Your rep sends a photo of the knocksheet at the end of the shift. You can read the total, but a few notes are cut off. Someone else is taking the patch tomorrow.
Which addresses still need a visit? Who asked for a callback? Where did the rep stop?
If you have to ring them to find out, the handover needs more detail. Start with the information the next person needs to do the job. You can use the same approach whether your team works from paper or a shared digital record.
Key takeaways
- Agree what each door result means before the shift.
- Keep unfinished coverage separate from agreed callbacks.
- Record the next action and the person responsible.
- Check that the next rep can use the handover before they head out.
In this article
What should a canvassing handover include?
Record the addresses worked, the outcome at each door, any agreed next step and who owns it. Keep unfinished coverage separate from callbacks. Before assigning tomorrow's patch, make sure the next rep can find that record and understand it. That is the working standard suggested in this guide. Adjust the fields to your campaign and your organisation's rules for handling household information.
Agree what each result means
Pick result labels your team understands and use them consistently. A rep who writes "interested" may mean the householder asked for a leaflet. Another might use the same word for an agreed appointment.
Decide what each label means before the shift starts. Keep "no answer", "not interested" and an agreed callback separate. Where someone asks not to be contacted again, follow your organisation's process for recording and honouring that request.
Record the outcome while it is fresh enough to be accurate. If you cannot confirm a note later, mark it for checking rather than filling in the gap from memory.
Separate coverage from follow-up
A street total cannot tell the next rep which doors remain unworked. Keep an address-level record, including where a rep stopped partway through a street.
For an agreed callback, record the next action, the person responsible and any agreed time. An unvisited address and a callback need different instructions. Keep each visible in the handover.
If your team already reports door totals and conversation rates, keep doing that. Those numbers help with performance reviews. The handover has another job: telling the next person where to start and what to do.
Keep notes useful and limited
Write notes that explain the relevant next step. "Requested a visit after 6 pm on Thursday" is easier to act on than "try again sometime".
The ICO's data minimisation guidance says personal data should be relevant to its purpose and limited to what is necessary. Use that principle when deciding which household details belong in your record.
Leave out personal details that have no relevant purpose. Store and share the record through your organisation's agreed process, with access limited to the people who need it.
Check the handover before changing the patch owner
Ask the next rep to explain where they will start and which follow-ups they own. If they cannot answer from the record, clarify it before they head out.
For a worked example, imagine a fictional window canvassing team on Birch Close. The outgoing rep finishes at number 31. They record the door outcomes up to that point, leave the remaining addresses marked as unworked and note an agreed Thursday callback against one visited address.
The manager gives the next rep the remaining coverage and assigns the callback to a named team member. The next rep can distinguish the unfinished part of the street from the address with an agreed return visit. This is an illustrative handover, not a customer result.
Use one patch to check whether the process works
Try the handover on one patch before changing every rep's routine. Check whether the next rep can identify the remaining addresses, understand the outcomes and find the agreed follow-ups without asking the previous rep to reconstruct the day.
If your paper sheets already do that reliably, keep what works. If the information depends on separate photos and messages, choose one shared record that the team can use during the shift and at handover.
Keep reading
- Door knocking KPIs: the metrics field sales managers should actually trackSign-ups are the number everyone watches. Doors knocked and talk-tos are what drives them.
- Why field sales reps leave so quickly, and how to retain themRecruiting harder doesn't fix a leaking bucket. Retention starts with what happens after someone joins.