Door Knocking - Feelings?

[Stephen Spradley]

Hey guys,

I've been an agent for about a month up here in Northern Colorado. Aside from hosting other agents open houses every weekend, I'm having a hard time coming up with cheap ways to generate leads. My mentality is get out there and meet as many people as possible since I have only lived here a year and don't have a huge sphere. I've decided door knocking is probably my best bet and am hitting the pavement tomorrow. What are your guys opinions on this old-school method? Also any tips would be appreciated. As always thanks!

[Account Closed]

Originally posted by @Stephen Spradley:

Hey guys,

I've been an agent for about a month up here in Northern Colorado. Aside from hosting other agents open houses every weekend, I'm having a hard time coming up with cheap ways to generate leads. My mentality is get out there and meet as many people as possible since I have only lived here a year and don't have a huge sphere. I've decided door knocking is probably my best bet and am hitting the pavement tomorrow. What are your guys opinions on this old-school method? Also any tips would be appreciated. As always thanks!

 Door knocking has been successful for me to find properties. 

Another method is phone calls of course:

From The Baylor University’s Keller Center for Research Study

"Agents were asked to call a generic, random list of numbers from a region not previously marketed to that either they provided or that was supplied to them by their KWRI regional office. Calls were to be placed for an hour at a time, and were to be completed at a different hour on each day of the study (e.g.,an agent would call for one hour beginning at 10:00 AM one day, then for one hour beginning at 11:00 am the next, at 12:00 PM the next day, and so forth).

Of the 160 agents recruited, 50 completed the full seven hours of telephoning required. What We Learned–By The Numbers Over the course of a two-week period in November 2011, 50 participating agents made 6,264 phone-based cold calls, collectively. Of the 6,264 cold calls placed, 28% were answered, 55% were not answered, and 17% were non-working numbers.

While 6,264 calls were placed over the seven-day period, 72% were very quick calls due to non-answers and non-working phone numbers. Accounting for non-answers and non-working numbers becomes the tedious part of working true cold calling lists. However, the 28% of calls that were completed (1,774) were productive calls. Out of the 1,774 calls that were answered, agents were able to set a total of 19 appointments with prospective clients, and 11 referrals were received. Agents were asked to call back at a later time by 132 prospective clients, and 1,612of the callees were not interested in the offering or refused additional information.

The study reveals that for every 330 calls made, approximately one appointment was set (a 330:1 call-to-appointment ratio).

One out of every 59 calls answered (30 out of 1774) resulted in either an appointment or referral.

The data also reveal that there was clearly a significant difference in the time of day that calls were most productive.

Mornings to early afternoon (10am - 2pm) were the most effective times of day to place the calls.

During this time period, 31% of the calls were placed and resulted in 53% of all appointments/referrals generated. The least effective time for making calls was during the evening hours (after 5pm). During the study, this time period accounted for 42% of all calls made but resulted in only 21% of all appointments/referrals."

(That surprised me. I was taught that evenings and weekends were best. Seems things have changed.)

From the CallHippo Study: Tuesday, 30 May 2017 -

The Best Day And Time To Make A Business Call

CallHippo did a research on what is the right time to make a call to your prospect,where we took the data of our 1000+ clients that engage with their prospects over calls on a daily basis. The research contains data of 24 weeks, 13,750 call attempts, and 1,350 successful conversations. The focus of the research was to find the appropriate time to call your prospects so that maximum qualification ratio can be achieved with minimum efforts.

Persistent Calling:

Most of the sales reps give up on the lead way too soon, and we have observed that over 30% of the leads are never followed back after the initial connection failure. We have found that at least 6 attempts should be made by sales reps to have a successful conversation with the prospects. By making few more attempts, sales reps can increase the conversation rate growth up to 70%. By making around 5 more attempts, chances of having a conversation with your prospects can directly increase, and so do the chances of sales.