#35 - The Demise of Door-to-Door Sales

and the fate of cold outreach

Most aren’t old enough to remember (including myself), but the door-to-door salesman was THE dominant force in sales.

Think vacuum cleaners, encyclopedias, or early telecom services. Without modern infrastructure like TV, phones, email, or LinkedIn, a well-dressed guy knocking on your door was often the only way a company could create awareness and drive revenue.

But that era is long gone.

As consumer buyer journeys evolved, the door-to-door model collapsed. Sure, management tried to keep the engine running — encouraging reps to “knock on more doors” or “try new pitches” — and those tactics might’ve worked on the margins for a while. But ultimately, structural shifts in the market made the model unsustainable.

Some still argue that cold outreach isn't dead. My response: how many door-to-door salesmen have you seen in the past five years?

If that motion continued working, it would still exist. But it doesn’t — because the economics no longer made sense. And the same thing is happening to inside sales teams today.

Let’s break down the parallels:

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Then: The Decline of Door-to-Door

• Information Asymmetry Disappeared
  Before, buyers had limited access to product knowledge. Salespeople filled that gap. But once advertising, catalogs, and mass media arrived, buyers could learn on their own — making reps less essential.

• More Efficient Channels Emerged
  TV ads, direct mail, and later e-commerce enabled companies to reach broader audiences at lower cost. Door-to-door suddenly seemed inefficient, slow, and intrusive.

• Market Saturation and Skepticism
  As more salespeople hit the same neighborhoods, buyers grew weary. Trust eroded. Homeowners stopped opening their doors. The channel became blocked — not through regulation, but through irrelevance.

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Now: The Same Shift in Inside Sales

• Information Asymmetry Is Gone
  In SaaS especially, buyers don’t need SDRs to educate them. They read reviews, check G2/Reddit/LinkedIn, lurk in Slack communities, and often arrive to the first sales call more informed than the rep.

• More Efficient Channels are Emerging
  Product-led growth (PLG), self-serve buying, and AI-powered chat let buyers explore solutions on their terms. These motions are to SaaS what TV and e-commerce were to consumer goods — more scalable, more efficient, and aligned with how buyers actually want to buy.

• Volume-Based Outreach Is Saturated
  Cold emails and LinkedIn DMs had their moment — when they were novel. But now, everyone’s inbox is flooded. Just like homeowners tuning out door-to-door pitches, today’s buyers ignore outreach unless it's hyper-relevant and timely.

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The companies winning today aren’t relying on brute-force outbound. They’re investing in:

• Hyper-personalized engagement

• Embedded product value

• Inbound demand generation

• Community-led growth

Just like the door-to-door model gave way to better systems, the old playbook for inside sales is being replaced. Not because people got lazy — but because buying habits evolve and the ROI on previous best practices erode.