Knocking in bad weather
Bad weather changes two things at once. More people are indoors, which raises the chance somebody answers, and the person answering is less inclined to stand in a doorway while it is coming down. The conversation gets shorter and the pressure to be quick rises, so weather days reward reps with a tight opening and punish long ones.
Contact rate up, patience down
The reason weather days are debated is that both effects are real and they point in opposite directions. Reps who only track how many doors opened conclude that rain is good. Reps who only remember how the conversations went conclude the opposite.
What you can say with confidence is that a long opening costs more on a wet day than on a dry one, because the person is deciding whether to hold a door open in it.
Do not make them stand in it
Position yourself so the person can hold the door without getting wet, and make it obvious you intend to be brief. This is the same threat-and-duration calculation as any other day, with the duration half turned up.
Anything that reads as settling in works against you more than usual.
When to stop
Heat is the one to take seriously rather than push through. Reps in summer programmes routinely work through conditions where the sensible call is to stop, because stopping feels like weakness and the day is measured in doors. It is worth deciding your threshold in advance, when you are not already in it.
Common questions
- Is knocking in the rain worth it?
- More people are home, and each conversation is shorter and less patient. Whether that trade is worth it depends on how tight your opening is.
- Does bad weather help or hurt close rate?
- It compresses the conversation, which hurts anything that needs time to explain. We do not have data of our own on the net effect and would rather not guess at one.
- When should I stop for heat?
- Set the threshold before you are standing in it. Judgement about heat is one of the first things heat degrades.
More on door knocking
The craft of working a door: approach, first line, reading the house, what to do when nobody answers.
- How to door knock
- The first seven seconds at a door
- The best time of day to knock
- Which days actually convert
- What to do when nobody answers
- Reading a house before you knock
- Door-knocking etiquette
- Staying safe on the doors
- How many doors a day is realistic
- The mistakes that cost you the door
- Apartments versus subdivisions