Let’s be honest. Some people think door to door sales is an antiquated way of selling. As the next generation of outside sales reps join the workforce, the majority may be unaware just how powerful door to door selling can be.

We know the reason D2D prospecting is still relevant: It works. Today, 65% of outside sales reps attain quota, which is 10% higher than quota attainment for inside sales reps.

Door to door sales can be a rewarding sales career and drive the bottom line for businesses in many different industries. In this post, we’ll cover the fundamentals of door to door selling, share some tips for success, and talk about technology that can help sales teams and managers achieve their objectives.

Let’s get started.

What is Door to Door Sales?

Door to door sales is the process of canvassing a territory and speaking face to face with potential customers about the benefits of a product or service.

In a B2B context, door to door sales involves visiting a business to speak with a decision maker, book an appointment, or provide promotional material, such as sales sheets or a business card.

B2C salespeople may target prospects in a specific neighborhood, knocking on doors to speak with residents. Reps may also use social proof in their process — for example, telling a prospect whether someone else in their neighborhood has purchased the product the rep is selling.

Pillars Of The D2D Sales Process

Wondering how to be a good door to door salesperson? Effective door to door sales processes are based on the following pillars:

Prospecting is the search for new customers. Prospects are essential to your sales funnel, because you need a steady stream of new customers in order to grow.

Qualifying means identifying a prospect’s need that matches one of the features or benefits you offer. Qualifying is based on prospects’ “pain” (enough pain to buy), budget (the money to buy), and decision power (authority to buy). It requires a door to door salesperson to ask a lot of open-ended questions, listen carefully, and respond appropriately.

Pitching: is when you make an offer and describe the benefits to your qualified prospect. You provide a solution for their pain points and explain how your product makes their lives or jobs easier. 

Closing is when you convince the potential customer to buy your product or service. There are numerous ways to close a deal, and finding the one that works best for you and each qualified prospect is a vital skill for successful door to door sales. 

Follow-up means that after the sale, the door to door salesperson contacts the customer to ensure they received what they ordered and are satisfied with their purchase. It’s essential to establishing a relationship with your new customer, and the gateway to future opportunities with the customer, should their needs change.

How To Be A Successful Door To Door Salesperson

We have identified 11 traits that most successful door to door selling professionals share:

1. They know their product inside and out. To explain the features and benefits, or even to gauge need, a door to door salesperson must have thorough knowledge of their product or service.

2. Their expertise provides value to the customer. Customers are more educated than ever, with the resources available to them online. If sales reps tell them what they already know, they’re not providing any value. HubSpot recommends that door to door sales professionals educate the prospect about what they can’t discover on their own, thereby establishing credibility and trust.

3. They build rapport immediately. The most successful door to door salespeople have excellent emotional intelligence and are skillful in the art of finding connections with other people. Some people have these skills naturally and don’t have to think about it; others have to research a prospect to find common ground.

4. They understand how to ask questions that qualify potential customers. The best sales reps ask open-ended questions to gather information and close-ended probes to establish needs.

5. They are expert listeners. Once they ask questions, they actively listen as the prospect answers.

6. They are excellent at WIFM, which stands for, “What’s In It For Me?” The most successful sales reps are able to explain how their product or service will help the prospect.

7. They know how to establish expectations for the call. The most successful salespeople explain to the prospect what will happen next. InsightSquared suggests creating a buyer-seller agreement, which is a verbal agreement that outlines what will happen next in the call and makes the lead more comfortable.

8.They outline the purchasing process well. Honesty is key to building trust. Door to door sales reps that explain what the prospect will experience before, during, and after the sale will be successful at establishing that trust.

9. They are strategic about prospecting and manage their time well. Whether that means calling on current customers and looking for referrals or reviving lost opportunities, the most successful door to door sales reps are strategic in their prospecting manage their time well, and focus on the prospects most likely to convert.

10. They have a few ways to close. Knowing how and when to close is a critical skill for all sales reps, especially in door to door sales. Not all customers are the same, and neither are your prospects, so make sure you understand what appeals to your target audience. When you are presenting and handling objections, you should also be thinking of how you will ask for the order. (See our blog on specific strategies for closing deals).

11.They maintain excellent activity records. A successful door to door salesperson keeps detailed notes about potential customers, pain points, and meetings. With this information, they can continue to build rapport and move the prospect further into the sales funnel.

