SMART BUSINESS: Door to Door Isn't Dead

Until 2003, telemarketing was one of the primary methods the lawn care industry used to generate business because of the opportunity to initiate a large volume of low-cost sales. The advent of the Federal Trade Commission’s National Do Not Call Registry four years ago greatly inhibited the ability of lawn care firms to reach their prospective clients. Facing this major roadblock, some of these companies found a new – or perhaps old – way to sell their services: knocking on doors.
  
Door-to-door sales evokes thoughts of a simpler time, when  asking people for their business was the extent of a salesman’s marketing efforts. Today, commerce is quite different. Marketers use “buzz” and “blink” techniques, search engine optimization, pay-per click advertising and a variety of other ways to get their names in front of their customers.
 
With these modern methods available, some business owners are skeptical that door knocking works. They say homeowners may perceive this sales strategy as a nuisance and that people in this day and age don’t want to be bothered.
 
Although it takes persistence, regulatory due diligence and a greater investment in manpower, several lawn care companies are proving that door to door could be the way of the future.

TRUGREEN’S DOING IT. TruGreen ChemLawn is one of these companies.
 
The industry’s top earner with close to $1.5 billion in revenue in 2005, TruGreen at one time generated 100 percent of its sales from telemarketing, says Tim Ehrhart, director of sales. “With the do-not-call list in place, in order for our company to continue to grow, we’ve had to move into other areas of sales generation, one of which is what we call neighborhood marketing.”
 
In 2004, TruGreen’s central region piloted its neighborhood marketing, or door-to-door sales, program under the leadership of regional Marketing Manager Kerry Tidwell. This region, which encompasses the state of Indiana, looked into door-to-door sales before the company’s other 19 regions because it was one of the first areas to have statewide do-not-call restrictions. In 2004, the central region alone generated 87,000 neighborhood marketing sales.
 
In 2005, with 75 percent of regions participating, TruGreen made 280,000 door-to-door sales. Last year, with 90 percent of regions compliant, the company made 320,000 door-to-door sales and projects 327,000 neighborhood marketing sales in 2007. That’s about one-third of TruGreen’s million-plus annual sales.
 
While the results have been good, Ehrhart says the company has adjusted its expectations over the last few years. “Our initial thought when getting into this was that our neighborhood marketing would be our primary channel and the No. 1 way we’d make sales as a company,” he says. “Quite honestly, what we’ve learned is it’s going to be a big piece of what we do, but it’s not going to be the driving sales force in the company.” TruGreen still makes at least half its sales over the phone, Erhart notes, and plans to use “pull” marketing, or creating in-bound interest through direct mail and other methods, to supplement sales moving forward.
 
Cost played a significant part in this decision, considering a TruGreen neighborhood marketing sale is 50 percent more expensive than a telemarketing sale, Erhart says.

METHODOLOGY. Companies considering door-to-door sales and marketing can implement it in a variety of ways, the simplest of which is the owner of a business knocking on doors each evening on his way home from the shop, says Joe Kucik, owner of Scott’s LawnService of Lansing, Mich. “That’s how I first got into lawn care back in 1984,” he says. “I only had to do it for a month and a half before I was so busy I didn’t have the time or need to do it anymore.”
 
It can be difficult for an owner to get motivated to knock on doors himself, Kucik acknowledges. “Even after weeks of doing it, it was hard to knock on that first door every night,” he says. “But I really believe you can take somebody who’s not afraid to go door knocking and they could grow a lawn care business in a year.”
 
Kucik founded his current business, a Scott’s franchise, in 2003 and started using a lead-generation method in 2006.
 
Ideally, one supervisor manages a team of six door knockers (who are typically friendly high school or college students) and two salesmen. For his first year testing door-to-door sales, Kucik promoted two of his best technicians to salesmen.
 
This crew targets one neighborhood at a time, deploying two door knockers per street. “They should go together for nothing else but safety, working across the street from each other,” Kucik says. The uniformed door knockers introduce themselves and the company with the intent to generate a lead for the salesmen. When they reach the end of the street, they give any leads to the supervisor, who relays them to the salesmen.
 
Although the door knocker tells the customer that a representative will be out in the next two days, Kucik likes the sales rep to follow up within 30 minutes. “It’s a sales tool to exceed their expectations,” he says. “Plus, they’re home, you know it and you want to get in front of them. The salesmen can say, ‘I knew you were interested, so I got out here right away.’”
 
After one year of implementation, Kucik says the company expects each door knocker, working three hours a day (typically between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m.) to yield nine leads, or about three leads per hour. Salesmen typically close one-third of those leads. He pays his door-to-door sales reps a commission like he would any salesperson and he pays door knockers $6 to $7 per lead.
 
