How is customer acquisition cost calculated for door-to-door fiber sales?

Under a per-order dealer contract, the dealer's share of CAC is the contracted fee per customer order, fixed before anyone knocks. The provider's all-in CAC adds its own per-order handling costs plus any field support, spread across the orders the dealer writes. Because every fee ties to a specific order the provider can verify in its own system, the channel's cost per customer is known in advance rather than estimated afterward.

What moves D2D CAC once the per-order fee is set?

Volume. The provider-side costs that do not scale with orders, such as a launch event, a partner manager's hours, and order-desk setup, get spread across every order the dealer writes, so a dealer whose reps produce more orders per selling day lowers the provider's all-in number without the fee moving. Across Velocity One's 2026 blitz deployments reps averaged 3.3 orders per rep per selling day, and the best sustained deployment ran 4.5.

How Much Does D2D Customer Acquisition Cost?

ISP Strategy

Under a per-order dealer model, the answer is a single contracted number: the dealer is paid a fixed fee per customer order it writes and the provider verifies, and nothing for the hours spent on doors that don’t buy. That makes the dealer’s share of CAC known before the first knock. The provider’s true all-in CAC is that fee plus its own order-handling costs and whatever it spends supporting the field, and the only variable in that sum you and the dealer control together is how many orders the team writes. Digital and mass media can’t offer that certainty: spend is committed up front, and attribution to subscribers is a model, not a ledger line.

Per-order pricing is what makes the number real

Most acquisition channels are paid for inputs. You buy impressions, clicks, mailers, or airtime, then work backwards to estimate how many subscribers those inputs produced. The per-order dealer model inverts that. The provider pays for the output, a customer order written at the door and entered in its own system, and only after that order is verified against its own records. If a dealer’s reps knock a thousand doors and write sixty orders, the provider pays for sixty. The knocking cost the dealer, not you.

That one contract term does three things at once. It fixes the dealer’s line of CAC in advance, it puts the dealer’s own money behind coverage and the quality of the doorstep sale, and it makes the channel auditable line by line, because every fee ties to a specific order. How that audit trail should run is covered in dealer management.

The CAC structure, written out

Keep it in words. For the dealer’s line:

Dealer CAC per customer = the contracted per-order fee. Fixed. Zero variance.

For the provider’s all-in number, add the costs the provider carries no matter who sells:

Provider all-in CAC = per-order fee + provider cost per order + (field support ÷ orders written).

“Provider cost per order” is order desk time, provisioning, scheduling, and equipment staged for the appointment. It lands on every order, and it is the same whoever wrote it. “Field support” is whatever the provider spends around the dealer: a launch event, door hangers or mailers into the footprint, a partner manager’s hours. Usually a small line, and it gets smaller per customer the more orders the dealer writes against it. Keep it honest anyway.

For comparison, the digital or mass-media version:

Media CAC = total spend ÷ subscribers attributed to the campaign.

Both halves of that fraction are soft. Spend is committed before results exist, and “attributed” depends on a modeling choice (last click, view-through, a matched-market lift study). Two analysts can defend two different CAC figures from the same campaign. That is not a knock on media; it is the reason the D2D line is the easy one to defend in a board deck.

Where the media comparison actually breaks

Cost per order is the wrong axis for comparing D2D with digital. The right axis is which households each channel can reach. Media converts the households that were already looking for fiber. D2D converts the ones that weren’t, and past the launch spike those are most of the persuadable middle in any footprint (take rate explained). A cheap media CAC on a small pool of self-selected buyers and a fully measured D2D CAC on the larger pool are answers to different questions. The blended number is what the network’s economics actually run on.

Volume is the lever

Once the per-order fee is signed, the dealer’s line of CAC can’t move. What moves is the provider’s field support, which is spread over however many orders the deployment writes, and the calendar cost of a launch that runs long because the team was slow. Both come down to the same thing: orders per rep per selling day.

Our 2026 blitz deployments averaged 3.3 orders per rep per selling day, defined as total blitz orders divided by rep-selling-days, and the best sustained deployment ran 4.5 over a month (methodology). Since February 2026 that has added up to 1,600+ customer orders across 20+ markets in 15 states.

Run the formula at both ends. A ten-rep team averaging 3.3 spreads a day’s field support across roughly 33 orders; the same team at 4.5 spreads it across 45, and finishes the footprint in fewer selling days. The per-order fee didn’t move; the provider’s all-in CAC dropped anyway. The same math explains why a dealer with strong per-rep production can hold a per-order price that a slower dealer can’t. Both are paying reps for the same doorstep hours. One of them is writing a lot more against them.

What to ask before you sign

Ask for orders per rep per selling day, with “selling day” defined and zero days accounted for. Ask which provider-side costs the dealer’s process reduces (payment details on file at the door, same-day order entry, order data clean enough that nothing bounces at the order desk) and which it creates. Ask how reconciliation against your remittance file works, line by line. A dealer who answers those in specifics is quoting a CAC you can hold them to. The full cost-structure comparison against building your own team is in outsourced vs internal.

This article is part of the Fiber Sales Academy. For the full picture, start with the complete guide to door-to-door fiber sales.