12 Door To Door Sales Tips To Crush Sales Quota

Below are some direct sales strategies that will help door to door salespeople succeed.

Master the Product

Why is this important?

Excellent product knowledge is paramount to your success. After all, you can’t sell what you don’t understand.

Actionable tip:

Practice explaining your product’s features and benefits to someone who knows nothing about it (a friend or family member, for example)Then ask what questions they have or if they have feedback on your presentation.

Prospect Efficiently

Why is this important?

Qualified prospects are the best prospects that will lead to more revenue for your company’s (and your) bottom line. By finding the fastest ways to identify qualified potential customers, you can shorten the selling cycle and close more sales.

Additionally, by having a solid lead qualification process in place, you can sell with confidence knowing you’re not wasting valuable time pitching to someone that’s a poor fit.

Actionable tip:

Ask your satisfied customers for referrals. Not only will a satisfied customer want to help you, but they are also likely to refer you to someone they know needs your product or service because they don’t want to irritate their contacts with a pointless sales call.

Assign Sales Territories

Why is this important?

Outlining and assigning territories ensures there is no overlap, reps have enough leads to work, and the top reps are working the biggest accounts.

Actionable tip:

Use territory management software to reduce the manual work of assigning territories and create territory hierarchies with just a few clicks. You can also use it to gather data-backed insight into territory history and performance.

Automate Tedious Tasks

Why is this important?

Automating routine tasks can increase rep productivity by as much as 46%. And higher productivity correlates with more sales.

Actionable tip:

Use a tool that automates tasks such as CRM data entry, sending emails, updating contact info, logging activities, and planning a day in the field.

Find the Pain

Why is this important?

When the pain of change is less than the pain of the status quo, prospects will invest in solutions. Sometimes a prospect might have become accustomed to a pain point in their current situation and not realize that a better alternative exists.

Actionable tip:

Ask questions about how a prospect’s challenges affect their productivity, resources, or profits, so they can begin to recognize the importance of resolving the issue.

Employing the Sandler Selling method here would be ideal because this technique is built around selling to a prospects pain points.

Pay Attention To Body Language

Why is this important?

People communicate with far more than their words. Recognizing and understanding the visual cues that people give you can tell you a lot about what they think of your product or service.

Actionable tip:

Know your pitch so well that you can deliver it while simultaneously assessing the signals your prospect is giving you. Observe facial expression, body position, and even breathing patterns to discern whether your cold-call is giving you the cold shoulder or warming up to your suggestions.

Pitch Perfectly

Why is this important?

People form impressions of you quickly — sometimes in as little as10 seconds. So, you need to communicate what you are selling and present your best information, quickly.

Actionable tip:

Structure your pitch to align with these four steps: introduction, questions, presentation, and close.

First, introduce yourself and your product while making eye contact and smiling. Then, ask open-ended questions and let the prospect do the talking. Present your product with the pertinent information first, and keep it short. Finally, ask for their business.

Get to the “No” Faster

Why is this important?

Many people are too polite to say “No,” and they may let you pitch, even when they have no intention of buying.

Actionable tip:

Example: “If at any point you feel the product I’m selling is of no value to you, please don’t hesitate to tell me so. You won’t hurt my feelings, and I don’t want to waste anyone’s time.”

Craft a Sales Script

Why is this important?

Knowing what you’re going to say and what you need to find out will help when you’re making cold calls. A sales script will help you seem eloquent and knowledgeable, and keep you on track and calm in a sales call.

Actionable tip:

Take notes about your calls as you work. Over time, you’ll see what qualified leads had in common, and you can use that information as the basis for your sales script.

The script should include basic details, like the introduction and the pitch, along with questions you use to qualify leads. By putting together a script, you can navigate the sales call and quickly determine which potential customers are uninterested and which may be open to learning more.

Learn How to Handle Objections

Why is this important?

Objections are the reasons prospects have for not buying your product. In a D2D sales situation, these reasons might also be a way to put off a “Yes.” Your job is to determine if the objection is really a “No,” or just an obstacle to overcome.

Actionable tip:

Use the LAER model, an objection-handling concept created by Carew International (a leading provider of sales training, leadership development and customer service programs).

