E0103 - Canvassing

In this episode, Ed and Vic discuss the hazards of canvassing, it's negative impact on a brand and how it is an outdated mode of lead acquisition.

Watch the companion piece to this episode by clicking here: https://zeromarketingwaste.com/oneleg-up-blog-1/f/canvassing-should-die 

Or, read our article on Canvassing here: https://zeromarketingwaste.com/oneleg-up-blog-1/f/article-the-death-of-canvassing-is-imminent-5-min-read

Transcript

Edward Davis: 0:03

Welcome to one leg up, where we discuss how you can deliver the very best customer experience and how you can achieve zero marketing waste. I'm Ed Davis, the chief operations ninja here at one leg and I'm joined as ever, by our intrepid mastermind, Victor son, Vic. How's it going?

Vic Sun: 0:20

Good. Yeah, it's Friday. I'm not supposed to do that.

Edward Davis: 0:26

That's okay. I'll leave it. It's good. It's good. All right, we're getting the hang of this. Today, I want to talk about canvassing and how it is a practice, in my opinion, that needs to be killed off. But first that you've got a lot of experience in this talk a little bit about how canvassing came about and and how is it that companies use canvassing?

Vic Sun: 0:49

In a nutshell canvassing, you started in a time before the internet, before mobile devices, before the whole world was connected through social media, and the other more videos and everything else is transpired in the last 3040 years?

Unknown: 1:12

Right? Yeah, so

Vic Sun: 1:14

in the home improvement space, it's, it's been a practice to go and do a lot of face to face marketing, in hopes of generating leads. And that, you know, that canvassing in particular is a very outdated way of doing face to face marketing, where you physically walk around neighborhoods, you know, through gates, knocking on people's doors ringing doorbells, and usually with a pen and paper writing down their information, right, and then, you know, calling that into your call center of some sort or noting that somewhere, and then they'll start contacting you trying to schedule an in an in home appointment or a demo. You know, inherently nowadays, you can, you can start to imagine how, you know, there's a flurry of issues, especially when you've got someone who's writing down your information, and, of course, with the pandemic and everything else, but that's typically how it started, I would say it's, it's a, it's a marketing campaign, you know, that originated from before the internet, you know, was available to the world and social media and, and all of these other things that have come about in the last 3040 years.

Edward Davis: 2:33

Sure, and I think those issues that you started to touch on in terms of, you know, random people walking a neighborhood, potentially taking down, you know, addresses names, phone numbers, things along those lines. To me, that's just the start of why canvassing nowadays is is problematic, set aside the fact that we are in this, this mode, of, of trying to become more socially distant, in our, in our sort of business exchanges, if you will. The bigger issue that I see nowadays, is really around, brand. And in and I think a lot of companies fall into the trap that a brand is your logo. And that's not actually your brand. That is the that is the visual manifestation of your brand. But a brand is is made up of a number of elements. It's partly your people, it's your culture, it's where you want to be as a business and what direction you're going your your mission, your vision. It's also the it also is sort of the sum of the values and the people who who make up your company. And so the way that I like to liken it is you know, you're you're you have interactions with brands all the time. And your opinion of that brand is typically that last interaction that you had. And the example is, let's say you have a favorite restaurant. And for the sake of this example, and they're fairly ubiquitous, let's call it let's say it's McDonald's. Although, you know, since coming to America tos coming out, we'll say it's McDowell's. And if you go to McDonald's, and you order the rib sandwich, and the person who's taking your order is short with you, they get the change wrong. And then when you get your your sandwich your meal, the drink is wrong. You feel like you don't have enough fries. And on top of that, it's packaged poorly and it doesn't taste very good. Even though you might be the biggest McDowell's fan on the place on the face of the earth. You now have Have a bad view of that brand. And, and the the creators of that brand had no control over any of those things. And that's sort of the the analogy that I think about with canvassing, when you go out and you solicit, and let's face it, these people are typically temporary workers. They they are, they're not really trained as we would recognize it. And essentially, what you say is, here's my business card, here's my flyer, I want you to go be the face of my company, and go, go Go share my messaging to everybody in this neighborhood. And that's just a recipe for disaster. You don't know what they're gonna say, if somebody happens to be home and ask them questions, somebody might not like you coming on to their property anymore. And they may take a bad view of your of your company. So there's all sorts of reasons why you won't, you shouldn't be doing it. And if we're going to talk about the reasons why you shouldn't be doing it, let's talk about what the replacement is for actual physical canvassing, because that's the point of this, this edition of the podcast, social selling, and your social media channels, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, neighbor, these are all becoming the de facto venues for you to canvass not physically. But if you do it right, you can leverage these platforms as as the as a better way of actually canvassing excuse me large swaths of of a market.

