Is going from door to door in your neighborhood a good idea?? I live in a sub-divison…
I believe it’s a great idea!! for multiple reasons… First, you get to see what you are going to be working with, type of homes, what you will encounter when working, troublshooting, also meet people in the neighborhood. Presenting yourself well, collared shirt, nice pants, a smile and a handshake work wonders. It’s much better for people to associate a face and a name to a business than “just” a card/flier. DO BOTH and watch your business grow leaps and bounds. Where are you going door to door? What kind of response are you getting?
it depends on people in the neighborhood. around here i have had people call the police if the guys put a door hanger on their door… even if we were working next door. here we need a permit for every town through the police station, i think its $25 per town
I think it sucks. Your walking so you cant cover as much ground. I did it when I had a lawn and landscaping biz and i will never waste my time like that again. Cover 100 houses or a 1000. You do the math. It only works when you have community mail boxes and you have to go door to door.
It seems to work great for me. It’s my chosen marketing method. It me in front of them. Be prepared for rejection though.
I’ve stirred up several thousand dollars in work for this year by spending several hours in my field picking and choosing homes I’d like to clean. It is difficult, humbling, stressful work but in my opinion the payoff is immediate.
My 2nd choice would be direct mail. This takes a lot less time and costs and bit more.
Door to door beats waiting for the phone to ring. I call it “active” marketing as opposed to “passive” marketing (waiting for the phone to ring).
It’s a great idea and works but be careful as many towns around the country are starting to enact (No knock laws). I have one in my town. It’s not a big deal until someone get’s upset and calls the police. Going on 4 years in business now and 1st year tried it, did pretty well but after a few hours had the police roll up on me and tell me to stop. Last year I hit up one of the retirement communities I work in. I thought it was going to be hard and was correct. I got to the 5th house and the police were coming down the street with the community security and association manager. I was lucky to be able to talk my way out of the upset group. The association manager banned me from working in the community. But I got that fixed in a monday morning. I called all my customers and told them the community had banned me from working because I did door to door. I told them I would not be able to service them this year. Old people get upset really fast. Well they called and called and called the management office until I got a call from the management office acting like they knew nothing and I was told “You’re not banned, by all means please come service your customers.”
My 2 cents and you can give me back the change from what you don’t want.
I walk door to door and leave a flyer on the door. I do not ring door bell and try to engage them. Now if home owner is outside I will approach them to personally hand them a flyer and offer them a free quote if they would like.
Why? Not ring door bells?
I am not a door to door salesman and dont want to be perceived as such.
Why do all walking? To be honest even in the nice neighorhoods there are some windows/houses that I wouldnt want to touch and some jobs that are just too big(i.e. 3rd floors) for a one man operation.
Why do all the walking? Well if I have time to advertise door to door then I need the customers, as I dont have any jobs on the schedule. I figure that d2d is the cheapest way to advertise at about 3 cent per flyer and it also keeps me from going stir crazy in my house.
I am new at this and have been in operation for 7 months, so this is just my method and so far I am pleased with the results.
I’m a pretty confident guy, but even so I’m not sure I have the self esteem to handle going door to door 
I can honestly say I’ve never seen a salesman walking up to my house and thought to myself “This guy just might have something I need.” My first thought is always “Ugggh what does this guy want.” So I can’t comment much on actually selling door to door. I wouldn’t.
I can comment on delivering marketing material d2d though. I did do quite a few door hangers last year. I put them on the door at first, but it was awkward when people were outside and it took so long on foot it wasn’t worth the time. Then I started doing them on mailboxes from my vehicle and that worked better, because I was there and gone in seconds. But some would fly off and end up in the road and a few stayed there too long and ended up getting stuck to the mailbox when it rained.
I got 4 negative calls (angry homeowners) from delivering a batch of 5000. I calmed them all down quickly, and fixed whatever problems they had, but I’d rather just not recieve the call in the first place. I’m still going to do a few thousand this spring just because the ROI was so high, but this will be the last time before I go 100% direct mail.