LAER stands for “Listen, acknowledge, explore, and respond.” In other words, pay attention to their objection, acknowledge that you understand it, ask them why they feel the way they do, then reply to their feelings with empathy and an explanation that might resolve their objection.

Analyze The Data

Why is this important?

Data can help managers identify opportunities for improvement. Some key metrics to track: leads created by each rep, visits made, pipeline velocity, and number of activities per rep.

Actionable tip:

Keep a record of daily activity that includes how many calls you had, people you talked to, demos you performed, and units you sold. Then analyze your results to look for weak points in your process. For example, if you didn’t sell a lot, maybe your demo needs work.

Always Follow Up

Why is this important?

Nearly half of sales reps never make a follow-up attempt, and that can result in lost sales. (See our blog post about why following up is important).

Actionable tip:

Use an appointment app or book to organize and optimize your call back schedule. Also, whenever possible, get prospect email addresses so you can add them to any automatic follow-up software you might be using.

Within SPOTIO’s appointment setting feature you can easily organize and manage the follow-up process. From the field, you can capture lead notes, input a prospect’s contact details, and view, set, and manage appointments. All this information will automatically sync to SPOTIO, eliminating the need to re-enter field notes at the end of the day.

How to Recruit High-Performing Door to Door Sales Reps

One of the first things you should do when hiring a D2D sales team is to decide who your ideal candidate is. What traits are you looking for, and what kind of skills do you require?

You should also decide early if you want experienced or inexperienced D2D sales professionals.
Experienced canvassers can get right to work and start delivering leads, but their sales techniques may not align with your goals. New canvassers might be slower to get results, but you have the opportunity to train them on exactly how you want them to work.

We recommend finding up to five candidates to interview before extending a job offer. You can look for candidates on LinkedIn, Indeed, and ZipRecruiter, as well as ask your professional network for any recommendations.

Determine Your Compensation Model

Here are a few of the most common compensation models for door to door sales reps:

Commission Only

Sales reps working on a commission-only structure are usually independent contractors, not full-time employees. This payment structure is best for people that are self-motivated and eager to sell.

Gross Margin

While it may or may not have a base salary, a gross margin commission structure pays the door to door salesperson on the amount of profit a sale generates. For example, if the deal is for $1,000, but the costs associated with the sale are $300, then the rep earns commission on $1,000 minus $300, or $700 gross margin.

Tiered Commission

When a company uses the tiered-commission compensation model, they pay higher commission on sales that exceed a certain threshold. For example, the sales rep might earn 5% commission on all sales up to $10,000, but then earn an additional 3% on any sales over that amount for a total of 8% commission.

Interview Questions For Door To Door Salespeople

Once you have a pool of appropriate candidates, it’s time for you to screen for the best of the bunch.

Some examples of great questions include:

• What do you do for fun?
• What motivates you and why?
• What streaming shows have you enjoyed the most?
• Would you please describe for me a typical day for you on your last job?
• Can you please share an example of when you convinced someone to do something they were not interested in doing at the time?
• How do you set goals and hold yourself accountable?
• What do you want to be doing a year from now? Three? Five?
• Who was your best boss so far and what did you learn from him or her?
• What is the best lesson you ever learned in a work training session that you still use today?
• How do you deal with rejection?
• How do you celebrate success?

Popular Door to Door Sales Industries

Many industries employ a door to door sales force. Some of the most prominent include the following:

Solar Energy

Door to door sales of residential rooftop solar panels work well for the solar energy industry, because the product is complicated and is best explained in a one-on-one, in-home consultation.

Roofing

Roofing is expensive, and a homeowner might be more likely to purchase a new roof if a sales rep explains the benefits of it in person.

Home Improvement

Door to door sales works well for home improvement services, because D2D sales professionals can demonstrate how homeowners can upgrade or maintain their homes. Sales reps also know that they’re speaking with decision-makers, when they meet with homeowners and can typically know within minutes which leads are viable.

Alarm/Security

Alarms and security systems that protect a homeowner’s property are other products that are best explained in person.

Telecom

Canvassing efforts have worked well for sellers of telecommunications services, because they can offer persuasive reasons to switch from a current provider to a new service.

