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Best Time to Call Agents: A Recruiting Call Schedule

By Phillip Gagnon · November 5, 2026 · 13 min read

Brokerage recruiter speaking with an agent by phone

The best time to call an agent about joining your brokerage is a weekday, mostly Tuesday through Thursday, in mid-morning (10 to 11 AM) or mid-to-late afternoon (roughly 3 to 5 PM), always in the agent’s local time. Agents spend mornings and weekends at showings and client meetings, so the gaps between those are where a recruiting call gets answered. Treat those windows as your starting hypothesis, then let your own call log tell you which ones work for the agents in your market.

TL;DR

Start with 10 to 11 AM and 3 to 5 PM local time, Tuesday through Thursday. Published sales-call data points there, and agents’ own calendars support it.
Agents are independent contractors with unpredictable days. Their schedule, not yours, sets the window.
Segment your call list by time zone before every session.
Test two windows for four weeks and log answers, conversations and booked interviews, not just dials.
A good time to call matters less than a good reason to call: open with something specific about that agent’s own goals and production.

What the data says about the best hour and day
Why agents need their own call schedule
Match the call to what that agent is doing
A weekly call schedule you can run starting Monday
How many calls is a session, and how long do 100 calls take?
Test your own windows in four weeks
What to do when the agent does not pick up
Practice before the calls count
Perspective
Put the schedule on autopilot
FAQ
Sources

What the data says about the best hour and day

Most published numbers come from general B2B sales calling, not from recruiting agents. They are a useful starting point, and they agree more than you might expect.

Source	Best time of day	Best days
HubSpot’s 2025 survey of 379 sales professionals	10 AM to 12 PM was the most productive window (51% of regular cold callers)	Tuesday (39% of regular cold callers, 30% of daily cold callers)
PhoneBurner’s 2022 Sales Calls Statistics Report	10 to 10:59 AM CST was the single best hour, with calls answered often from 10 AM to 3 PM	Tuesday, followed closely by Monday and Wednesday
Cleverly’s 2025 timing guide	10 to 11 AM and 4 to 5 PM	Tuesday drove the most booked meetings
InsideSales’ analysis of about 30 million outbound calls (2018 to 2020)	Mornings through noon, with contact rates 15% higher in the AM than the PM	Monday and Tuesday mornings were strongest early in the week
MIT Lead Response Management Study	4 to 6 PM for making contact; 8 to 9 AM and 4 to 5 PM for qualifying	Wednesday and Thursday

Two patterns hold up. Mid-morning and late afternoon show up repeatedly, and Tuesday is the most frequent day named. The sources disagree on the rest, which is itself the lesson: the best hour depends on who you are calling.

Those studies cover sales calls in general. An agent is not a typical buyer at a desk, which is why you should adjust the numbers to how agents actually work.

Why agents need their own call schedule

An agent’s day is built around clients. Zillow’s guidance on contacting agents notes that agents often have showings and client meetings on weekday mornings and weekends, and suggests mid-afternoon on weekdays for getting through directly.

That changes how you read the generic data:

Early morning (8 to 9 AM) is strong in several studies, but for agents it can collide with property tours, inspections and morning closings. If you try it, expect voicemail more often than a live conversation.
Mid-morning (10 to 11 AM) works when the agent has no appointments. It is the best generic window and a reasonable first test.
Midday is often lunch or a showing between listings. Do not plan your best prospects here.
Mid-to-late afternoon (3 to 5 PM) is the window many agents have between appointments and before evening clients. It lines up with both Zillow’s advice and the late-afternoon peaks in the data above.
Evenings and weekends belong to the agent’s clients and family. A recruiting call is an invitation to think about a career decision, and it lands better when the agent is not rushing to an open house.

The agent-centered rule is simple: call when the agent is most likely to have attention to spare, because a conversation about their goals needs attention.

Match the call to what that agent is doing

A single window for every prospect wastes your best leads. Segment instead.

By production profile

An agent closing a lot of transactions has a packed calendar and little slack. Try the late-afternoon window for the busiest names, and keep the call short with a clear question. An agent with a lighter calendar may be reachable mid-morning. You can tell the difference by looking at recent closed volume and listing activity in your MLS data.

By time zone

An hour that looks perfect on your clock may be lunch or after-hours for the agent. Cleverly’s guidance says a best hour is only valid in the prospect’s local time zone, and recommends segmenting the dial list by time zone before each session. If your brokerage covers more than one zone, build blocks: Eastern agents first thing on your day, Central next, Mountain and Pacific later.

By the signal that put them on your list

Some agents reach your list because of a timing cue: a recent office move, a production dip, a change in their market. A cue is a reason to call soon. If the cue is fresh, the day you notice it beats any perfect time slot. The MIT Lead Response Management Study found that contacting a lead within five minutes made contact and qualification far more likely than waiting 30 minutes. That study concerns inbound leads, so apply it to the cases where an agent reaches out to you first: a reply to your email, a form fill, a returned voicemail. Return those within minutes.

A weekly call schedule you can run starting Monday

Here is a plan for a broker or recruiting manager who has about five hours a week to spend on outreach.

Monday, 30 minutes: Pick your week’s list. Aim for 20 to 30 agents, ranked by fit and timing signals. Sort by time zone.
Tuesday, 10 to 11:30 AM: First calling block, top-ranked prospects. Tuesday is the most commonly named best day in the research above.
Tuesday, 3 to 4:30 PM: Second block, for the same prospects who did not pick up, plus the busiest producers.
Wednesday, 10 to 11 AM and 3 to 5 PM: Repeat blocks with new names. Follow up on any texts or emails you sent from Tuesday’s attempts.
Thursday, 3 to 5 PM: Final attempts, plus return calls and scheduling interviews.
Friday, 20 minutes: Log results, note what you learned about each agent, and set next week’s list.

