local-in-person-acquisition

name	local-in-person-acquisition
description	Use when planning ethical face-to-face acquisition for a niche local web studio through territories, short audits, walk-in conversations, follow-up, and pipeline tracking. Use `agency-positioning` to choose the niche and `premium-sales-conversation` after qualification.
metadata	{"portable":true,"compatible_with":["claude-code","codex"]}

Local In-Person Acquisition

Acknowledgement: Shared by Peter Bamuhigire, techguypeter.com, [phone].

Use When

• Planning a local client-acquisition push for a niche web design / branding studio.
• Building a territory plan and daily prospecting cadence for one city or zone.
• Preparing what to say walking into a business cold, and what to leave behind.
• Using a free quick website audit as the reason to start a conversation.
• Handling the standard SMB objections at the doorstep or counter.
• Designing the follow-up sequence after a first in-person contact.
• Tracking the in-person pipeline (visits, conversations, meetings, sales).

Do Not Use When

• The acquisition channel is inbound, paid ads, cold email, or content marketing (use they-ask-you-answer, social-media, or seo).
• The task is choosing or validating the niche itself (use agency-positioning/references/niche-selection-rubric.md first — niche before doors).
• The task is the sales conversation after a qualified lead is sitting down with you (use premium-sales-conversation and agency-positioning proposal references).
• The task is building the audit deliverable as a paid product (use seo-audit and agency-positioning/references/premium-audit-offers.md).

Inputs

• The chosen niche and city/zone (from agency-positioning).
• A reachable prospect list, or the means to build one by walking a defined area.
• One portfolio piece or a niche-relevant mockup to show on a phone or tablet.
• A repeatable free-audit checklist (see references/5-minute-audit-checklist.md).

Artefact	Source	Required?	If absent
Approved niche, territory, and no-go rules	agency-positioning and local plan	yes	Stop route design.
Verifiable prospect and website facts	Public evidence and observation	yes	Do not make an audit claim.
Contact, consent, safety, and CRM rules	Agency operations	yes	Draft only; do not visit or contact.

Workflow

1. Confirm the niche and territory. Acquisition starts only after the niche passes the guardrail in agency-positioning. Map the zone: cluster the target businesses by street/area density so a day's route is walkable.

2. Set the daily cadence. Target 25–50 in-person contacts per active prospecting day. Track conversations, not just doors — a contact only counts when you speak to a person. See references/cadence-and-crm.md.

3. Lead with the audit, not the pitch. Run the 5-minute audit on the prospect's current site (or note its absence) before or during the visit, so the opening is an observation about their business, not a sales line. See references/5-minute-audit-checklist.md.

4. Open, qualify, and reach the decision-maker. Use the scripts in references/walk-in-pitch-scripts.md. Ask directly who owns the website decision; insist on a real conversation, not "send me an email".

5. Show, don't tell. Show one relevant before/after or a quick mockup built for a business like theirs. Leave a one-page leave-behind with a single next action.

6. Handle objections with the bank. Use references/objection-bank.md for the five SMB classics. Acknowledge, explore, then respond — never argue.

7. Follow up on a schedule. Run the Day 1 / 3 / 7 / 14 sequence in references/cadence-and-crm.md. Most deals need five or more touches; one visit is a start, not a close.

8. Log every interaction and qualify with BANT. Record the visit, the person, the outcome, and the next action the same day. Qualify Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline at the doorstep.

9. Read the pipeline weekly. Review contact rate, conversation rate, meeting rate, and close rate weekly, not monthly — the cycle is short enough that monthly review wastes a month of correction.

10. Stop on refusal, unsafe access, or unverifiable evidence; recover by suppressing contact or returning to desk research.

Quality Standards

• Niche-first. Every visit is to a business inside the chosen niche. "Anyone on the street" prospecting dilutes the positioning and the referral compounding.
• Conversation is the unit. Measure conversations and their outcomes, not doors knocked. A reachable 25 beats an unreachable 60.
• Respect the owner's time. Never pitch during a rush. For a busy brick-and-mortar business, be a customer first; ask when the owner is free.
• One next action per contact. Every leave-behind and every follow-up asks for exactly one thing (a 15-minute slot, a reply, a look at a mockup).
• Honest audits. The audit names real, checkable issues (mobile, speed, SSL, stale footer year, missing call button). No invented problems, no fake urgency.
• Five-touch persistence. Do not record a "no" until the follow-up sequence is exhausted or the prospect explicitly opts out.

