Use These Tactics to Push Through the Summer Sales Doldrums
Vacation: A period of time in which an adult pretends they are a child again, has no responsibilities, and spends money like there’s no tomorrow. Usually followed by a period of financial instability, hundreds of emails, and depression from spending too much money!
Summer has officially started and at some point, during the hottest part of the year, we usually take some time off…something called a vacation. For hustlers, vacations are often seen as hell on earth as they must stop prospecting, talking with customers and closing deals. But with the right planning, vacations can actually be a time of re-energizing, regrouping and (gasp) spending time with your family and friends!
Summertime and vacations, like Thanksgiving and the Christmas season, come at the same time every year. So planning ahead with prospects and customers can help make the summer sales doldrums a little less scary. Try these four tactics to stay productive while getting ready for business to pick back up when school starts and summer ends.
Feed your mind: I’m a voracious reader year-round and in the summer, I tend to read motivational and business books. Authors like Malcolm Gladwell, Daniel Pink, Eric Reis, Seth Godin, Tony Robbins, and Napoleon Hill, to name just a few, can teach, motivate and reinforce best practices. Pick one book and commit to reading it this summer and see what a difference it can make in your business life. Or you might search for relevant online courses to up your game, listen to sales podcasts, find virtual events to attend and look at other industries and brainstorm ideas that can transfer into your own business. Investing in yourself will set you up for a great rest of the year.
Connect with current customers: Sometimes we tend to forget about our established customers as we’re always pursuing new business connections. Summer’s a great time to reach out to these customers. Pick up the phone to say thank you. Ask what fun things they have planned for the summer and what you can do to help take something off their work plate. Or perhaps a handwritten note to thank them for their past business and include a $5 gift card for Dunkin’ or other businesses they can visit on vacation. Handwritten notes are powerful since very few people send them, and they will set you apart from your competitors.
Clean Up: It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day frenzy and let emails, files and other non-sales tasks back up. Take this slower time to go through and clean out your email inbox, update files like prospecting lists or databases. And if you have samples, go through them, discarding outdated products and adding new and unique ideas to your tool box for the season ahead. If you use a CRM system, make sure the data for your customers and prospects is current and the dashboard is set-up to give you the information you need at a glance.
Be Patient and Plan: Nothing lasts forever (although sometimes it may seem that way) so take this time to plan for the future. Map out a few fall promotions, create marketing collateral on topics that resonate with your customers and prospects, and develop a list of “dream” prospects you’d love to turn into customers. Research these prospects using the Internet, Linkedin and social media to find ways you can genuinely connect with them vs. simply cold calling. This is also a good time to review your sales goals for the year and update them based on your year-to-date numbers. Laying out a game plan for the balance of the year will re-energize you, giving you a path to hit your numbers and surpass them.
Instead of letting the summer sales slump get you down, grasp the opportunity, embrace the challenge, and pave the path for an amazing rest of the year. As sales guru Brian Tracy says. “There Are No Limitations to How Good You Can Become or How High You Can Rise Except the Limits You Put on Yourself.”
Now, grab an umbrella drink, put on your shades, and enjoy the summer months knowing you’re ready to rock when things crank back up.