Monday and Friday are kept light on purpose. Monday is for preparation. Friday is for review.

Before you dial: five minutes per agent

The window gets them to answer. What you say decides whether they stay on the line. Before each call, write down:

One specific detail from the agent’s own production, such as a price band they work or a neighborhood where they close often.
What that agent seems to be building: a team, a niche, more listings, more time.
One question about their goals, not your offer.
The outcome you want, which is a 20-minute conversation, not a signed agreement.

For wording that opens real conversations, see our guide to real estate recruiting scripts.

How many calls is a session, and how long do 100 calls take?

There is no authoritative standard, so work from your own arithmetic. A dial with no answer and a voicemail left takes about one to two minutes. A live conversation of five to ten minutes adds up quickly. If roughly one in five dials turns into a conversation (a conservative planning number, not a published benchmark), 100 dials means about 20 conversations. That is well over two hours of talking and about three to four hours in total once you include voicemails and logging.

For a recruiting manager that is too many names at once. Agents are not leads from a purchased list. Each one deserves a prepared call. Twenty well-prepared calls a week beat a hundred rushed ones, and a short, specific call list is easier to keep up for months.

Test your own windows in four weeks

The published studies reflect other industries and other years. Your market, your recruiting message and your list all differ. A simple test gives you an answer that belongs to you.

Set it up

Pick two windows. For example, 10 to 11:30 AM and 3 to 5 PM.
Keep everything else constant. Same caller, same script style, same kind of prospect in each window.
Alternate the order. Run window A first in week one and window B first in week two, so the day of the week does not distort the result.
Run it for four weeks. One week is noise.

Log these four numbers

Metric	What it shows
Dials	Your effort in each window
Live conversations	How often agents were available
Interviews booked	Whether the conversation was good enough to continue
Callbacks received	Whether voicemails and messages worked

Do not stop at answer rate. A window that gets more pickups but fewer interviews is not the better window. Compare interviews booked per hour of calling.

Read the result

After four weeks, keep the window with more interviews per calling hour. If the difference is small, the hour is not your bottleneck and your list or message deserves attention. Tracking each prospect through those steps is easier when your notes live in one place, and our prospect tracking best practices show how to set that up.

What to do when the agent does not pick up

Most first calls end in voicemail. Plan for it.

Leave a 20-second message with your name, the specific thing you noticed about their business, and one easy way to reply.
Follow with a short email or text that same day, referring to the voicemail.
Retry in the other window. If you called at 10:30 AM, try 3:30 PM another day. Different day, different hour.
Stop after a set number of attempts. Many brokers use a cadence of four to six touches over a few weeks. Choose yours, write it down, and move the agent to a slower follow-up rather than dropping them.
Log the context. If an agent mentions a busy season or a pending listing, note a date to reconnect.

When the agent does answer, start by asking if it is a good moment. Asking respects their time and often earns you the next five minutes.

Practice before the calls count

Timing gets you a conversation. Preparation determines whether it is any good. Rehearse the first 30 seconds and your two or three most common objections out loud before a calling block. Soravel, our sister product, is an AI coaching platform for real estate agents with voice or chat coaching sessions, daily check-ins, role-play practice and GCI goal tracking, and the role-play practice is useful for getting your recruiting calls sharper too. Two or three practice runs before a block takes about ten minutes.

Perspective

Brokers often ask us when to call, and the honest answer is that the hour matters less than the reason. An agent who gets a call that starts with their own production numbers and their own goals will make time, even on a busy Tuesday.

We built 3 Data Pulse around that idea. It watches the data a brokerage already has, scores every agent in the market for fit, and surfaces timing signals such as office moves and production trends, so the call list is short and the moment is right. Each prospect comes with outreach anchored in that agent’s real production and a guided five-step interview playbook.

The call is also only the start. Agents stay and grow where they are coached and supported, not where the split is a few points higher. That is why the same platform that helps you recruit also helps you retain and coach, so the agent you win on a Wednesday afternoon is still with you in two years.

Client

Put the schedule on autopilot

If you want the weekly call list built for you, our agent recruiting software searches the MLS, ranks agents by fit and timing, drafts personalized outreach and tracks every prospect. Pricing is usage-based on the pricing page: $1 per month for each agent you manage, $0.25 per month for each agent you are recruiting, with a $250 monthly minimum.

After the first call, the same platform helps you keep what you win with retention alerts and weekly coaching materials. For the full process from first touch to coaching, read our nine weekly steps for agent recruiting.

FAQ

What is the best time of day to call a real estate agent about joining a brokerage?

Start with 10 to 11 AM and 3 to 5 PM in the agent’s local time. Those windows appear across several published sales-call studies, and they sit between the morning showings and evening client meetings that fill many agents’ days. Test both against your own results.

What is the best day of the week to call agents?

Tuesday is named most often, with Monday, Wednesday and Thursday also showing strong results depending on the study. HubSpot’s survey favored Tuesday, while the MIT study pointed to Wednesday and Thursday. Run Tuesday through Thursday blocks and compare.

Should I call agents on weekends or evenings?

Generally no. Agents are busiest with clients on weekends and evenings, so a recruiting call tends to feel like an interruption. Weekday windows with a clear, short opening respect their schedule and get better conversations.

How do I handle agents in different time zones?

Sort your list by time zone before each calling session and call each group in its own local mid-morning or late-afternoon window. Calling at an hour that suits you but not them is the most common avoidable timing mistake.

How many agents should I call in a week?

For most brokerages, 20 to 30 well-researched agents a week is a manageable number. Each call can then be prepared around that agent’s production and goals, which matters more than the volume of dials.