Knock Tracking Metrics That Actually Predict Revenue

It's Monday morning. You're standing behind your sales manager, staring at the canvassing dashboard he built in a spreadsheet last quarter. The number on the screen is 4,812. That's how many doors your team knocked last week. He's proud of it. Production is flat. Two of your top reps just quit. And you still can't tell him why.

Knock count is the number every canvassing manager watches. It's also the number that tells you the least about whether next month's revenue is going up or down. This is a cluster post under our complete guide to roofing sales door knocking.

Why raw knock count is a vanity metric

Raw knock count measures effort, not outcome. A rep who knocks 250 doors and walks away with zero conversations looks identical on paper to a rep who knocks 250 doors and lands 18 roof inspections. Three reasons it fails as a leading indicator: it rewards speed over quality, it ignores territory, and it's trivially easy to fake.

The five metrics that actually predict revenue

1. Contact rate. The percentage of knocked doors where a human actually opened the door and engaged in a conversation. 2. Inspection rate. The percentage of contacts that convert into a scheduled roof inspection. 3. Sit rate. The percentage of scheduled inspections that actually happen. 4. Close rate. The percentage of sits that convert into a signed agreement. 5. Cycle time. The number of days from first knock to signed agreement. Cycle time is the metric almost nobody tracks and almost always predicts cash flow problems before they hit your bank account.

Benchmarks: what good, average, and bad look like

Contact rate. Average teams land in 18-28%. Below 15% means wrong times or stale territory. Top reps 28-35%. Inspection rate. Average 12-20%. Top reps 35-45%. The spread between average and top is almost always bigger on inspection rate than any other metric. Sit rate. Healthy 70-85%. Below 65% something is broken in confirmation. Close rate. Good team closes 40-55% of sits. If under 30%, problem is inspection process not canvassing. Cycle time. Retail 7-14 days knock-to-signed. Insurance longer because of adjusters. Track the trend line.

Leading vs lagging indicators

Close rate and revenue are lagging indicators. They tell you what already happened. Contact rate, inspection rate, and sit rate are leading indicators. They tell you what is about to happen. Coach on leading indicators. For more on this framework, see roofing sales metrics that predict revenue.

How to catch fraud

Ghost knock. A rep taps "knocked, no answer" on every house without walking up. Set a minimum interval alert. GPS drift. A rep parks at Starbucks and logs knocks from their phone. Modern canvassing platforms including RoofKnockers cross-check these. Contact inflation. A rep marks every knock as "had a conversation" so contact rate looks great. Look at ratio of contact to inspection scheduled. 40% contact with 2% inspection means inflation.

Reporting cadence

Daily: knock count, contact rate, inspections scheduled. Field managers check these end of day. Weekly: inspection rate, sit rate, close rate at rep and team level. Your coaching cadence. Monthly: cycle time, revenue per rep, full funnel conversion. Your ownership and board cadence.

Board KPIs vs floor coaching KPIs

A common mistake: showing your board your floor dashboard. Build two dashboards. Or use a canvassing platform that separates them for you. We do this in RoofKnockers by giving managers and account admins different default views. See our features page.

What to ignore

Ignore doors-per-hour unless you have a rep problem with pace. Ignore neighborhood heatmaps as a primary KPI. Ignore leaderboards built purely on knock count, they actively incentivize ghost knocking. For leaderboards that help, see rep leaderboards that drive behavior. The "how many doors should a rep knock" question is covered separately in how many doors should a rep knock per day.

Closing

Stop putting raw knock count at the top of your dashboard. Replace it with contact rate, inspection rate, sit rate, close rate, and cycle time. The teams that run this way hit 2x and 3x per-rep productivity gains. See pricing or start a free trial.