The Ultimate Door to Door Sales Toolset

The technology you use is a crucial part of success in door to door sales. Following are some of the best tools for managing the D2D sales process:

Reps

1. Route Planner

A route planner optimizes route efficiency, so you make the most of your time in the field. SPOTIO’s route planning feature automatically creates the best route for sales reps, tracks mileage, and syncs completed routes to your CRM.

2. Lead Machine

SPOTIO Lead Machine lets sales teams import existing customers and prospects, color-code map pins based on account type, and filter leads by more than 200 data points. With the user-friendly mobile app, reps can find contact information with a single tap while in the field.

3. Appointment Setting

You need technology that makes it easy to schedule appointments — for yourself or for other members of the sales team. SPOTIO’s appointment setting feature lets you see everyone’s schedule and schedule demos or appointments from your mobile device.

4. Customer Mapping

A customer mapping solution takes complex data from your CRM and compiles it into an easy-to-view interactive map.

With a mapping tool, you can look at a map, zoom in on a territory, and tap it to see all prospect information and rep data.

5. Autoplays

Autoplays are like a roadmap for sales activities and next steps. They eliminate the need for a door to door salesperson to keep track of when they should follow up, where prospects are in the pipeline, and what activity comes next.

Whether it’s a text, email, visit, or call, Autoplays deploys the right activity at the right time, keeping prospects engaged, reps productive, and leads moving through the pipeline.

6. CRM Integration

Manual processes can be a drag on productivity. With CRM integration, any notes or data recorded while canvassing will automatically push to your CRM, ensuring sales reps are always working with the most recent information.

Managers

1. Territory Management

Territory management software allows you to determine strategic territories for your sales reps by geography, ZIP Code, and other factors. You can also define parent and child territories, set user permissions for territory views, and get detailed analytics for every territory.

2. Sales Leaderboards

Sales leaderboards encourage healthy competition between reps and boost engagement in contests and other incentives you use to motivate team members.

3. Rep Tracking

Rep tracking tools show you where reps are in real-time. Reps can drop pins on a map at each visit, so you can see the exact time of every sales call, how long reps met with a contact, and whether they completed their route for the day.

4. Sales Tracking

Sales tracking offers management and operations key insights into rep and territory performance, with activity metrics and KPIs.

FAQ

What are the pros of door to door sales?

Door to door sales can help businesses build relationships with prospects, which is especially important when selling high-value items.

What are the cons of door to door sales?

It’s possible that reps could inadvertently cold-knock prospects who have already interacted with another sales rep, but sales territory mapping and prospecting software can prevent this misstep.

What’s the average conversion rate in D2D sales?

The average conversion rate for field sales is 2-3%; however, that figure may vary based on factors like the cost of the purchase, competition, and market trends.

Ready. Set. Sell.

Door to door sales isn’t for everybody or for every type of business. But if you have the right combination of opportunity, talent, and technology, you can take your business development efforts to a new level.

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SPOTIO is the #1 field sales engagement and performance management software that will increase revenue, maximize profitability, and boost sales productivity.

Want to see a product demonstration? Click here to see how SPOTIO can take your sales game to the next level.

Think about the process of taking your car or truck into an auto shop. You bring it in to get one minor thing done and what happens…? The serviceman tells you they’re going to do a complete 150-point inspection. If you’re anything like me, the first thought through your head is, “yeah, go ahead and tell me how many things on my vehicle need to be serviced because I know you’re going to try and charge me an arm and a leg, but I’m not buying what you’re selling.”

Aside from the blatant distrust I have toward this oh-so-lovely inspection, I know there’s likely to be other issues with my vehicle that need to be fixed. After the initial feelings of anger feeling like I’m getting ripped off, I start to look at the report and think logically. Sure, some of the issues with my car are minor and not an immediate concern, but the others need to be fixed now, not later.

If you’re picking up what I’m putting down you’ll get this: Your sales process may seem to be running smooth right now and your sales reps may be doing pretty well, but if you don’t correct the canvassing conflicts (minor or major), they’re going to lead to a larger problem down the road. Whether it’s getting a flat tire and needing to replace a member of your sales team or it’s replacing the engine where you need to completely revamp your sales process, you’re going to experience problems by not recognizing or addressing the issues that exist.