Vic Sun: 6:46

I agree, you mentioned, you know, neighbors are next door the there's apps right now we're we're neighbors and neighborhoods are highly active in you know, they've, they've been able to go and, and reach out to their neighbors and to businesses around the area, you know, and do it safely, you know, from within their, their their home. And actually, you know, conduct business that way, you know, from with the companies that they that they trust. There's really so much, you know, issues with canvassing nowadays, I don't know if we have time to cover all of them. But I think the top two things that companies could do should start to consider is that they can reallocate their, their budgets towards you know, activities that really do enrich, you know, their business and their customers. You mentioned something about, you know, low low skilled workers being hired, and for the most part, or part time or temporary. That's really one of the core things that I detest about canvassing, when I was younger, I did that. I did that for my own business and home improvement, a dividend yet and in Honestly, it wasn't fun, right? I mean, I could say that I was good at it. But it's certainly something if I had a choice I wouldn't do. Number one, companies don't pay a ton of money for this, a lot of them are minimum wage, they try to hook and bait them with commissions, bonuses, you know, that really nice carrot at the end of that, but let's face it, less than 10% of those individuals succeed or even, you know, make decent enough money. That's a living wage. Number two, it's what you've mentioned about the brand, which is it's inherently, you know, known that these canvassers, they're just not going to be aligned with your brand. And for the most part, they are unable to consistently represent your brand as well as your messaging. because number one, when you're going up there, depending on where you are, if you're no, like, I'm in California, and so it gets really really hot during the summers just think about that. So you're sweaty, you might serve stinking for you know, body odor, that's human nature, right and, and things that happen to the body, you're tired, you've just walked four or five miles in a neighborhood, you might have been chased by a dog. Right? You're huffing and puffing, and now you knock on the door, somebody's answering it. And just imagine all of those amalgamated, you know, elements, you know, coming into fruition. And now the person who is the first time seeing you and interacting with your brand has this really terrible first impression. And a lot of companies don't realize that

Edward Davis: 9:32

well, and you know, just just building off of that, right? How many people actually open their door anymore. I mean, you've got security concerns. You've got us, like I said before, set aside the pandemic piece of it, who actually wants to open the door and potentially open their home up to strangers and a lot, a lot of us nowadays, are even more sensitive to that, especially when you've got random people walking in neighborhood and Kids are out playing and things alone The world is a much different place than when there was the traveling salesperson, you know, in the 40s, and 50s. And, and when canvassing really started to take hold in the 60s and 70s, and 80s, the world has drastically changed. And I think that this is really where, you know, business owners, especially in the home improvement space, Vic, you we see this all the time, they are slow to grasp the evolution of marketing and brand and advertising. And part of that is fear of change. But the other part of it is, it's just habitual. We do it because our competitors do it. We do it because quote unquote, historically, it's worked for us. Although I think you and I are pretty, pretty savvy enough to understand the success rate is pretty low. And and and I think it would be good for you to share. You know, if somebody is canvassing what should they honestly expect? Right for every 100 homes a canvasser is going to visit? What's how many sales Do you think that they're going to make versus for every 100 people you actually engage with on social media, whether it's through a chatbot, whether you get them to come to your website, or or through Facebook Messenger or something like that? How many of those 100 are you actually going to get an opportunity to legitimately sell to

Vic Sun: 11:34

the percentage is 1%, or less success rate for Canvas, physical for canvassing national average. And again, I'm going to be very specific with regards to lead generation appointment setting. If you if you do it based on sales, transactional ones, where you're canvassing and you're also demonstrating a product under $20, then that rate could go up. But with regards to canvassing lead generation or improvement, appointment setting, it's less than 1%. So it's one out of 100. If that. And, you know, you start using compared to other campaigns where you could go on social media, engage them meaningfully go through an app, create a creative campaign, you're talking about 200 300%, you know, above the 1%. Right, so right off the gate, your you know, zero marketing waste, that's it's a lot of waste when you when you talk about canvassing, and it really has so much more of that impact that people don't read the negative impact not only to the person who's canvassing, but to the homeowners who have to, you know, they're afraid or maybe they don't want people in their neighborhoods into the brand. So all around, it's a lose lose situation. Sure. No. In in, and I think that, you know, even the companies who are successful at being able to do it, as we know, because we're habitually, you know, doing it, they, they can say, Oh, it's work for us in the past, the owners of the company might be making a ton of profit out of it. But you know, what's happening is they they're not calculating the turnover, they're not calculating sure for the negative impact on their brand. So when they do these very insane, very simple call monkey math, you know, and they say, Okay, we'll produce all these leads. And, you know, we sold a few of them. And I only spend this much on the labor and I don't pay my canvassers enough money, and only maybe one out of 10 of them will get the bonus. Sure, in their in their minds, right. They feel that they've made money when they're actually losing money, because there's an opportunity cost to doing that.

