Even before I reduced my "ministry" to a once a month showing and a fake 2 or 3 hours on my report my door knocking went like this.
Look at NH slip (AKA S-8) and say there are 2 dozen NH's to do.
Choose first one and pretend to press bell. Wait about 30 seconds and pretend press again. If the first house is not home then I would leave it on the slip as a NH. I would also cross off a few of the NH's anyway to leave long walking gaps between.
Let's say I find someone who comes to the door.
If elderly I always said "Hello Sir/Madam, my name's (Freddo) and I live in the neighbourhood (might be five miles away but hey!) and I wanted to ask for some advice - do you think there will ever be a time when there will be no more war?
Obviously they will either say "Not interested" (Great!) or "No."
If they say "No." then I asked "Can you remember WW2?" and off they go. YAK YAK YAK. stand there for sometime talking about my Uncle Billy who was in the RAF or Uncle Stan who was in the Royal Navy and if I was lucky they'd talk about the "Blitz" by the Luftwaffe and I'd learn something about what it was like to grow up during the war.
More often than not though, out of 2 dozen NH's I would find one or two in and get "Go away" or "not interested", cross off about half the NH's anyway and hand them back to the territory chap a week or two later.