The most common types of canvassing conflicts that door to door sales organizations experience:

| How to allocate equal opportunity for each sales rep
| Sales reps poaching their coworkers territories
| How to effectively design sales territories
| How to select the best method of designing sales territories
| How sales reps should handle referrals they receive that are outside their territory
| How to hold sales reps accountable

Designing Sales Territories

One of the most prevalent canvassing conflicts that exists in the door to door sales industry is how managers create and assign territories for their foot soldiers. Well-designed sales territories can actually boost sales rep productivity by 10 – 20%. Establishing an effective and efficient sales territory design process can be extremely time consuming, especially in the beginning, but it’s imperative that you invest the time up front.

The time you initially put it in will pay large dividends moving forward, not only as it relates to how much quicker the process will be, but your sanity as well. There’s countless strategies that door to door sales companies utilize to design sales territories. Without the initial strategizing and design process, you’ll miss out on numerous quality prospects and pull your hair out trying to ensure you covered the right areas.

One reason sales territories create a canvassing conflict is because they’re not updated. Sales territories that are not adjusted periodically can lead to situations where growth in your territories is constrained by as much as 20 – 30%. Limited growth means less potential for canvassers. Less potential means less commission. Less commission equals more frustration and more problems.

Other conflicts that arise as a result of ineffective sales territory design:

| Sales reps targeting the wrong prospects
| Hiring and retention problems in select territories
| Negativity influencing your sales culture
| Neighborhood not being completely saturated

5 Critical Components for High-Performing Sales Territory Design

#1 | Revenue Source

To avoid canvassing conflicts and design sales territories that will produce results, you need to start by breaking down where your revenue comes from, where your current customers are located, and the revenue generated by lead source: inbound vs outbound.

It’s easier to get a new customer in an area where you already have existing customer. Determining where your best and most loyal customers are located geographically is an exceptional strategy to use when designing territories for this reason. Historical sales data will become your new best friend and is the best predictor of future success.

Inbound leads are a cheap lead source with a high conversion rate. The only leads that are cheaper with a higher conversion rate are referrals. Focus on the demographics like geography, industry and size before building a strategy to divide them up as evenly as possible across your sales team. Focus on the amount of revenue generated vs the number of leads generated.

#2 | Rank Talent

Sales is an extremely competitive environment and your canvassers know that. Evaluate your team using metrics to find out how they stack up against each other and identify your top, middle and low level performers.

| What’s their quota?
| Do they consistently achieve their targets?
| How many current customers and prospects are in their funnel?
| How many viable prospects are located in their territory?
| After ranking each member of your sales team, match the most fruitful territories with the highest performing sales reps.

#3 | Goals

Accountability produces results. Establish SMART goals to outline what you want to accomplish as a company.

Profitability (Least Risky): If your goal is increase your profit margins or reach profitability, determine which territories you’ve had the most success in and double down on what’s already working. You should also analyze what made these sales territories successful and identify similar territories for your team to work.

High-Growth: If your focus is to simply drive revenue, focus your attention on identifying the characteristics of territories that have performed well. After identifying those, create all new territories around these characteristics. Territories that haven’t been worked mean prospects haven’t heard from you. You’ll be able to generate some quick wins. This is a long-term play that will generate growth over time.

Prospecting / New Markets: To establish yourself in a new market segment or determine if it’s viable territory worth spending the time in, send a canvasser into an area to accomplish a specific task. For example, send your top 3 canvassers into an area you’re interested in working to knock 200 doors and see how many appointments they’re able to set. Is this higher or lower than their average, and the team average? This will help determine exactly what’s needed to succeed in that market.

#4 | Measure Performance

“What gets tracked gets measured.” Tracking performance against your main KPI’s for each territory is extremely valuable because it will provide key insights into how each canvasser is performing. You’ll have the ability to recognize trends and determine efficiencies and inefficiencies within the sales department.

These metrics will help you to design higher quality sales territories and reduce canvassing conflicts to set each member of your team up for success. To accomplish this, I’d highly recommend implementing a sales enablement tool like SPOTIO to help you measure and see:

| Team performance in relation to your sales funnel
| Data from custom statuses and fields based on KPIs
| Graphs representing team performance, best time and day to knock, etc.
| The number of attempts it takes to establish contacts, get leads and make sales

#5 | Include Salespeople

Involving your sales reps is an important step in this process. Your team may surprise you with ideas you likely wouldn’t come up with on your own. It may take a little longer to develop the plan, but they’ll have a greater sense of importance by being included, which will eliminate most of the typical frustrations associated with change.

