Your Expired Listing Follow Up Cadence Actually Look Like?
What Does It Mean to Get Outscripted on a Cold Call?
Getting outscripted means the prospect ended the call before you did, not that they closed the door on selling their home. It is a term Cherry Bryant picked up in a coaching group built around scripts and objection handling, and it reframes a hang-up as a simple scheduling problem.
Cherry practices scripts and objection handling weekly with David Radney’s Push Academy coaching group, and the rule they train on is simple: if someone hangs up, call back on a different day and keep them on the list. Real estate agents cold calling expired listings hear plenty of curt answers, and most of that reaction reflects being one of several calls that week.
Treating a hang-up as data keeps the lead in rotation, which is the foundation of any expired listing follow up strategy. Treating it as rejection gets a live seller deleted from the pipeline for good.
How Long Should You Follow Up With an Expired Listing Lead?
Keep an expired listing lead in active follow up for weeks or months, not one call. According to REDX MLS tracking data, 43% of expired listings relist within 90 days and 65% relist within 2 years, with a 45 day average relist window, which means a homeowner who will not sell today may be ready the next time you call.
Cherry’s signature lead sat in her database for a while, called multiple times across several days with no answer or a hang-up, and stayed in active rotation. Part of what kept the door open was skip-traced contact data for expired listings with more than one number for the household, so a disconnected line was not the end of the search.
“The fortune is in the follow up” is how Cherry puts it. A seller who talked to an agent three weeks ago has usually forgotten the call and any name or number they were given, so consistent, spaced follow up is what keeps an agent’s name in front of them long enough to be remembered when they are finally ready.
What Actually Happened When One Reconnected Call Turned into 12 Listings?
This is the clearest example of what an expired listing follow up can produce when the cadence holds. A previously unresponsive expired lead answered on a later attempt, agreed to a same-day 7pm listing appointment, and signed on the spot, then referred her to 12 more properties he owned over the following days. The seller was a husband who co-owned properties with his wife, some held under a business name.
Cherry did not bring up the earlier hang-up when she finally reached him. She booked the appointment for that same evening, and the address turned out to be his nail salon. She delivered the full listing presentation and CMA there, in front of customers and staff, and he signed before she left.
Driving home, he texted her screenshots of parcel numbers for other properties he owned. Over the following days he sent 13 properties total. One was already under contract with another agent, leaving 12 that went on the market from that single reconnected phone call. Cherry says this call almost did not happen. It was the last call of a coaching call-lab session on Good Friday, and she nearly skipped it to go home.
Reach mattered as much as the script here. REDX’s Plus Insights™ data layer surfaces multiple phone numbers per lead, which is what let Cherry keep trying the household after earlier attempts went nowhere. A script only works if the call connects.
How Do You Build a Daily Follow Up Habit That Sticks?
Build follow up around a fixed daily call block, not around how motivated you feel that morning. Cherry credits a coach’s phrase, “activity breeds activity,” for keeping her consistent: showing up to dial even on a low-energy day is what produces the next win. Waiting to feel ready produces nothing.
Her day is built around calling expired listings and FSBOs, then working a written follow up list that tracks who needs a callback, plus a weekly mindset and coaching call. One line from a group member stuck with her: every morning you wake up in real estate, you are unemployed, meaning nobody pays an agent for showing up, only for the calls and follow up made that day.
Cherry is honest about the gap between real activity and busy work. Calls and follow up produce income. Tweaking a website or polishing an Instagram feed feels productive without paying anything, and a working follow up strategy depends on auditing which category most of the day falls into.
How Do You Follow Up Without Sounding Pushy?
Read the room on each call, distinguishing a seller who is annoyed but still worth reaching from one who is genuinely done. Cherry compares persistent follow up to pulling a splinter: it can sting for a second, but the agent is offering relief.
She keeps the focus on helping the homeowner. Many agents chase the deal first, and homeowners can feel that. A curt answer usually reflects being contacted by several agents already. Wanting to help is what keeps compassionate persistence from turning into the kind of call reluctance that stalls an expired listing follow up habit before it starts.
What Should Your Expired Listing Follow Up Cadence Actually Look Like?
A working expired listing follow up cadence has four parts: a place to log every attempt, callbacks scheduled on a calendar, a habit of asking reached sellers about other properties they own, and an accountability group that keeps the whole system honest.
- Log every call attempt in one place. A hang-up, a no-answer, and a full conversation all need to live in the same record so nothing gets worked twice or forgotten.
- Put callbacks on a calendar, not in your memory. Cherry’s reconnect call happened because the lead was still in rotation weeks later, not because she remembered it on her own.
- Ask every seller you reach about other properties. The 12 additional listings in Cherry’s story came from one extra question after the first listing was signed.
- Find a coaching or accountability group. Cherry names accountability as the biggest reason she has stayed consistent since recommitting to real estate this year, more than any script or tool on its own.
Cherry also credits pre-foreclosure leads for growing her pipeline since she rebuilt it from scratch in January, alongside the reach that comes from multiple phone numbers per lead. Neither replaces the daily habit. Both just make the habit produce more once it is already in place.
Cherry compares her business to the old story of Nehemiah rebuilding a wall while people tried to distract him from finishing it: every call, door knock, and in-person conversation is one brick, and the wall gets built by an agent who keeps showing up to lay them. The National Association of REALTORS® research desk tracks housing turnover trends that back up what Cherry sees on her calls: sellers who go quiet have not disappeared from the market, they just have not been reached at the right moment. Somewhere in an agent’s database is a homeowner who needs the patience described here, and that seller will not find the agent who already stopped calling.
