The Doorstep Route Planner

A free planning checklist from The Doorstep Playbook

Print it, or paste it into your notes app. It’s a five-minute pass, and the reason to do it before you leave is that once you’re parked on the first street you will not do it at all.

Before you leave

• Today’s zone, confirmed. Not Tuesday’s. Overlaps get discovered around four in the afternoon by two people on the same block, and they are never discovered cheerfully.
• The rules for the city you are working, if it is a new one. Whether a permit is required, what the permitted hours are, whether a badge has to be visible. Door-to-Door Permit Rules by City has sixteen of them with the ordinance section and the date checked beside each; anywhere else it is one call to the clerk’s office, and it is cheaper than finding out from a resident.
• Sunset, and what the weather is doing. Daylight is the real end of your day in most cities and it moves a long way between June and November. Rain matters because it shortens how long anyone will stand in an open doorway — plan for shorter conversations, not cleverer ones.
• One number for the day. Doors, conversations, or closes. One of them. Three focus numbers is no focus number, and closes are the worst of the three to pick on a day you need something you actually control.
• The bag. Badge or ID somewhere a resident can see it, whatever paperwork a yes requires, a charged phone, water. The paperwork is the one people forget and the only one that costs you a sale.

Building the route

• Far edge first, work back toward where you parked. The walk out is the expensive part of the day and you’re freshest at the start of it. Finishing near the truck also means your last hour is spent knocking rather than getting back.
• One side of the street at a time. Odds, then evens. Crossing back and forth adds more walking than it looks like it should, and it makes your own coverage hard to reconstruct the next week.
• Write a callback down when you get it. “2pm, ask for Maria,” on the spot. Six houses later you have a callback and no name, which is the same as not having one.
• Put one break in on purpose. Ten minutes, somewhere near the middle. Skipping it doesn’t buy you a longer day, it buys you a last hour that sounds tired.

What to log at each door

One line per door. You’re building tomorrow’s route, not writing a report.

• Address.
• Outcome — no answer, spoke and no, callback, sale. Keep no answer separate from a no. Those are not the same door, and running them together is how a street gets written off that nobody has spoken to yet.
• One word for why, if it was a no: price, timing, spouse, renter, sign.
• Callback time, if there is one.
• The hour, if you’re trying to work out which part of the day is worth your good hours. Two-hour blocks are enough.

Five minutes at the end

• Compare against the one number you picked this morning. If you missed it, say why in actual words — the route, the hours, the weather, the opening. “Bad day” isn’t a reason, and it leaves you free to have the same one tomorrow.
• Sort tomorrow’s callbacks by time before you do anything else. Tomorrow should start from a list rather than from what you can remember.
• One line on what you’d change. One line. Not a journal.