Allocating Equal Pipeline ($) Opportunity

The number of leads each salesperson has to work is always a huge area of canvassing conflict. While the number of leads plays a considerable role in allocating leads equally, the more important metric that should be the determining factor for deciding whether opportunities are getting distributed evenly is opportunity value – the amount of revenue a lead would generate if it converted to a customer.

Assigning opportunities evenly can mean many things based on your sales process. For example, it could literally mean that each sales rep is assigned an equal amount of opportunity value ($), but if you distribute opportunities based on performance then you need to establish which tier each salesperson is in before ensuring each rep has equal opportunities.

You could always distribute leads using a round robin approach. This is one of those timeless sales concepts where sales reps essentially “get what they get.” Of course, if you’ve already assigned territories you should be distributing leads based on geographic location. Another option you have is by product or market segmentation.

In order to prevent canvassing conflicts from arising, even distribution is going to require a certain amount of tracking and monitoring. Conduct a pipeline review once every 30 days, at least, calculate the average opportunity value, and determine the number of opportunities each sales rep has to work.

A sales rep may have an equal amount of opportunity value but only have large leads to work, meaning there’s less for that person to do. Another rep may also have an equal amount of value but have too many leads to keep up with. Track the touch points being put on each lead. If leads are starting to slip through the cracks, reassign the leads not being worked to sales reps with the ability to dedicate the proper amount of time to each prospect.

Working Referrals

When a salesperson is assigned a territory they tend to take complete ownership over it as if they personally own it. They throw fits when their coworkers knock doors in their territory whether it was on purpose or not. If someone enters those imaginary lines and says anything other than hello they’re considered fighting words.

This is major source of canvassing conflict among door to door sales organizations. So what happens if a member of your sales team actually does their job and gets a referral after closing a deal, but it happens to be in someone else’s territory?

Very simply put, they should 100% be allowed to work that lead regardless of where it’s located, assuming they want to work it of course. If they don’t want it, distribute that lead to the sales rep who owns the territory where the lead is located. In order to prevent canvassing conflict, referrals need to be proven.

The first thing that should happen when a salesperson gets a referral is for them to put that information into your door to door sales tracking software. In SPOTIO, you can create custom fields for each piece of information they’re required to collect and enter, like the referral’s name, phone number and email. Once this information is entered and saved it will be dated and time-stamped for proof if needed later.

Because referrals are the highest converting and cheapest lead source, they should be valued and prioritized. One strategy is to implement a lead play clock. This means the sales rep who got the referral has “x” number of days to work and convert this lead before it gets turned over to the owner of the territory.

You should also require them to make first contact within a certain number of days due to how valuable these leads are. If they don’t put their first touch point within that time period, the lead will get turned over to the sales rep who is working that territory. When you conduct pipeline reviews, require salespeople to list all of the referrals they’ve received so you can ensure they’re being worked properly.

Clearly defining the rules pertaining to when certain leads can be worked regardless of location or territory will help reduce the amount of canvassing conflicts that arise and continue to promote positivity through structure.

Holding Sales Reps Accountable

Many salespeople tend to resent company rules and procedures until canvassing conflicts arise and one of their coworkers does something they don’t agree with that ticks them off. This most commonly occurs when a sales rep works a lead that is outside of their territory or wants to work a lead that another sales rep isn’t working properly.

To prevent these sources of contention, each member of your team should be held accountable regardless of performance or any other factor to ensure fairness.

The Golden Rule: If it isn’t in your CRM – it didn’t happen.

What the Golden Rule is really saying is that everything should be logged and tracked in the CRM you’re using, like SPOTIO. To prevent additional canvassing conflict, sales reps should log all of their attempts, notes, contacts, referrals, emails, and any other sales activities they complete as soon as they happen. If they enter all of this information as it happens, you’ll always have a date and timestamp for that activity. If you ever need to reference it, you’ll have that ability.

Sales Rep Tracking Tools

To promote honesty and accountability, SPOTIO has two features that will change the way you handle and manage any issues that may arise.

Verified Locations: When sales reps knock a door outside of their territory, you’ll easily be able to see it on the map. Where verified locations truly comes to the rescue is when salespeople say they’re doing one thing when they’re really doing another. Anytime a sales rep on your team logs an activity on a pin in SPOTIO, we’ll tell you whether it’s verified or not – meaning the sales rep was within 300 feet of that home when they entered the activity, or they weren’t.