“As long as you’ve got the right people in pace, it’s pretty effective,” Kucik points out. “You can make sales for less than $60 per sale. It can be an economical way to pick up new customers, like telemarketing used
to be.”
 
The Weed Man franchise system has implemented a similar system over the last three years, also as a result of the do-not-call list.
 
Weed Man first tested direct selling, where a salesman simply knocked on the door himself. After some trials in Canada, the organization discovered that on-the-spot sales didn’t work. “What we know about our customers is that they want to buy from a company or person they have a relationship with,” says Phil Fogarty, submaster franchisor for Weed Man in Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York. “So we decided to try to create that relationship by making several contacts with them. We’re using our door knockers as lead generators, like in telemarketing.” After receiving the door-to-door leads, sales representatives set up firm appointments over the phone and visit their prospective clients at their homes.
 
Like Kucik, Weed Man owners also prefer to hire high school or college students as door knockers. “The younger they look, the more likely people are to come to the door,” Fogarty says, adding that Weed Man franchises send pairs of knockers out into targeted neighborhoods, supervised by an adult. Although the teams’ sizes and structures vary from location to location, on average Weed Man door knockers generate one and a half to two leads per hour, Fogarty says. “It’s been wonderful as a good way to start off a relationship. We still take advantage of the phone as much as we can, but we don’t stop because someone won’t let us call them. We want density in our neighborhoods and this is a great way to do it.”
 
TruGreen’s approach is to send the salesmen directly out into the field, not preceded by a lead generator. “Our opinion of that is it would just add cost,” Ehrhart says.
 
Depending on the region, TruGreen uses a territorial concept, where teams of sales representatives are assigned to a set of ZIP codes to target for the entire spring, or a crew-canvassing concept, where a group of eight to 10 salesmen blast a particular neighborhood in one day. Although homeowners sign commitments on the spot, no money is exchanged at the door.
 
The TruGreen neighborhood marketing sales force is generally made up of former telemarketing salesmen. “When we first started, we thought it would be a completely different salesperson,” Ehrhart says. “But in a lot of cases our telephone reps made the transition into knocking on doors.” Companywide, 80 percent of TruGreen’s door-to-door sales take place in the spring, so these salesmen may do telemarketing or quality audits the rest of the year.
 
In fact, telemarketing is a big part of TruGreen’s neighborhood marketing success. The company learned along the way that homeowners may say they’re interested but prefer to talk to their spouses before making buying decisions. In this case, a TruGreen representative takes down the homeowner’s name and phone number and asks him or her to initial a form granting TruGreen permission to follow up with a phone call.
 
Typically, neighborhood marketing reps spend about six hours per day in the field, knocking on at least 100 doors per day, and then make these follow-up calls in the evening. “Some of our neighborhood sales reps make a good chunk of their sales over the phone because of that process,” Ehrhart says. On average, the neighborhood marketing team’s goal is 10 to 11 sales per week per person.
 
Considering that a person is home at only 23 percent of the doors company reps knock on, TruGreen leaves marketing materials in the door, which helps generate in-bound sales, Ehrhart says.

CHALLENGING PROPOSITION. Fear of rejection and alienating consumers is one major challenge associated with door-to-door sales and marketing efforts. “There’s a fear of anything new,” Fogarty says. “Occasionally somebody’s having a bad day, but generally we feel people are pretty receptive.”
 
If you’re polite, nine out of 10 people say thanks for stopping by, Kucik says. “I’ve only had one person slam a door in my face,” he says.
 
Ehrhart agrees. “I started out in this business as a sales rep on the phone and I thought the doors were just going to shut in my face, but that’s not what happened,” he says. “Does it happen occasionally? Yes, but it’s not near as often as you’d think. On a nice day when you’re talking about how to make someone’s lawn look better, people are more receptive than you’d think.”
 
The key to a well-received door-to-door sales plan is following soliciting laws and regulations, which can be tricky because restrictions are different from municipality to municipality. Some towns simply require that solicitors request permission, others require permits (which can range from $20 to $2,000) and some prohibit door-to-door sales entirely.
 
Regardless of laws and restrictions, direct sales professionals say to always respect an individual homeowner’s wishes. “If an individual puts a sign on their door saying ‘No Soliciting,’ then we’ll turn around and go away,” Fogarty says.
 
Weather, too, is another factor to consider. “I think weather’s the biggest challenge,” Ehrhart says.
 
Although TruGreen’s neighborhood sales team knocks on doors rain or shine, homeowners are less likely to come out and talk if the weather is nasty, he says. But Fogarty says poor weather can be an advantage. “Everyone’s home,” he says.
 
As with any kind of sales, Ehrhart says a sales rep with a winning, positive attitude gives neighborhood marketing the best chance of success. As he explains, “If you’re going to smile and walk up and down the street and be enthusiastic about what you’re doing, then you can make as many sales as you want.”