Canvassing & soliciting

You don’t see canvasing much any more because the office is a ‘nice to have’ now in business. Canvassing is walking around knocking on doors taken from political campaigns. Different to door-to-door sales which is more like a product demonstration; canvassing is just making introductions, like local area networking. (Little IT gag) or soliciting which I categorise more as stopping someone on the street.

•Take a little brochure, invitation, sample it’s a really good crutch

•Always surprisingly good results

•Make a day of it

•Ask about their business, Try to give back to the local community by hiring local services

•There’s a limit to it in that you can’t keep disturbing companies so you can really only canvas an area once every few years

•Recommended for any time you get a new office, walk around to the local suburb

•Be fearless and just walk in

•Know your elevator pitch ‘Hi sorry to disturb you, my name’s Jamie from New Business Solutions, we help secure new clients. We just opened our offices down the street and I thought I’d come make an introduction’.

•Great for service delivery companies like IT maintenance, restaurants, because the short travel distance means you don’t need to charge a delivery or travel cost.

•People like to know that they can reach out and touch you

• Community is the bedrock of society, so you’ll bump into the people you meet later

•There are laws around canvassing but I’ve never had a problem.

•If they ask you to leave, just leave

•Under law its called an unsolicited consumer agreements

•Don’t worry if they have a no canvassing or no sales people sign

•The law is really on enforced if you go outside business hours or on Sunday