The Call-In
The Call-In is conducted at the end of the presentation, after booking the appointment and going over with the homeowner the appointment reminder and incentives. This is where the canvasser will call in, while still at the homeowner’s front door, to speak with the office to confirm the appointment.
Unless the appointment is scheduled for the next day, the call-in will not be used as a full confirmation. There’s no need to conduct a full confirmation at the door and then have the office perform another full confirmation a few days later. This will be very repetitve for the homeowner and completely unnecessary.
However, if the appointment is scheduled for the next day, then you do want to call-in for a full confirmation so you won’t have to follow up with the homeowner again.
For the canvasser it accomplishes the following:
- It reports the date and time of the appointment with the office to clarify real-time availablilty
- Transfers the homeowner’s contact information at the office
- Confirms the company legitimately has the allotted appointment time available for a demo
- Solidifies in the mind of the homeowner they want to get a demo on the product
- Adds validation to the necessity for both homeowners to be present for the demo
For the homeowner it accomplishes the following:
- They’re formally entered into a database
- There’s more behind this canvassing call then just a person knocking on their door
- Perception that it is a firm, legitimate, scheduled appointment
There are some potential drawbacks to the call-in.
- It takes too long at the door to get a hold of someone from the office
- Your company may not be setup to handle these inbound confirmation calls (you don’t want canvassers calling into voice mails or fellow canvassers and faking this process)
- It potentially lowers the canvasser’s credibility in the eyes of the homeowner (the canvasser has to call the office for “permission”)
- It is painstakingly repetitive for the homeowner (they just spent the last few minutes going through all of it with the canvasser)
The Call-In Script
You should make the determination if the Call-In is to be part of your canvassing process. If not, there is another technique for authenticating the appointment, and that’s the “Validation”, but I’ll save that until next month.
If the appointment is more than a day out, here is a sample script to use. Remember, keep it short and sweet to accomplish your goals of the call-in at the door.
“One last thing (addressing the homeowner), before I go I want to call into the office to make sure your appointment is available. There are several of us out here today and I want to make sure we didn’t over-book your appointment. It’ll only take a minute to check.”
At this point the canvasser would use his or her cell phone to call the office. If they do not have a cell phone they could ask the homeowner to bring their cordless telephone to the door.
Once they have a phone:
“Hi, this is (canvasser’s name), I’m out here in (city). I have an appointment for (product) for the estimate on (day) at (time) and I want to make sure we still have that appointment available.”
“That’s for (homeowner’s name) on (street address) in (city) (zip code). The estimate will be for (product) (and then give a brief description of what the estimate will entail – number and type of windows, etc.) Great! That appointment’s available, I’ll let (insert homeowner’s name) know that we’ll be out to see them (time and day). Thank you. Goodbye.” (hang up the phone)
(Directed to the homeowner) Great! We have you scheduled for (date and time). We look forward to seeing you then.”
If you’d like to learn more about the numbers and call-in procedure, call me for a brief, free phone consult. You can contact me directly at (216) 588-1337.