How Successful Sales Reps Start Their Day
By The D2D Experts

7 Min Read

Last Updated: May 15, 2023
Summary: This blog post delves into the daily structure and mindset of highly successful door-to-door sales representatives. It emphasizes the importance of a disciplined morning routine for personal preparation ("Prepare To Battle The Day"), followed by dedicated "quiet time" for crucial administrative tasks, customer follow-ups, and ensuring clean business operations. The author also highlights the significance of work-life balance by making time for one's spouse. Key sales strategies discussed include maintaining consistent daily effort ("Be Consistent In Your Hustle"), the critical importance of "Staying In The Same Neighborhood" to build credibility and become the local go-to expert (like "Jory"), and mastering the art of "Follow Up" to significantly boost sales and cultivate lasting customer recognition.

Master Your D2D Sales Day!

Learn Proven Routines & Mindsets with D2D University.

Stop guessing and start succeeding. Discover the daily routines, neighborhood strategies, and follow-up mastery that top D2D reps use to achieve consistent sales and become unforgettable. Learn more!
Two smartphones display a course app interface with a featured course titled "D2DU 101" showing 14 lessons. The screen highlights include 'Start Course,' lesson topics like 'Self Improvement,' and a "D2D Experts Certified" badge.

Everything from door approaches to closes, in one no-BS guide. Whether you sell solar, alarms, pest, or pest removal for robots—this is your pitch flow bible.

A red book titled "D2D Sales Playbook: Your door-to-door game plan" by D2E Experts, featuring a white house icon on the cover—essential reading for mastering High-Performance D2D Sales.

Punch in your info and get the goods.

Because there are so many people that change neighborhoods every other day. Oh man, that’s my pet peeve right because you can’t be the mayor, you can’t be the president, and you can’t get mega credibility. You can’t walk down the street in a brand new neighborhood and everyone’s like, that’s the solar guy. Because I want somebody to like, when someone knocks on that door and tries to sell solar, I want them to say- “I don’t have it, but if I do get it, I’m getting it from Jory.” I’m like, whoa. I want them to call me back. I want to be at the front of their mind. I want them to see my installs. Okay, so, let’s talk sales routine.

Prepare To Battle The Day

You know when you were selling, just selling. You’ve been doing sales and you were to tell this rep what a perfect top rep routine looks like, where do you start? When do you finish? What does your morning routine look like? Just describe what that day would look like. Let’s say the rep has kids because, as you said, the reason I switched from alarms and summer sales and traveling every summer to solar is that you’re like, I can’t keep moving my family. I think a lot of people resonate with that model and they bring their family along when they are selling solar. It is the easier industry in door-to-door sales when it comes to having a family. So, what does that day look like? You wake up at 6:00 a.m. and get your workout in from 6:00 to 7:00. But, it depends on when your kids wake up. Let’s assume they wake up around 7:00-7:30 and so you wake up at 6:00 a.m. you get your workout in, you get your words of affirmation in, you get your meditation or clearing of the mind in, you get fully prepared to go to battle that day, right? You are fully prepared to battle that day and then you take your kids to school, you give them a kiss, and you tell them they’re the most amazing things in the world and we have a motto in the Sullivan family and it is “Go Hard”. We talk about that and our day on the way to school and that’s how I start my day.

Quiet Time

Then it is the quiet time between the hours of like 9:00-10:00. This is when you progress your accounts. You follow up with your customers. You ask for referrals. You make sure your business is clean. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, you sell clean business. I’m going to put this as the key to managing your business. You have to set aside an hour of quiet time to clean up your business. The reason is, if you aren’t doing this it will lead to cancelations. It is vital that you sit down and clean out all your deals and make sure there is nothing left out. If you have cancelations simply because you didn’t clean your deal, that’s a lot of money. Don’t leave that on the table like an idiot. No matter what you sell, make sure it’s clean. Make sure it’s funded so it can go to install. I don’t have over 400 sales, I have over 400 personal installs because I love the meticulousness of paperwork and getting it right. I don’t want to cancel. So, you spend that quiet time in the morning cleaning the house and making sure everything is in order.

Spend Time With Your Spouse

Then right around 10:00 to 11:00, if you have a spouse, make sure you spend some time with them. It’s really crucial to get that one-on-one time with them and invest in your marriage. The happier your marriage and your home life are, then the easier it makes your job. Don’t slack off on spending time with your spouse. This is probably the number one piece of advice I can give you. It is a time when you can just relax. You can bond and strengthen your friendship. Find something you can do together or use this time to brief each other and discuss your personal lives, what is going on with the kids, things to do as a family, whatever it is, just make this a priority.