This is especially beneficial when a sales rep says they’ve been working leads that they haven’t. They won’t be able to quickly go back and enter fake attempts or information without it being noticed because the location won’t be verified, and the dates and timestamps will be within minutes of each other.

Track My Team: Ever want to know exactly each member of your sales team is at without having to drive to each person to check in on them? Enter the Track My Team tool. With the click of a button, SPOTIO will show you the geographic location for all of your sales reps on one map. This can actually help you prevent canvassing conflicts from arising. See a rep that’s in a territory they shouldn’t be? No problem! Send them a message without ever leaving the app asking them why they’re in that territory.

Conclusion

Canvassing conflicts can destroy the attitudes of sales reps. They can cause a lot of unneeded tension and stress that could have been avoided with proper processes and procedures. Sales territories and equal opportunities are always at the top of the list of frustrations among door to door companies. Like a car, your sales team may be running smooth now, but issues that are not properly addressed will likely break you down sooner rather than later.

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Questions or comments? Contact SPOTIO at info@spotio.com or comment below.

SPOTIO is the #1 field sales acceleration platform designed specifically for outside sales managers and reps to squeeze every drop out of their field sales efforts.

Want to see a product demonstration? Click here to see how SPOTIO can take your sales game to the next level.

Our interview with sales guru Jeff Johnson discusses how you go about finding and hiring the best people for your field sales team. In this video, we discuss:

1. What’s your strategy to hiring “A” players?
2. What does your hiring process look like?
3. When evaluating talent, what makes you say: “This is someone I want to talk to”?
4. What are your top three interview questions?

[beginning of recording]

Jennette:  Okay. Give us a brief introduction, if you wouldn’t mind.

Jeff: Well, thank you, Jennette. So, I’m Jeff Johnson, I’m a sales coach, and I work with companies that want to build dynamic, strong, overachieving, motivated sales teams, and so I’ve been doing that for about two decades.

Jennette: So, to kick us off, we’re just going to start today, it’s going to be how to select “A” players for your sales team. How do you go about selecting/making sure you’re picking the right and the best people? Is there a strategy that you use?

Jeff: Okay. So, what’s my strategy to hire “A” players?

Jennette: Yes.

Jeff: So, I think the first question is: what is an “A” player? And, everybody needs to have that definition. So, when I think about an “A” player, the easy answer is: the top 20%. The question is, how do you determine that? And, so, I would preface that by saying there’s really four types of sales people, and it really…you have to categorize people in two different ways – and, when I say “people,” I’m talking about sales people in their role. So, sales people in their role first need to have the right sales DNA: can they execute in a selling environment? Will they do the work that needs to be done? The second thing is, do they have the motivation? Do they have the commitment to those kinds of things? So, I would say you look at the can do and the will do. So, four kinds of sales people: there are those that can’t and won’t, there are those that can but won’t, there are those that can and won’t, and the top 20% would be those that can and will. Those who have the motivation, the determination, the outlook, and the commitment to achieve something, so they’re motivated, and they have the sales DNA, the ability to execute, which means, really a lot about their EQ, their ability to think on their feet, the ability to paint things in a persuasive manner, that’s how I generally would describe sales DNA.

Jennette: Excellent, great. And then, the hardest part is finding people to join your sales team. More often than not, do you find more success referrals, going out on job boards, hiring recruiters? How do you go about filling your vacancies?

Jeff: Oh, that is easy. That is the hardest part, and you know, it’s so important, because I’ll preface it by answering your question. This is absolutely the most critical part about building a sales organization. If you don’t stack the deck with good folks, I don’t care if you’re a great manager, you’re probably not going to be ultimately successful if you’re a great manager and leader, but you hire poorly, it’s probably not going to work out. And, if you’re a bad manager and you hire poorly, you just have a lot going wrong. So, we’ve got to get this thing right. So, the question really is, how do you go about it? Well, it’s not where first, it’s what, and the what isn’t about the role, the what really is about who specifically are we looking for? What are the attributes of a person that’s going to be successful in this role? So, it’s very important to start with that, because we’re not looking for just anybody, we’re looking for somebody very specific, and the closer we can get to defining exactly who that person looks like, we can first, write an ad that describes this person, because if someone reads an ad about us, they make like it, but are they the right fit? So, if they read an ad that says, “Oh, wow, that’s me! I’m motivated to do that, I would be willing to do this, and that sounds like it’s a fit for me,” these are the people that I want to interview first. So, once I have that down, then it’s really about spreading the gospel, and it’s the normal channels, it’s all the boards, it’s LinkedIn, it’s all of the things that are standard, but I’d say that’s the fly in the ointment that’s a little bit different, is making sure we clearly understand exactly who it is that we’re looking for that have the attributes that we’re looking for for success.

