What Is Eat What You Kill? Definition, Examples & Who Teaches It
Eat What You Kill is Sam Taggart's foundational D2D (door-to-door) sales philosophy — codified in his book of the same name and the training system built through The D2D Experts — which holds that a professional salesperson's income is in direct, unmediated proportion to their field activity, and that this accountability structure, rather than being a hardship, is the precise mechanism that creates elite performance and personal freedom. The philosophy reframes commission-only, territory-based selling from a precarious position into a professional calling.
How it works
The framework operates at two levels simultaneously: a practical system for maximizing daily door-to-door production, and a mindset architecture for the salesperson's relationship to accountability, autonomy, and results.
The accountability structure:
In most corporate sales roles, there are buffers between effort and income: base salary, protected accounts, team quotas, management buffers. In D2D commission selling — Taggart's native environment — none of these exist. The rep walks a territory, knocks doors, runs presentations, and closes or doesn't. The weekly commission is a direct readout of that week's performance. No soft landings.
Taggart's argument is that this structure, which most people experience as threatening, is actually the most honest and empowering compensation model available to a skilled salesperson. A rep in a structured corporate role is capped in ways that are often invisible — by territory protection politics, management preference, pipeline rules. A D2D rep with strong skills and high daily activity can out-earn executives by their third year. The eat-what-you-kill structure makes that ceiling visible from day one.
The daily production system:
Taggart's practical system begins with what he calls "golden hours" — the specific windows in a given territory and season when the highest percentage of homeowners are present, receptive, and capable of making a buying decision. In residential D2D, golden hours are typically late afternoon and early evening on weekdays, and midday on weekends. Every system decision — when to knock, when to travel, when to do admin — is optimized around protecting the golden hours from everything else.
The production framework includes:
- Doors per hour as the primary leading indicator (not conversations, not presentations — raw doors)
- Presentation rate (what percentage of door answers convert to a full sit-down presentation)
- Close rate (what percentage of presentations convert to a signed agreement)
- Average contract value (what each close is worth)
Working backward from an income target through these four metrics produces a daily door number with no ambiguity. If the rep isn't hitting their income target, the framework identifies exactly which metric is the binding constraint: not enough doors, presentation rate too low, close rate issue, or deal size problem. Each has a different training intervention.
The professional identity dimension:
A significant portion of Taggart's teaching addresses what he sees as a professional legitimacy problem in D2D selling. The industry has a reputation — not entirely unearned — for high turnover, predatory tactics, and short-term extraction from reps and customers alike. Taggart's counter-argument, central to both the book and D2DCon, is that D2D selling at its best is a professional discipline with a defined skill set, an honorable service relationship with customers, and career trajectories that rival any professional path. Eat What You Kill is as much a professional manifesto as a productivity system.
The D2D University (D2DU) platform extends the training into structured coursework, and D2DCon — Taggart's annual conference — has become the largest professional gathering in the D2D industry, pulling together reps and operators from solar, pest control, home security, roofing, and related sectors to share performance data, tactics, and culture.
Who teaches it
Sam Taggart founded The D2D Experts, D2DU, and D2DCon, and wrote Eat What You Kill as both a philosophical statement and a training manual for professional D2D salespeople. Taggart began his career in D2D selling during college, discovered a natural talent for field sales, and spent years building performance in the pest control and home security industries before shifting to training, speaking, and platform building. His companies now train thousands of D2D reps and company owners annually. Taggart's public positioning is explicitly about professionalizing an industry that has long been treated as a stepping stone rather than a destination — he talks about D2D in the same terms that other industries use for skilled trade careers: specific skills, career progression, and professional pride.
The eat-what-you-kill philosophy shares structural thinking with fanatical prospecting's emphasis on activity volume and accountability, while the daily production metrics system has functional overlap with the straight-line selling framework's discipline around conversion tracking.
Frequently asked questions
Where does the 'Eat What You Kill' phrase come from in sales?
The phrase is a hunting metaphor applied to commission-based compensation: you earn exactly what you produce, with nothing guaranteed and nothing subsidized. In law, the phrase describes equity partners who keep their own billings. Sam Taggart adopted and systematized it as the defining philosophy of D2D (door-to-door) professional selling.
What industries does Sam Taggart's D2D system apply to?
Taggart built the system primarily around residential D2D industries — solar, pest control, home security, roofing, and similar sectors. The framework applies broadly to any commissioned field sales role where the rep controls their own prospecting territory, schedule, and daily activity with minimal supervision.
What is D2DCon and how does it relate to Eat What You Kill?
D2DCon (Door-to-Door Con) is Sam Taggart's annual industry conference, the largest event in the D2D professional sales world. It brings together reps, managers, and company owners from D2D industries to share training, benchmark performance, and build professional community around the philosophy that D2D is a serious, honorable profession rather than a fallback.
Who teaches it: Sam Taggart
Related terms: Fanatical Prospecting, 10x Rule, Straight Line Selling, High Ticket Closing, Setter Vs Closer
Sources
- The D2D Experts — official site (Sam Taggart) — https://thed2dexperts.com
- D2DCon — annual D2D conference — https://d2dcon.com
- Eat What You Kill book (Sam Taggart) — https://thed2dexperts.com/eat-what-you-kill