Door to door sales will it work?

[Yes Traders]

We have a range of car cleaning products.
They are good and good value for money.

'm looking to recruit agents to sell door to door with our website also for sales.
My question is, do you think the door to door era is over? You very rarely see it but I think it might be worth a bash.

Selling online is very competitive but I still believe if you only have one product on front of you, you are less likely to quibble on price etc through comparison.

Anyone had experience.

Thanks

 

[HarveyIT]

I'd say your liable to annoy a few people, but I guess that's pretty much inevitable

Sent from my HTC Wildfire using Tapatalk 2

 

[ethical PR]

I think you need to do some research with your target customers to find out about which selling channels best appeal to them and the cost of those channels to see what will be most effective for you.

 

[weblisterltd.com]

I would say door to door is pretty much over now, I hate all sellers to the door and telephone, unless you work on just comission like Avon, betterware etc you will pay a fortune, better off establishing online then door to door, its winter months too, gonna be cold brrrrrt

 

[SwindonSteve]

The only way I see this working is not by selling your car cleaning products door to door but by selling them to the existing door to door car cleaning outfits and by perhaps encouraging the standing cleaning outfits to go d2d as well with a commission on selling a product for you.

 

[Twoscoops]

I moved house recently and was amazed to have 2 D2Ds in the first week in my new house. One for charity and one for organic veg boxes. Both after 7pm. Of course there may have been more while I was at work!!!

I hate it because I'm really not not in the mood to meet new people when I get home. That and I don't want door knocker waking the kids up and I'm really tight so don't want heat leaving the house when the front door is open!!! Small things, but no thanks.

 

[Paul Norman]

Personally, my home is private. If you knock at the door to sell me something I will assume that your business is not legitimate.

I am wrong to jump to that conclusion, but I do. However, you only need to watch consumer programmes to see how many people will buy just anything from people who rock up at the door, which means it can certainly work.

Please, however, do not knock on my door to try to sell me anything at all.

Bizarrely, and inconsistently, I am fine with you turning up at my office, or phoning me. I know. I am odd.

 

[TradeSmart]

It all depends on the demographic of the area you calling at.

I started my working career as a door salesman for E.On (formerly Powergen when I started) and I got so much stick off my mates is unreal.

They were soon put silent when they seen the money I was earning. As I said though, it's all about the demographic. I had massive success (Tops sales rep in the North for 5 years on the bounce) but I would only ever knock at council houses/estates (what we called low dem). Bought council houses (mid dem) was hit and miss and private estates (high dem) absolute waste of time.

If your prices are competitive and your product is actually half decent, door to door is one of the most effective sales channels going. Think about it. How much easier is it t get someone to say yes there and then, as opposed to getting them to your website, to then look on it, make a decision, then actually purchase. Door to door is instant sales.

Just make sure you have ID, Business Cards/flyers with all company details and even give them the option to purchase by pay pal/credit card (yes you can do this door to door with ipad or them home connection) and you wont have any issues.

I run a cleaning company and a lot of my work is from door to door canvassing when I first started it and had no money for any sort of online marketing.

If you want any advice, drop me a PM.

 

[beasty]

It will work, will it work enough for someone to make a job out of it?

Market research?

Just go try it that is research!

Those that say it will not work, you can sell pretty much anything door to door (I have sold many things YOU might personally say NO to but the next person says yes.

IMO damn right it will work with the right people knocking the doors, you can easily see the dirty cars, hell offer them a cleaning service too, have a single guy who comes round and washes the cars with the products then leaves them the stuff.. job done..

 

[Paula Cohen]

The fact that many people think the era of door to door selling is over may be exactly the reason this could work - because so few other people are doing it!

I'd suggest taking a stab at a cashflow forecast should be your first step - so how much will you need to pay someone, are there travel costs or insurances to pay, how much would you need to invest in stock, ID cards, brochures, branded clothing etc to get started? So ... on that basis how many sales would you need to make in order to break even? And how many sales would that mean you'd need to make for every 20 houses called at? Is that a realistic figure?

That should give you a quick & dirty picture of how realistic a strategy this is.

One thing to bear in mind is this is quite a low volume sales stream compared to something like your website sales. Could you make a much bigger jump in sales by investing in some good SEO? (but bear in mind there are a heck of a lot of companies out there who over-promise & under-deliver on that frint so be choosy!)

 

[Talay]

Come knockin' on my door after dark and you'll be starin' down the barrel of a 12 gauge !

Seriously, the poster about council houses in high density works because they are unemployed or have someone at home and buy on demand at any price whilst I wouldn't trust whatever crap you hauled around with you and I know I can get better and cheaper delivered in 24 hours from Amazon, John Lewis and many others.

 

[Thermodynamic Man]

For us D2D is the mainstay of our business. Door knocking is far from dead. However we do not sell at the door, we get appointments to go back at a later date, our sale process could last up to 2 hours, but then we have been invited. Nobody want's to stand at the door for 2 hours...even us
At the door it is basically a quick introduction and just to discover if there is any interest and need in our products. If so we make an appointment go back, if not we thank the homeowner for the minute of their time and we move on.
I do appreciate some will not want us to knock. Unfortunately we are not to know the ones that do and those that do not. So we have to knock all so that we and the potential customer don't miss out.
I will say however that all of our customers tell us that they are glad we knocked the door in the first place, for various reasons. So it does work for some

 

[JonnyMP]

Door to door marketing might work in some communities and fall flat in others. This will just depend on the neighborhoods you are targeting. One thing you might do to 'soften up' a potential customer would be to conduct a postcard mailing campaign to a neighborhood ahead of time that allows each person to claim a 'free car wash' (with the products you sell obviously). You would collect these leads on your salesman's behalf. The sales person would hire a kid to come along on sales calls and wash the customer's car using the products that he's selling. The potential customer would see how well the products work and want to buy more. Of course, you would pass these leads along to your sales team