To be fair though, I got amazing ROI on those door hangers. 11:1 on the first 5000 and the design sucked. So if you have the time, and can handle some stares, give it a shot.
when I started out 10 years ago we hit our neighborhood d2d w/doorknob flyers/coupon. It felt a little awkward at first going to my neighbors’ houses, but response was great. I think in part because they knew us. I didnt ring door bells just left flyer.We then hit as many local n.hoods as possible…and our biz took off from there. If a customer is out tho i/or my employee will go up to them ask if we could leave a coupon for services, had 1 person in 10 years say no. I still do d2d today but a lot of times will hang postcards on mailbox flags by truck. I use postcards now instead of flyers. I think they look more professional imo. I say go for it!I think too if a potential customer meets you and LIKES you, thats 1/2 the battle.
I agree with Sharen.
I just got back from passing out 500 and I picked up 3 jobs while I was walking around by talking with people while I was walking.
What do community mailboxes have to do with D2D sales?
It is unlawful to attach items to mailboxes or place items inside.
knocking on doors is something i do spur-of-the moment . if i think about it too long i start to worry and then back out of the idea. i try to do it little and often, so the rejection doesnt cut in deep . usually i call at 3 or 4 houses then just get on with my work .
We drive around and place them in paper boxes under the mail boxes. Around here most of the time if they have a community mail box there is no paper box so we will place them door to door.
Am I reading this wrong? Is he talking about knocking on each door?? If so, I have never done that one.
I was looking at pictures on my phone and forgot I had taken this last fall. You could try something like this for window cleaning if the homes in the subdivision are relatively all the same.
That is what I thought!!!
And unless I’m mistaken, placing anything in (I’m not sure about on) is a federal offense. Ouch!
Knocking door to door? Yes, door to door. I live in a town of 4,000 people and you can go out on a map 60 miles in all directions and not round up 10,000 people. So everyone tends to know everyone and their business around here. I’m guessing that is why I’ve seen great success going door to door.
In 1 neighborhood of about 8-10 homes I’ve picked up all except 1 home that I’ve knocked. Their are 2 left that haven’t been home. Several I’ve chosen not to pursue. But I’ve picked up 3 jobs out of that 1 neighborhood for this spring.
Now when I visit the other homes I just tell them how their neighbor so and so is having me clean their windows. It works great.
I picked up upwards of $2,400 worth of annual income in 1 day pursuing high end homes about 60 miles from here.
I am going to start direct mail at some point which I have done and it does work well.
I’ve found though that door to door is THE best ROI during this winter when $ is tight and I have an abundance of time. The customer sees me face to face and it usually puts them at ease.
What I do is ease into their driveway and park my car pointed away from the house, ease on up to the door (heart panting), knock and step back several steps.
I basically don’t hammer them but try to come at them basically with my hat in my hand. I’ve only had one bad experience where the lady wouldn’t even take my business card. I’m actually surprised at the good response of all.
I certainly wouldn’t be so receptive if I came to my door and interrupted me:)
BTW - I did check with the county attorney before I began and it is a lawful activity in my county. I just try not to push it.
the postmaster told me I’m allowed to attach but not allowed to open the mailbox…not sure if thats allowed all over or not. He also told me that I could arrange for them to deliver, never checked into that ,but I think I may .
Yeah I know… but it’s just so much easier. I never got told not to though, I would’ve stopped if I had. For the record, I never opened the mailboxes… just put door hangers on the flags.
I won’t be doing anymore that way anyhow. In hindsight though, it was worth the risk then.
But i don’t think so its great idea.i think you should try Every Door Direct Mail.It enables you to extend your customer reach via saturation mail without the need for mailing lists, permits, and the associated fees. With Every Door Direct Mail, you create a saturation mailing without applying individual names and addresses to each mailpiece.Choose the area you want to mail to, Design and Print your mail piece,Bring the prepared mail to your local post office.We love this program because it enables customers that would have never tried direct mail to take a test without significant risk.But if you have lot fo time then you can use your idea.
