Review from the Summit: What’s Wrong With Canvassing

My son David took on the next topic at the summit which covered the primary problems that exist when companies attempt to implement a canvassing program. These include:

• Failure to control the herd: Your canvassers need to be given strict guidelines for their dress, behavior and actions as part of the canvassing team. You expect your salespeople to conform to specific standards, why should your canvassers be any different?
• Failure to control the process: There is a proven system that produces greater results than anything else that can be implemented. However, just stating that this is how you are going to cavass is not enough. You need to have a strong manager in place who is willing and able to enforce these rules.
• Failure to measure properly: Your goal should be for your canvass leads to perform equal to your leads from other sources, and maintain a 12% marketing cost.
• Failure to train: Do you have a canvassing manager? If so, is he devoting enough time to training your personnel to adhere to the guidelines? If not, your sales manager needs to be the one responsible for this task.
• Failure to coach: Great managers are also great coaches. They see what is working and what isn’t and make the necessary changes while constantly motivating their personnel to achieve maximum performance.
• Failure to compensate properly: Like it or not, your canvassers have to be compensated requisite with their responsibilities – – and canvassing is not an easy job. Remember – your canvassers are an extension of your sales force and should be treated as such.
• Failure to organize: The successful canvassing program has steps of implementation, you cannot expect to foster immediate results overnight.

For more information on canvassing, look at our free articles.

Next posting, I will review Brian Smith’s presentation on “Why Most Sales Training Ultimately Fails”.