Edward Davis: 13:45

Yeah, no, and I just think that it's an outdated tactic. It is one that really does need to change. I think that the other benefits and we haven't quite got into them just yet as part of this podcast, and I think maybe it's, it's, it's worth a follow up. When you're out employing temporary workers to canvass a neighborhood. Tell me how you're tracking that. Tell me how you are analyzing the demographics of that neighborhood. You're not you're shaking your head, you're not You and I both know that you're not hence the benefit of social selling, right? You can get into Hey, you know what, I actually want to target the top 15% of income zip codes with the highest income, right? I want to just target neighborhoods. In this state, I want to just target people who have these characteristics or things along those lines. You can get into where you can increase your chances of success right and And to your point and we talked about this all the Time, sometimes it's not purely about limiting the waste in terms of maximizing your profit. But it's also about limiting your waste in terms of minimizing your resource expenditure and making things more efficient. And social selling, in my opinion, in our opinion. That's what that does. And so, you know, to us, this gets us to sort of the final point of this podcast. Social media doesn't need to be the big bad Boogeyman because we don't understand it, it sits in the cloud. And and who knows what it is that people are going to like. People, companies who have a coherent marketing and communication strategy can leverage social selling, it can absolutely supplant things like physical canvassing, for for a business, and therefore change the the marketing expense ratio that you might be paying attention to. So we would encourage everybody to take a look at social selling, we absolutely would encourage everybody to give up physical canvassing, if not for the fact that it helps your brand. Think about the safety, security ramifications, you know, the funny thing to me, Vic is, you know, we'll sit there and talk to some CEOs who are in home improvement or sort of related industries. And if you ask them, oh, when is the last time you purchase a service or a product that was that was left as a business card or a flyer on your door in your driveway. 100% we get never done it. And yet, they've programmed themselves to think my business is different, they will absolutely buy their windows or their bath remodel or whatever, from the little bag of rocks with a with a business card that was set up like this. It's just not happening.

Vic Sun: 17:03

Now, it's quite true. And it is funny inside I think at the same time, because, you know, they're they're trying to peddle something that they themselves wouldn't, you know, they wouldn't. They wouldn't buy from that person if that person showed up in their house. And I think it's that fear of change that you mentioned. I also think that it's it's also incumbent that we talk about how marketing agencies and, and digital marketing agencies and companies is are also at fault, because, you know, they really don't provide clear enough guidelines on how to reallocate those those, you know, that budget. And on top of that they're afraid, you know, they're really a bunch of wimps, you know, who just say, you know what, just do this and just do that. Because when an owner gets tired of it and says, Well, do you have something that you can guarantee? We'll do this? I mean, my response to that has always been, well, how long have you been doing canvassing, and they go, Okay, well, I've been doing it for the last, you know, 25 years. Okay, and when do you expect, you know, when we reallocate your funds from canvassing to a new campaign, that you'd be just as successful, if not even more? What? Can you do it in a month? And I said, my responses again, very simple, where you're not serious about this, then? Yeah, because you just said it's took you 25 years to get to where you are, and you're expecting to just, you know, one day go and say, Okay, I'll reallocate that next month, and that can that be so much more successful? social selling social media, those sorts of things, they do take time, they don't take 25 years, okay? Usually months, especially if the if the company or the person who's doing it for you knows what the hell they're doing. And so I think one of the things that we could advocate is like more companies should guarantee their results, right? I mean, if if the fear of change is not going to change, just by giving people more information, you got to cater to really listen to what they want. And see, as owners, they want some guarantees. Well, look, you know, if you guarantee that you're going to do it in six months, and you're going to move that needle and you don't just fire yourself, and you should get out of the business unit. I mean,

Edward Davis: 19:13

Well, speaking, speaking of guarantees, you've let us ably to our shameless plug. Are you have we have we given you enough information to intrigue you about or pique your interest in eliminating your canvassing efforts, but maybe you're not quite fully ready to give it up. We've got a challenge for you one day will guarantee to beat your current canvassing metrics over the course of 90 days by at least 10% or will give you your money back. Want to know more drop Vic a note he'll be happy to have a conversation with you. And the team here at one leg would be happy to generate a social selling campaign that is proven to guarantee results. proven to guarantee results. proven to get results. So that that brings us neatly to the end of this podcast, Vic. How do you think it went?

Vic Sun: 20:09

I think it went okay. Hopefully somebody will listen to it.

Edward Davis: 20:14

That will in fact be the proof and I think people are listening. So we appreciate that. At one leg we test marketing wastage and bleed port marketing pollutes the planet, and that business with that business. Sorry, we're gonna pause and redo this whole bit. All right. At one leg we detest marketing waste, and believe poor marketing pollutes the planet. Fuck me. I'm showing you that video, Vic. The bloopers video? Yeah,

Vic Sun: 21:01

I have that video. There was a lot of F bombs and Yeah, it was.

Edward Davis: 21:07

Alright, Alright, one more time.

Vic Sun: 21:11

It's Canada.

Edward Davis: 21:18

Now one leg we detest marketing waste and believe poor marketing pollutes the planet. And we also believe that business is full of tired outdated, indistinct unremarkable and underperforming marketing. That sucks. But what sucks even more is that many companies have forgotten the most important thing of all the customer. We're on a mission on behalf of our clients, customers to change just that. To learn more, go to one leg. co find us follow us rate us. Anywhere you find yourself socially settling or socially interacting. Thank you talk to you later. Okay, great. Awesome.