Lenny Gray Part 2 | The Secrets of Selling Door-to-Door

Lenny Gray is the CEO of Rove Pest Control and D2D Millionaire. He shares the skills and traits that make a door-to-door salesman successful, and why communication is key. 

Lenny started Rove Pest Control in 2003 after working in door-to-door sales for another pest control company and also serving as Vice President of training for door-to-door sales for Orkin. 

Busting Door-to-Door Sales Myths

Lenny is straightforward when he says that door-to-door sales is not for everybody. Most people will find out within two weeks of trying it out if it is the right role for them. For him, it was about a month into his first door-to-door sales job that he realized he could be successful. 

He had just finished selling in Homewood, AL, a blue-collar neighborhood. He decided he would go to Mountainbrook, a well-off neighborhood nearby, although most of his fellow salesmen said it was too hard to sell there. 

On his first knock in Mountainbrook, he was able to sell to a doctor and his wife. In that moment, he says he realized he could sell anything to anyone, anywhere. 

He shares that he learned everything about selling by doing, as his company had a very short training manual. It wasn’t until after he wrote his own sales book that he read other books. He felt he had his own selling style that he didn’t want confused with other styles. 

The Most Important Skill a Salesman Needs to Master

Make each door think you’ve sold to everyone else in the neighborhood. 

“In our company, we call it mental toughness. But at the end of the day, it’s being able to go to one door and have that person at that one door be incredibly rude, condescending, you know, they call your mom a name. I don’t care, whatever it is, and then you bounce back to that very next door and you act like that never happened. You can just erase it from your memory.”

Weathering the Highs and Lows

On July 4, 2000, in Jacksonville, FL, Lenny remembers selling 23 accounts. It was his best day ever. Two or three weeks later, he had a day where he didn’t sell anything. His advice is to stay balanced during these times of highs and lows. Don’t carry your negative momentum with you, only the positive. 

He captured these stories of success and failure in his book “Door-to-Door Millionaire” and eventually started his consulting company that goes by the same name. During his time working in pest control and consulting other home services businesses, he has identified the traits that make or break a salesman.

Successful salesmen are:

• Good communicators:
  • Eye contact
  • Smile
  • Creative 
  • Think on their toes
  • Know a little about a lot
  • Relatable
• Hardworking
• Mentally tough
• Ask open-ended questions instead of yes or no questions
• Never forget to close the sale

D2D Selling In the Trades

“I’m convinced that you can sell anything door to door, any type of trade industry you have, any type of home service industry, you can craft a way to have people go out, knock doors, and generate interest. Because you’re actually kind of at that place where those things are needed, so it’s pretty easy.”

Lenny highlights that he has even seen his plan work for a no credit check finance company. If you have the right processes and system, you will be successful, no matter what industry you are in. 

Lenny has just finished the rough draft of his new book that covers next level door-to-door sales tactics. You can learn more at LennyGray.com.