Be Consistent In Your Hustle

Then by noon, you should be out hustling. Someone’s always home. You should look at this job kind of like the postman. So I look at my job as if I am as predictable as the postman meter reader. I know my postman. I see him every day in the neighborhood. He’s not a stranger. I can predict when he will come around. If you’re going to be the mayor of your neighborhood, then you need to be out there every single day and you literally need to read people’s meters so you’re like the postman slash meter reader. When I don’t want to get out there, when it’s cold, when it’s rainy and I don’t feel like it I say, well, what will the postman do today? And he always delivers, except on Sunday. And so, I have that same mentality. Monday through Saturday I always deliver. I may not get my result, but that’s okay. I’m back out there the next day because I have a job. I am here to read meters and to be there for the people, to be the mayor of my neighborhood. One thing that scares me the most is changing neighborhoods.

Grab the Leadership Playbook for meeting rhythms, scorecards, and coaching scripts your managers can use this week. Less chaos. More consistency!

A yellow hardcover book titled "Leadership Playbook: Maximize your impact" with a white icon above the title and three small icons—a lightbulb, bar chart, and star—along the bottom edge.

Stay In The Same Neighborhood

This is key because there are so many people who change neighborhoods every other day. Oh man, that’s my pet peeve because you can’t be the mayor or the president of the neighborhood when you skip around. You can’t get mega credibility. You can’t walk down the street in a brand new neighborhood and everyone’s like- “That’s the solar guy!” Like, when someone else knocks on that door and tries to sell solar, I want them to say “I don’t have it, but if I do get it, I’m getting it from Jory.” I want them to call me back. I want to be at the front of their mind. I want them to see my installs. This is why I don’t like changing neighborhoods. I don’t know the terrain. I’m going in and I’m like a navy seal getting dropped off and some people might have fun in that, but I have fun being the routine postman. I want to know what’s going on. I want to be able to beat my chest and say “This is my hood! Get out of here!” Imagine doing my job. I have to put on a new company shirt a new product a new territory a new state yeah and just show off for four hours and I’m like dude you guys realize if I had it my way this would be month three after me working my neighborhood and you know. Unfortunately, on a day on-site, or whatever, I can’t show that like yeah, I cultivated my area knocking, versus new turf new area. It’s just so scary, right? So, don’t change areas. Do not change. You need to stay put.

Master Your D2D Sales Day!

Learn Proven Routines & Mindsets with D2D University.

Stop guessing and start succeeding. Discover the daily routines, neighborhood strategies, and follow-up mastery that top D2D reps use to achieve consistent sales and become unforgettable. Learn more!
Two smartphones display a course app interface with a featured course titled "D2DU 101" showing 14 lessons. The screen highlights include 'Start Course,' lesson topics like 'Self Improvement,' and a "D2D Experts Certified" badge.

Follow Up

If you’re in solar, try to stay put for at least two months. If you can, and I promise you’ll get way more referrals, you have way more callbacks from it and callbacks are going to happen if you do your job right. I know it’s weird to hear, but I get callbacks all the time. I don’t sell them at first, right? If I get people texting and calling me and saying they think it’s time. I probably make an extra 100 grand a year just from following up with people and people calling me back. This is from Tony Robbins, so people literally will wake up in their box, they’ll get in their box, they’ll drive to their box, they’ll come back in their box, and come to their box, and they’ll change their state with a cylinder. But, I choose to change their state when I knock on their door. So, if they’re a 5 instead of me being a 10, I try to get them to a 7, right? I try to get their energy to kind of match mine a little bit, because no matter if I sell them or not, I want them to remember Jory, the solar guy. There’s a lot of bad stuff going on out there in terms of solar and a lot of negative press recently. So, I try to bring them and leave them in a healthy state where they’re excited to see me back. The next time I go over their energy option, they know that I am the guy in the neighborhood and they see me every single day. So when it’s time, I’ve had people literally say “It’s time.” It’s awesome. It’s finally time. They’re like yep, it’s time and then you’re just like, all right, let’s write it up. I’ve had some awkward ones where people are just super rude to me and said no and then they call me and I walk back in. I’m like, do you not remember just cussing me off your porch? The guy was in a bad state. I am like okay, yeah okay, that’s fair. Whatever, let’s get you enrolled. Let’s get five referrals and so what’s interesting, and if you’re listening to this, is a lot of times we see every customer that tells us no we’re like ah ding they’re they were a dick or they told me no and we write them off instead of just saying not the right time and state for them yeah and it’s like or maybe not the right time and state for me. Maybe I was going through some emotional weird dissonance and I then approached them all grumpy. I’m like hey, you know I’m out here doing the solar thing and then there’s like oh okay like I don’t want to buy from you at this moment. And so, right state, right time, you’re going to find that right formula.