Renee GoodenoughThough many sales teams now work mostly from home or an office behind a computer screen or a smartphone, there are still many industries that rely on door-to-door sales. Day after day, sales reps receive instructions and a new neighborhood to visit, they plan their field sales route, and they walk up and down each block, leaving flyers behind or having conversations with homeowners if they open the door. Also commonly referred to as canvassing, door-to-door sales requires that sales reps get used to rejection: there’s a lot of doors closed in your face before you get a yes. However, this type of sales work reaches target audiences that don’t always respond to newer forms of marketing, like social media ads or email marketing.
These days, the most common things sold door-to-door include roofing services, storm restoration, pest control, general home renovations, solar panels and other energy improvements, real estate agent services, telecommunications, and home alarms and security services. In other words, the vast majority of door-to-door sales have to do with ways to improve, protect, or optimize homes owned by the people who live in them.
And door-to-door sales people benefit from a very clear type of targeting: if they see a fence is falling down, they know the person living in that house already has the need for the contractor services they’re selling.
Door-to-door sales can be an exhausting job, especially if reps aren’t armed with the right information about every prospect.
That’s where SalesRabbit and HubSpot come in.
What is SalesRabbit?
SalesRabbit is an all-in-one outside sales strategy and management app. A sales enablement service and mobile CRM designed for outside sales, including field and door-to-door sales teams, SalesRabbit supports mobile lead tracking and management, from anywhere. It helps sales reps plan their routes for each day, and ensures they’re armed with the most up-to-date information available about every prospect.
What is HubSpot?
HubSpot is a powerful, easy-to-use CRM that holds all the data you need about every customer, prospect, and lead — which fuels your company’s sales, marketing, and customer care activities. HubSpot also offers powerful automation tools that help sales teams save time and access to detailed analytics that lead to faster growth.
The HubSpot CRM and SalesRabbit app integrate seamlessly to connect the efforts of your field and door-to-door sales teams with the rest of your marketing and growth initiatives.
3 Ways to Use SalesRabbit and HubSpot to Increase the Effectiveness of Outside Sales
#1 Collect information about leads in SalesRabbit and sync automatically to HubSpot
Canvassing is just as much about collecting information about leads as it is about closing deals. After all, a very small percentage of doors knocked on by salespeople will lead to a homeowner who’s ready to buy right away.
But as a sales rep makes their way through a neighborhood, with their route planned on SalesRabbit, they can gather information about each house and who they’ve spoken to there, laying the groundwork for a sale down the line — whether it’s through another door-knocking visit, or through another kind of marketing, like a HubSpot email nurture.
For example, if a sales rep is walking around a development selling solar panels, they can use SalesRabbit to easily note down information about each house they canvass. House 231 has solar panels already, so the rep notes down the name of the provider and how many panels they have. House 229 didn’t answer the door, has no solar panels yet, but does have a sign on their lawn saying they support their local Green Party candidate, perhaps indicating a stronger likelihood that they’re concerned for the environment and might want to change to solar in the future. House 227 had an elderly woman open the door, and she said she might be interested next year, so the rep should get in touch again. She provides an email, and the rep can include it in her file so that she can be added to an email nurture.
Any of these observations can be easily noted down in SalesRabbit, and the information included syncs automatically into HubSpot, generating leads and creating a new contact profile for each new prospect. And in SalesRabbit, the leads will be organized geographically, so when the company revisits the neighborhood — whether it’s next quarter or next year — any sales rep has access to information about each house. Plus, the information they gather can inform the rest of their company’s localized marketing strategy.
#2 Update lead status from prospect to deal in SalesRabbit and HubSpot
Closing deals is especially exhilarating when doing door-to-door sales, as the rate of rejection is so high. But when the moment is right, the message is right, and the product offering is right, a prospect can sign on the dotted line and become a new customer — or a previously satisfied customer can decide to sign up for another service.
For example, if a sales rep selling pest control is going door-to-door in a neighborhood and they notice that the open garage in one of the homes is littered with mice traps, they know they’re about to be talking to a very warm lead. They can knock on the door confidently, express their concern and empathy for the challenge of dealing with pests, and offer their services. The homeowner who opens the door is so fed up with traps that don’t work that they’re ready to take the next step and work with this pest control service. They let the sales rep come in, give a full pitch and proposal, and they sign up for services right away. The sales rep can then return to their car, update the win in SalesRabbit on their phone, tablet, or laptop, and all the information of the deal will be reflected right away in HubSpot.
#3 Have all the most up-to-date information ready to provide the best sales experience
In sales, knowledge is power — that’s why so much of advertising involves collecting information about prospects and leads. And when it’s time to knock on doors, an even more challenging type of sales than cold-calling, it’s so important to be armed with as much information as possible before entering any conversation.
With SalesRabbit and HubSpot, sales reps can take a quick look at their smartphone and read everything they need to know about each potential client. Have they been visited before? Which kind of products did they show interest in? Did they seem almost ready to buy, or should I hold off to revisit them until next year? All these questions and more can be quickly answered, and the sales rep’s door-knocking pitch altered to match.
Here’s a real-life example. If a real estate agent is making the rounds through a new neighborhood offering their services, they will have better success if they consult their CRM and find out everything they can about each house before knocking on the door. If the agent sees that someone on this particular block used their company’s services to buy the house last year, they might skip that house — but they’ll know there’s a good chance the neighbors next door might recognize them and be amenable to a conversation about buying or selling property.
Outside sales is a tough gig. But the right tools make it easier to be successful and close more deals.
Learn more about how SalesRabbit works with the HubSpot CRM — or check out these step-by-step instructions to set up the SalesRabbit integration with HubSpot — to provide your outside teams with the right knowledge and the most user-friendly platforms to support their sales process.
