The debate in the past 24 hours or so has been focused around whether in-home sales and door-to-door sales can take place during this lockdown. I addressed this issue in a post yesterday. You can catch up with that article here.

However, new guidance has emerged today, that was actually published on Christmas Eve, which states that areas in any tier of restrictions, door-to-door sales is to be stopped and in-home sales are to be done remotely. As it was Christmas Eve this new guidance went largely unnoticed and has only just come to light.

For those in B2C sales in fenestration, this is the text from the guidance that matters:

Tiers 1-3

Retail businesses, including markets, may remain open in Tiers 1-3 except for non-self-contained shops that are based inside closed premises and cannot be accessed directly from the street.

Door-to-door sales should not be taking place, and sales activities should be conducted remotely (such as by phone, online, or mail).

Read the full Christmas Eve guidance here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/further-businesses-and-premises-to-close/closing-certain-businesses-and-venues-in-england?fbclid=IwAR21fLZaZYIl8pd8KnsgSe70F-J76dug27oMyofZ19a8-4uwxvyS9F9xMZQ

To be clear, any pre-existing guidance and regulations are carried forward to the new national lockdown announced on Monday evening.

This means that door-to-door sales and in-home sales have actually been banned for the best part of a fortnight.

For the larger companies in this sector, such as the big regional companies and nationals, this is going to pose an issue as a large chunk of leads and revenues are still obtained with doorstep canvassing. Generally speaking, smaller installers don’t carry out sales activities in this manner.

All installation companies will need to quickly switch to other remote methods of sales.

To be clear, final surveys by surveyors and engineers, as well as fitting by installers at this moment in time can continue. So the sales process can actually be completed from start to finish. It’s just that the sales part of the process now has to be done differently until restrictions are lifted.

This is an example as to why looking at all of the available guidance is important. There is a lot of it and there are many changes which are applied very often. All companies across the supply chain should continue to keep up to date with Government guidance and be aware of any tweaks that are made in the days ahead.

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