How to turn a stranger who clicked a Facebook ad into a booked appointment

The lead just came in. Name, number and the property they clicked on. They registered through a Facebook lead form, which means they may barely remember doing it. Their phone is in their hand and other agents are already calling.

What happens next is where most agents fall apart.

In a recent episode of their weekly sales and marketing show, Taylor Hack walked through the full process for converting a cold Facebook lead into a booked appointment. Not the theory of it. The actual words, the structure of the call and the specific techniques that move someone from stranger to signed client.

The text before the call

The first contact should be a text, not a call. The goal of the text is not to book an appointment. It is to get a reply that signals the phone is in their hand.

Hack’s approach: watch for engagement signals. If someone is going back and forth in a text thread, their phone is active. That is the moment to call.

“I miss 100 per cent of the opportunities I don’t get to a phone call,” he said. “So I’m looking for the earliest point where I can see a probability of positive results.”

Andrew Fogliato added a useful option for agents who prefer to ask permission before calling. After a few exchanges, something as simple as hey, we can solve this way faster on a quick call – do you have one minute? is enough. Hack’s preference is to just call the moment he sees the opportunity. His framing: their phone is in their hand and they are already talking to him. The call is the natural next step.

The opening line that does not make them hang up

The single most common mistake on a cold call from a Facebook lead is the greeting. “Hey, how are you doing today?” is not a greeting. It is a signal that what follows is a sales call. Everyone knows it. Everyone prepares their defences.

“What they need in the first breath is who the hell are you and why the hell are you calling me,” Hack said.

The formula he uses comes from Phil Jones, whose work on persuasive language Hack has applied extensively in his own practice. Three components: a polite greeting, a mutually agreeable fact and an easy-to-answer question.

Hack’s version for a Facebook ‘coming soon’ lead: “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 is the coming soon status of the property. They know they clicked on it. They know it was not on Realtor.ca. Acknowledging that immediately establishes that this call is directly related to the thing they were already thinking about. The question at the end is easy to answer, low pressure and about the property rather than the agent.

Fogliato noted that for newer agents or those without an established brand, leaning on the brokerage name in the opening can help. Once the team name is recognizable in the market, it becomes a better anchor. For Taylor, the Remax name does the work. For Taylor from Hack and Co, the team name is increasingly doing the same. 

What to do when they say they were just browsing

A common response to the opening question is some version of “I was just looking, I’m not really ready to do anything right now.”

Hack uses a statement correction technique drawn from interrogation methodology. Rather than asking a direct question about their intentions, he makes a statement that is slightly wrong and lets them correct it.

“So if you found a great property, you wouldn’t want to go see it.”

It is not a question. It is a statement. And almost everyone corrects a wrong statement about themselves.

“No, no – we would definitely want to see it, we just need to stay in this school zone.”

In one sentence, they have moved from just browsing to revealing the actual situation: a specific school zone, which implies a child, which implies a timeline tied to the school year. That is more actionable information than most agents get after ten minutes of direct questioning. 

Going deep with FORD

Once the conversation is open, Hack’s approach is to keep asking questions in the pattern he calls going too deep: whatever they mention, ask two more questions off the bottom of it before moving on.

The framework is FORD – family, occupation, recreation, dreams. Not as a checklist to work through, but as a map of where the conversation is going. He wants to know the people, not just the property criteria.

“Most people measure relationships by how much you know about each other,” he said. “You probably know what your best friend’s first car was. I’m trying to get drafted onto their team.”

When someone mentions a daughter starting school in September, Hack matches it with his own kids and pivots naturally into the timeline. When they mention moving up from a starter home, he reflects their language back and asks what changed.

The goal is to reach what he calls bringing it to a boil – the point where the person is talking freely, the real motivation has come out and the agent is no longer running a sales call but having a conversation between people who understand each other. 

Closing on the appointment

Once the real situation is on the table, the close is straightforward. Hack’s version ties directly to the information they just shared.

If someone has a daughter starting school in a specific zone in September and they are in the market right now, the close sounds like: it sounds like you need to understand the frequency of opportunity in that area – how often does the right property come up? If it is once a week, you have time to wait for the right kitchen. If it is once every four months, you need to be ready when it comes. I can show you that history. Does tomorrow at four work or is Saturday at three better?

Two specific options. Not an open-ended “When would work for you?” Two times that force a choice between yes and yes.

“You are not selling them a house,” Fogliato said. “You are solving the problem of not knowing what they do not know yet.” 

Why Facebook ads require a different mindset than Google leads

The episode also covered an important distinction that changes how agents should think about Facebook lead forms compared to other lead sources.

Bottom-of-funnel Google leads – someone searching best realtor in Edmonton or sell my house fast – are expensive, competitive and full of people who have already had bad experiences with other agents. They are in it for the agent, not the property.

Facebook leads from coming soon campaigns are top-of-funnel. They are in it for the property. They may not have thought seriously about moving yet. They are cheaper to acquire and require a different follow-up approach entirely – one built for nurture, not speed-to-transaction.

Fogliato shared a concept from Dean Jackson called lead futures that illustrates the value of this approach. A client was paying $150 per bottom-of-funnel lead. Jackson could generate top-of-funnel leads for $3. His model was to sell the right to those leads at $15 upfront, nurture them himself at his cost and then sell them to the client at $75 when they were ready to transact. The client paid $15 today instead of $150 later. Jackson owned the pipeline.

“What agents really want is appointments,” Hack said. “But the cost of appointments is not something they want to spend. The agents who learn to build the nurture system own the pipeline.”

The full episode covers how to set up Facebook lead form ads correctly, why boosting posts from the button is always the wrong move, and how to think about the curiosity gap versus clickbait when writing coming soon ad copy.

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