Setting a daily knock goal
A useful daily goal is derived from your own knock-to-close ratio and what you need to earn, not imported from another rep or a recruiting pitch. Work backwards: sales needed, doors behind a sale in your area, hours available. A target that ignores your door density is a number you will miss for reasons that have nothing to do with effort.
Work backwards from money
Start with what you need to earn, convert to sales, and multiply by however many doors sit behind a sale where you work. That produces a target with a reason attached, which is the part that makes it survivable on a bad week.
Why imported targets hurt
A number from a rep working a denser area is unreachable in yours regardless of effort. Missing it daily teaches you that targets are decoration, which is worse than having none.
Goals on the inputs, not the outcome
Doors and conversations are things you control. Sales are not, on any single day. A goal set on the outcome punishes you for variance, and door-to-door has a great deal of variance.
Common questions
- How many doors a day should I target?
- Derived from your own ratio and your area, not borrowed. Density differences between areas are large enough to make any borrowed number arbitrary.
- Should my goal be sales or doors?
- Doors and conversations. Those are inputs you control; a daily sales target mostly measures luck.
- What if I keep missing it?
- Check whether the target was ever reachable in your area before concluding it is an effort problem.
More on your numbers
Contact rate, close rate and knock math — and telling a pitch problem from a timing problem.
- How to calculate your close rate
- Contact rate and close rate are different problems
- The knock-to-close ratio
- What counts as a good close rate
- Pitch problem or timing problem
- Dispositions, and why they are the whole record
- The KPIs worth tracking on the doors
- Why streaks beat big days
- Proving you actually got better