Door-to-door prospecting: doing it with routes and data, not blind

Why door-to-door still works

The owner who is going to sell has often not listed yet. Getting there before the portal, with a personal touch and knowledge of the area, is exactly where exclusives are won. The cost is your time, which is why the key is not knocking on more doors but not wasting any.

Prepare the area before you go out

A good day in the field starts in the office. On the cadastral map you know, before setting foot in the street, what is on each plot: its official area and its use. That lets you rule out what does not fit and arrive at each door knowing what you are going to talk about. If you are not sure what that data tells you and what it does not, start with how to use the cadastre for prospecting.

• Pick a bounded area, not a whole city: ten streets worked properly beat fifty done halfway.
• Check what has already been worked in that area and with what result, so you do not repeat doors or tread on a colleague.
• Decide what you are offering before you ring: a valuation, information about the area, a specific service.

Plan the route on the map

Instead of improvising, go out with a route. Drawing the area and letting the tool work out the order of stops saves the time you used to lose crossing the same avenue three times. And if the area is large, splitting it between several agents stops two of them ending up at the same entrance.

Record every door, including the ones that stay shut

What is not written down is lost. The difference between an agent and a good team is that the team turns every door into a record anyone can reuse tomorrow. And a door that does not open is information too: it tells you to come back, and at what time to try.

• The outcome of the conversation: wants to sell, will think about it, possible sale later, does not want to sell.
• Whether nobody was home, so you can return another day at another time.
• What the cadastre does not say: renovations, tenants, building work, another agency’s sign.
• The best time to come back and who to talk to.

The owner’s details: handle with care

At the door the owner gives you their name and phone number. From that moment you are processing personal data and the GDPR applies: you must tell them who you are, why you are keeping their data and how they can ask you to delete it. Say it in the conversation and put it in writing on the card or leaflet you hand over. It is one sentence, and it protects the agency.

Door-to-door does not compete with digital: it leans on digital so you never repeat a door or forget a face.

Clock-in and GPS: tracking the working day, within the law

Management needs to know which area has been covered and how much time has been worked. In Spain there is also a legal obligation behind it: Article 34.9 of the Workers’ Statute requires the company to guarantee a daily record of working hours, with the exact start and end time.

If that record uses geolocation, Article 90 of the Spanish Data Protection Act comes in: the company may use geolocation for its employment control functions, but must first inform workers — and, where applicable, their representatives — expressly, clearly and unambiguously about the existence and characteristics of those devices. Tracking the working day is legitimate; following someone outside it is not.

How Domuspace handles it

Prospecting routes and clock-in, from the Basic plan, cover the field day from start to finish:

• Management draws the area on the map and the route is created with the plots inside it that have no status yet, up to 100, for the agent they choose, who is notified straight away.
• Stops follow the order in which they were selected: automatic splitting and an optimised order depend on a routing engine that is switched off today, with no date.
• The agent moves stop by stop and opens the journey in Google Maps or the next door in Waze.
• At each door they record the outcome on the map itself, with six statuses; “Not at home” sends the plot back to their pending route on its own, three working days later and at another time of day. And they store the owner’s contact right there.
• Clock-in records start and finish by type of work — prospecting, viewing and call by default, and the company can change them. At the end of the day, the hours are in the timesheet and the plots worked are on the map.
• If someone forgets to close their day, management closes it by entering the time, and the adjustment is logged.

On GPS, here is how it is designed: the day’s route is part of the Professional plan and needs the native app, which has not been published yet. Position is only recorded while the worker is clocked in, with geolocation switched on by the company, with the legal notice signed by the worker and with their permission on the device. It is there to supervise the working day, not anyone’s life. And if you also deliver leaflets, the map has a flyer mode — “With flyers”, “Without flyers” or “Impossible” — with colours that fade over time and show which plots are due again.

From doorbell to record

Every contact made in the street has to end up in a record with its follow-up, not on a loose piece of paper. That way the owner who “will think about it” enters the scoring and someone calls them back at the right time. The street feeds the portfolio and the portfolio organises the street. And when that conversation matures, what comes next is the exclusive.

Measure to improve

Count doors knocked, conversations held, owners intending to sell and exclusives signed, by area and by agent. With those KPIs you find out which areas pay off, which agents convert and where it is worth going back.