Jennette: Great. So, we have what you need, how to find them, and then, this might be a multi-layered question, but what’s the first thing you look for when you see a candidate where you’re going to be like, “This is someone I want to talk to,” or is it a multitude of things?

Jeff: Good question. What’s the first thing I look for in a candidate? Well, so, I always like these little phrases, so here’s the first phrase: select, don’t settle. You never want to lower your standards. You want to select, and you want to have a very high expectation of the people that you are going to hire. So, that’s number one. The second thing that I look for is, do they have stability, and do they have success? So, depending on where you’re hiring from, if this is a rookie or someone, what we need to see is some stability of something, whether it’s in school, whether it’s been in an organization. The other piece is, have they progressed, or do they quit? What is in that history? So, stability is very important – stability of working towards a goal, any goal, right? And then, something that they’ve been successful. So, stability and success are the first two criteria that kind of get them in the gate. The second piece is – and, this is another kind of principle that I would say: it’s not what they say, it’s what they do. That’s the most important thing – it’s not what they say, it’s what they do. Now, this is going to sound crummy, but in some interviews, I have actually given people the wrong address and see if they show up. You would be amazed what happens. Some people don’t show. Some people call and say, “I’m lost,” and some people show up five minutes early, perfectly dressed, they never say anything about it, and they’re ready to go. That is my candidate. So, it’s not what they say, it’s what they do. So, a lot of what we want to do is to set up these circumstances that’s kind of similar to a selling situation, whether they get rejected or whether there’s some form of difficulty that they have to overcome and see how they do. So, I want to watch that. The other thing that I do, is I ask them to give me a presentation. I don’t care what’s in the presentation, but what I’m looking for is, did they do it? Did they do a good job? Are they engaged and motivated? All of those kinds of things. So, I’m putting up these things to see what they do. Does that help?

Jennette: Yes, excellent. Very cool. And then, what are your top three interview questions?

Jeff: Oh, I couldn’t wait until you asked me this. I don’t know if you’re going to like this. So, what are my top three interview questions? So, I would say that there are so many good interview questions out there on the market that I could give you a ton, but, here’s the most important, okay? The first one we talked about, it’s not what they say, it’s what they do, but in an interview, what I want to do, my job, is to get them talking. So, my favorite interview questions are, number one: tell me more. “Oh, help me understand how you did that. Can you give me an example? Here, it says that you did such and such. Tell me the story of how you arrived at doing that.” Now, here’s something that is very true: whatever is inside someone, is going to come out if you give them enough time to talk. So, it’s not really about the interview questions that you ask. There’s no secret weapon three questions that you can ask, but there is a secret weapon of getting someone comfortable enough to open themselves up entirely so you can really see what’s on the inside and based upon that, whether or not they are a good fit for your organization, and your organization is a good fit for them.

Jennette: Great, cool. And then, just to close out, nuggets of advice or anything, just building out your sales team, how you identify?

Jeff: What’s my leave behind, takeaways, golden nuggets? Well, the first lesson I learned early in my sales management career is that if I didn’t get the recruiting piece right, my sales development career is over, and because I have been stung by bad hires. They take more time, they’re more frustrated – they’re frustrated, I’m frustrated, we’re not getting the results, it’s taking more time, they eventually leave, and I’ve got to start over again. So, don’t fool yourself. Don’t put bodies in a role that don’t belong there, because in the long-run, you’re going to pay for it, and it’s going to be very frustrating. It’s going to take time away, and you’re not going to get your return on investment. So, don’t settle, select, and know exactly what you’re looking for, would be my advice. And then, go get them.

Jennette: Excellent. Awesome. Well, thanks Jeff, that was great.

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