Anti-Patterns

• Pitching the service in the first sentence instead of opening with an observation or a free offer.
• Leaving a card during a rush and calling it a touch. Fix: count only a real conversation or consented follow-up.
• Quoting at the doorstep. Fix: qualify the business problem and decision process first.
• Knocking every business in sight. Fix: stay within the approved niche and territory.
• Following up after refusal. Fix: stop immediately and record suppression.
• Logging door count as progress. Fix: report defined conversations, meetings, and qualified opportunities.
• Reusing a generic pitch. Fix: name the prospect's actual context and observed issue.

Outputs

• A territory map and route plan for the niche in one city/zone.
• A daily prospecting log (contacts, conversations, outcomes, next actions).
• A reusable walk-in pitch, opener, and one-page leave-behind.
• A completed 5-minute audit per serious prospect.
• A weekly pipeline read: contact / conversation / meeting / close rates.

Artefact	Consumer	Acceptance condition
Territory and route plan	Acquisition owner	Names niche, boundaries, safe cadence, no-go conditions, and daily owner.
Audit and conversation record	Sales owner	Separates observed website facts from hypotheses and records consented next action.
Pipeline register	Agency leadership	Every touch has date, outcome, permission, next action, owner, and source.

Evidence Produced

Evidence	Format	Acceptance condition
Prospect audit	Dated observation with URL or visible evidence	No scare claim or invented loss estimate.
Funnel review	Visits, conversations, meetings, sales with definitions	Rates reconcile to raw records.

Capability Contract

Planning defaults to read-only. Visits, calls, messages, CRM changes, location tracking, photography, or collection of personal data require explicit authority, respectful consent, and local safety rules.

Degraded Mode

Fallback if maps, prospect evidence, safe access, or contact authority are unavailable: return a desk-based territory hypothesis and audit template. Mark conversion and on-site facts not assessed.

Decision Rules

Choice	Action	Failure or risk avoided
Niche and dense safe territory are validated	Run a bounded route pilot	Random door-knocking
Prospect is busy, refuses, or asks to stop	Leave immediately and suppress follow-up	Harassment and trust damage
Audit reveals a verifiable priority and interest	Book qualified discovery	Doorstep quoting without diagnosis

Worked Example

Visit ten owner-operated lodges on a pre-approved route outside peak check-in time. Show one verified mobile booking friction point, ask permission to send the audit, and log a next step. A refusal ends the sequence and enters the suppression field.

References

• references/walk-in-pitch-scripts.md — the 30-second pitch, the 10-second opener, free-offer openers, reaching the decision-maker, the leave-behind, and what to show on the phone/tablet.
• references/5-minute-audit-checklist.md — the seven-point quick audit used as the door-opener, and how it feeds seo-audit and a paid engagement.
• references/objection-bank.md — scripted, non-arguing responses to the five SMB objections plus "no budget", using the Acknowledge-Explore-Respond pattern.
• references/cadence-and-crm.md — daily contact targets, the Day 1/3/7/14 follow-up sequence, doorstep BANT qualification, CRM logging, and the weekly pipeline KPIs.
• references/sources.md — attributed sources (Jeb Blount, RAIN Group, SPOTIO, SiteSwan, QCFixer) with confidence flags.

Notes

• This skill is the "GO IN PERSON" channel: deliberately the opposite of cold email / voice-bot outreach, which buyers increasingly tune out.
• Niche selection is upstream (agency-positioning/references/niche-selection-rubric.md); the paid audit product and proposal are downstream (agency-positioning, premium-sales-conversation); referrals from happy in-person clients are handled by referral-program.
• Africa calibration: brick-and-mortar SME density is high in trading centres and markets; relationship-first, in-person norms favour this channel. Frame price in the local market band and accept mobile-money payment realities — see ../../orchestration/africa-excellence/SKILL.md.
• This skill has no bundled scripts; the workflow is documentary.