Thanks for the tips, those are right on. You’re so right about not handing them anything. As soon as they get your card or flyer they stare at the whole time you’re doing your trying to do your thing. Make sure their eyes are ON YOU!
I’ve never had the cops called on me either. I’ve also never been bitten by a dog or shot at. It’s really not as scary as most people think.
Some people really love seeing you out there busting your butt trying to get some business too. Some of my best customer now are ones that I got going door to door in the beginning.
I think your main problem will be that you need to make sure that your ideas, tactics, and motivation are very specific to window cleaning. There are a lot of good sales books out there, so if you can come up with enough ideas, stories, and examples that are specific to window cleaning, I think you could have a book.
Wow tmeester1, I have to tell you that I think you have provided me with almost eveything I need to
know about cold calling door to door. I am very shy about approaching people and I am still trying
to work up my nerve. If I do try it I will remember to back up, talk slow, remove distractions and
use the name of their neighbor if possible. Thanks for the good tips pardner.
For those of you that have success with door knocking, do you go at all hours of the day, in the morning, or at night after 5pm? I wonder if it is simply a waste of time going at 8am. I figure 90% of poeple will be at work. Someone tell me I’m wrong please.
Your welcome. One thing I forgot to ad was the question by Kurt above about time of day. In my opinion knocking on doors before 4:30 PM is a wast of time unless your already at a job and then I thought the 5 door idea was very accurate. Saturdays were great but Sundays not so much. Even though I was willing to work on Sundays I found most people did not want to talk to me (but probably would have any other day of the week).
Also for those of you who use Screen Magic I put together a door flyer to hand out or leave on the door. Since Screen Magic is a new product, chances they have never heard about it and would be something new to talk about that might set you apart from your competition. Chris put it up on the WCR server for everyone. It’s a word document so you can put your company info at the bottom and print off as many as you want. Here is the link to down load it. http://windowcleanerproducts.com/bizdocs/flyerforpros
A few years ago I landed a client that is a 6k a year client from door knocking. Still a client and many referrals have spun off of it. I think it’s the person that’s doing the knocking. A professional salesman someone that knows how to uncover needs and then present solutions can do it quite well. It’s not the most efficient way to build a business, but if you have a lot of ambition/energy it can work just fine. Since then though I’ve found a lot easier ways of attracting customers.
I don’t think anyone would laugh at someone busting their balls door to door and I definitely disagree that it is a low class way of making money.
I go door to door almost every day and make great money, talk to tons of people, get exercise and waste less money and paper on 90+% of it being thrown out.
Everyone uses a fliers these days. I’ve gotten about 20-30 this week alone and I live in a town house. My parents get much more than I do.
Door to door has built my company, bought my van, payed my rent, paid for my WFP system, paid for all of my high rise gear, my food and my trips and fun. If I started this business and relied on just fliers, I would be broke and waiting for calls. Nothing good comes from sitting at home waiting. If someone calls while you’re knocking doors because you left a flier, GREAT! If someone doesn’t who gives a flying f***??? Not me, because I’m making a living. EVERY business is built, someone started out broke somewhere in the chain to build every business in the world, directly or in-directly.
My advice to everyone is this, do what you gotta do because if you don’t, I will or someone else will. Don’t listen to ANYONE who talks negative or down about your business or the way you do business. If it works. It basically boils down to this “If you think you can or you think you can’t” Your right!
The downside of passing out fliers and/or knocking on doors is that it is extremely time consuming. I would much rather spend my time in front of the computer doing entrepreneurial work like going over the budget, planning on future business implementations and processes or learning something new for the business. If you don’t have the money for other means of marketing like an active website, direct mail, email marketing etc., then you have to pass out fliers or doorknock and there is nothing wrong with that at all. I passed out fliers and pounded the pavement quite a bit in the beginning.
There is nothing like d 2 d sales, if you can captivate your client with charm expertise and know how in person face to face not only will you secure that customer for years to come but in a lot of cases I am able to charge premium prices while educating the customer on my high level of performance.
Damn, your first post is to throw shade at someone else’s comment that they made 11 years ago?
Even then, did he hate or did he just have a different perspective based on the laws and experiences in his region?
