5 Tips for succeeding in door to door sales

Door-to-door sales is a demanding profession, but it’s also extremely rewarding when done well. A lot of sales and canvassing mastery comes from practice and experience, but these 10 tips will give you a strong foundation.

#1 Establish (And Constantly Improve) a Sales Process

No matter your industry/segment/area, every company has a process that prospects go through in order to become a customer. But if you’re not thinking strategically about that process, you might be selling inefficiently.

If you need to build a sales process, here’s a few quick steps:

1. Outline the different steps of your sales process. What process does your prospect usually go through to become a customer? Write this down. It could be as simple as: contact, qualification, presentation, close, onboarding. Start simple and then get more specific over time.
2. Track information about your performance on each step. This will start giving you actionable info about your sales teams and their performance. How many of your contacts are qualified? How many of your presentations turn into closes? How many of your new customers successfully make it through onboarding?
3. Look for opportunities to improve each step. Once you’re tracking numbers, you can find weak spots based on your data. Then, you can start repairing them by creating a smarter onboarding process. Making specific improvements is much more effective than making general, blind improvements.

#2 Overcome Objection

When trying to overcome sales objectives, it is imperative you respond appropriately and avoid reacting impulsively to your prospect’s objections. Here are some helpful strategies for overcoming objections. Here are 7 things you need to do to overcome sales objections:

1. Practice active listening.
2. Repeat back what you hear.
3. Validate the prospects concerns.
4. Ask plenty of follow-up questions.
5. Leverage social proof.
6. Set an appointment to follow-up again.
7. Anticipate future objections.

#3 Constantly Learn More About Sales

It doesn’t matter if you’re a canvassing rookie, a vet, a manager, or a CEO—there is always something to improve, and door-to-door sales is one of the industries that most rewards you for mastering your craft. If you make it a habit to regularly spend time learning from sales masters and teachers, you’ll dominate the porches and grow as a rep and as a leader.

If you’re looking for book recommendations, check out our list of the Top 8 Books for Door-to-Door Sales.

#4 Embrace Discomfort

Door-to-door sales, by its nature, pulls you out of your comfort zone—so you might not think that this applies to you. But there are a lot of ways that you can crawl back into that comfort zone, no matter your experience or success in the industry.

Here’s an anti-comfort battle plan:

• Identify comfortable areas of your life and set goals to make them uncomfortable. Make them small goals at first, so that you build momentum and confidence moving forward.
• Control your inner voice. Your brain might not want to welcome more discomfort into your life. The difference between a catastrophe and a catalyst is attitude. Learn to silence the voice that says “I’m not strong enough” and replace it with the one that says “This will make me stronger.”
• Seek balance. We’re not saying that you need to ruthlessly eliminate all forms of comfort in your life. Give everything you have to your work, but don’t hesitate to set aside to relax, meditate, and prepare to come back stronger.

#5 Evolve with the Times

You wouldn’t believe what is becoming possible in this industry and that’s why we love it. We’re going to get out of the office, put down the phone, and talk to people, face-to-face. We built SalesRabbit around the idea that canvassing reinforced by tech would be a much more effective approach to sales. And we’re still building around that idea.

Here’s a glimpse into what we and other companies are building to drive door-to-door into the future:

• Boost: Until Boost, door-to-door companies haven’t had a cost-effective marketing strategy that matched the way they sell. Boost lets you send ads to web connected devices and services in a specific area. Your ads will appear on Spotify, ESPN, Roku, NBC, Fox, CBS, Pandora, and more. This will generate awareness for your brand and make people much more open to your canvassing.
• Zapier: We use Zapier to connect SalesRabbit to a lot of the services you already use, like G-Mail, Calendars, SalesForce, Google Sheets, Slack, and thousands more. Zapier makes it easy to connect all your apps and build workflows that automate everything. 
• Digital Contracts: Paper is too expensive and often has a tendency to disappear. It’s also a pain to have to carry around with you. We’ve built digital contracts that you can populate with whatever information you need and that the customer can sign on the porch. 
• And More! We’re constantly adding new features. Recently, we’ve added a route planner, credit checks, file attachments, and others. We’re doing whatever we can to make your job easier.

Use Our Resources

If you’re looking for more tips for succeeding in the world of sales, check out our resources page where we post best practices for you. Use our industry secrets to up your sales game and make 2021 your year.