Foot Canvassing

In certain industries foot canvassing has been an incredibly successful way of gathering good information and also on occasions making appointments.

 It is a good way of canvassing if your product or service could be used by most or all businesses, as you want to be able to drive to a town or industrial estate, leave the car and visit all the businesses in that area, traditionally copier companies, franking machine companies, stationary companies, double glazing, but today more industries are having to be proactive about finding new customers. You should be able to foot canvass over 50 companies in a day.

 The great benefit of physically calling on a company is that you can see what size they are, what the building is like, what image they portray, if they are similar size and feel to your other customers. You can gather information from the receptionist and quite often ask questions that maybe people would not answer if you rang them on the telephone. Occasionally there will be an opportunity for you to meet the decision makers and future appointments can be made.

 The type of information you can easily obtain is number of employees, turnover, main contact details, email addresses, systems used, suppliers etc. It is sometimes possible to get information on areas of issues and pains but these are not usually known by the receptionist, always be courteous and always take the receptionists name. It may be very useful in the future when you ring to get hold of the decision maker, assistance from the gate keeper can be very useful.

 When you ring the decision maker for an appointment it is of benefit if you have foot canvassed as you have already seen the physical set up, have talked to the receptionist about the business and so will have some information to add to the call and should be in a position to have prepared a good Initial Benefit Statement.