Big doors swing upon little hinges
There are many small things you can do in canvassing that can have an affect on the outcome of a lead. No one thing by itself seems all that significant, though neglecting or minimizing the importance of too many small things and it will affect the success of your canvassing; those ‘little things’ added up become ‘big things’.
In April I discussed the ‘Call-In’, which is when a canvasser has secured an appointment with the homeowner and then calls in to the main office from the front door to confirm and schedule the appointment. There are advantages and disadvantages of the ‘Call-In’ (Refer to April’s newsletter).
Last month I discussed the ‘Validation’, which is similar to the ‘Call-In’ yet is conducted back at the office. Once again, there’s pro’s and con’s for this (Refer to May’s newsletter), though it’s important to understand the objective of validating the lead before it goes to a full confirmation is:
- To confirm that all the homeowners will be present for the demo
- There’s enough time for a complete demonstration
- The lead qualifies for a product or service
Keep in mind, if the appointment is set for the next day you’d skip the validation and go straight to a full confirmation.
There are free sources available to you that can help you in validating your leads.
Cross Reference Sources
Regardless of how or when you’re validating the appointment, if you have access to a computer and the Internet there’s a few sources you can rely on for a lot of information.
White Pages:
You can access an online white pages website to validate the telephone and address of the home. A place to start is www.whitepages.com. It will confirm if you have the right phone number for the property.
As you can see, you can enter the name of the person your canvasser spoke with or you can use the reverse look up based on a telephone number.
County Auditors:
Another source is your county auditor. Simply type into a search engine the county in which the property is located followed by “county auditor”; for example, “Wayne county auditor”.
Using a county auditor site will give you a lot more information about the owners and the house. You’ll be able to see whom all the owners of the home are, or even if the person spoken to at the front door is in fact the owner.
If your company requires that both homeowners be present for the demonstration the county auditors site will be very helpful because it will often list all the homeowners. This will be very valuable when calling to validate the appointment. You can ask, “Will both you and Mr. Smith be available for the demonstration?” It’s a small detail that can have a major impact on the sale.
The auditor site can also give you a lot of information about the home:
- Age of the home
- The type of structure it is
- The tax value of the home
- Liens
This can be valuable information that can be used in the validation process by the confirmer. The more you can know and validate about the appointment the greater your odds of confirming and issuing the leads, as well as potentially closing that sale.
If you’d like to learn more about the numbers and call-in procedure you can call me for a brief, free phone consult. You can contact me directly at (216) 588-1337.