What's better: cold calling or door-to-door sales?

This is a false dichotomy. You should spread your efforts over cold calling, email, door-to-door, business events, trade shows, blogging, etc. There is no one formula. You have to get good at all the methods and properly integrate them. Your customers are all over the place and do not have one specific way that they plan to respond.

I would always venture to say cold calling, just because both are high-volume in nature, and you can always dial a number faster than you can drive to a business and go inside. Typically your results will be more successful on a one-off basis by going in person, but your volume is so much higher on the phone that I would say its more time-efficient to just hammer the phones, as unglamorous as it is.

I applaud your focus on using cold calling or canvasing to request appointments -- that focus will be more successful than trying to sell in the same contact. I also applaud your focus on using these direct and active prospecting tools. They will help generate results more quickly. Now for the semi-criticism...It may be too early to choose one or the other for 100% effort. I recommend dividing your prospecting time between the two, tracking contact rates, and then choosing. There are two other reasons to use both for a while: 1) Cold calling and canvassing have a LOT in common. The differences will be based in your market in terms of reaching the right people in the right numbers (not what you're selling). The nuances will be unique to you and your market and so the best way to see if one works way better is to test-drive both. 2) This is based only on a hunch that you may personally and professionally benefit from getting out and about. Meeting gatekeepers and prospects in person may be a nice energy-boost. That's my two cents. Oh, one more cent: Do not ask for in-person or phone sales appointments based on the marketing tool you use. See what the prospect prefers.

That really all depends on you and your market. I have seen both methods done very successfully but it really depends on what you are good at and the market you are targeting. Either one you choose, stick with it and work hard at it, it will work. Hope that helps, - JR

If talking about B2B, then perhaps it is better for you to integrate various methods and try different niches as well. B2B is such a complex world, and I'm pretty sure no one can ever survive in this industry if he's only using a single approach; it has to be a combination of two, three, or even more.

An alternative process to think about if you haven't already would be to cold email. At http://FoundIQ.com, we find that this is a very effective way of winning business not just for our clients, but for ourselves as well. With cold email, you're not forcing yourself in front of someones face. Your prospect has time to think about what you're offering rather than immediately going on the defensive and saying no before they've heard you out. A generic process of how we work with our clients is broken down as follows:1) Ideal Customer Profile - we work with you to decide exactly who are you targeting; job titles, industry, company size, location etc.2) Build Lists - we build an accurate list of these prospects utilising our own internal suite of tools with a systemized approach to contact and qualify them3) Enhance Lists - we research relevant information about your prospects to give you a better chance of closing the leads we pass through to you4) Outreach - we create and execute personalized email sequences to reach out to your prospects, with tailored follow ups and responses5) Deliver Leads - you receive warm and hot leads directly into your inbox - you just have to close them6) Insights - Insights into Found IQ with pinpoint accuracy on monthly list building reports, outreach performance and leads delivered directly in your inbox to measure performance.This is a very efficient and structured process, provide maximum return with minimal effort, when compared with cold calling or door to door stuff. Just out of curiosity, will you be going door to door into different businesses? If you do go down that route and have success, do come back and let us know.Good luck with whatever you decide.

So many answers being worth paying attention to!Really depends on what you are going to sell. There is no single tactics for sure.How many times have you seen women driving pink car with huge inscription “Mary Kay/Avon/Oriflame” on it? These ladies being peculiar “beauty consultants” and offering shampoos to this woman and lipsticks to that, are considered to be the best representatives of door-to-door sales technique.But in other case I would recommend to try cold calling. Despite being controversial by nature B2B cold calling still remains a very efficient way for businesses to get clients.Moreover nowadays there lots of new tools that could to help you out, including http://close.io/, that could give you an opportunity to make and receive calls with just 1-click cause all calls are logged automatically; http://www.dingtone.me/en/index.html - nice calling and texting app for Android and Iphone; https://crazycall.com/?utm_source=Quora&utm_medium=Writing&utm_campaign=Answear - if you want to significantly improve your productivity – to increase performance of telesales and cold calling. Hope my answer was helpful for you!

There is a difference between door to door sales (usually transactional) and b2b sales, many confuse the two terms.  B2B doesn't mean you go from business to business to sell necessarily, it means you are a business selling to another business. You can go door to solicit or calling on the phone starts the same process.  Remember.  Some things work some time, nothing works all the time.

What's the difference?  Door to door sales is cold calling without the phone.   I expect your success will depend on the attractiveness, marketability and usefulness of the merchandise as well as your sales ability.   One item of note: Cold calls allow you to sell to a lot more people. Door to door sales allows you more personal contact.