I’m writing this post on Wednesday, November 23rd, the day before Thanksgiving. Looking at the calendar, there are 24 selling days left in 2022, assuming most companies will recognize the holiday for New Years on January 2. That’s about 10% of the total days you have in the year! That means you should be able to produce one-tenth of what you do throughout the whole year, right?
Wrong.
While the calendar shows 24 days, my math shows only 13 days left in 2022. No, I’m not looking at a different calendar. I’m taking into consideration the three factors below that, when applied to the remaining weeks, totals 13 days of productivity. In detail, in the next five consecutive weeks, I see four days, three days, three days, two days, and one day of productivity per week, respectively. Why? I’m glad you asked …
- Your contacts won’t be at work. Most influential people are taking days off in the next five weeks. If you need four people to help push through an order (and that’s a low number), then good luck on getting those four people together on the same day between now and January.
- The level of effort for most people is lower than usual. When my wife woke up yesterday at 6:00, she was so surprised to see me still sleeping that she checked to make sure I was breathing. When she asked me about it, I answered: “I wasn’t working out today and it’s Thanksgiving, so I let myself sleep.” I wake up at 4:40 every morning. If I’m not working out, I just go to my office. But not yesterday. After all, it’s Thanksgiving, right? This is the same attitude the world will have over the next five weeks.
- It’s professionally acceptable to say “I’m slammed. Let’s wait until after the holidays.” Unless it’s their deadline, it will be very difficult to bring in an order that’s not already done.
So, should you give up and start looking toward next year? No, absolutely not. Be aware of this dynamic, frontload your workload, understand your customers’ schedules, and make sure they know how quickly January will be here. This week, contact every opportunity and say something like: “January will be here before we know it, and I’d like to know what we can do to help get the project processed this year.”
They’ll appreciate your call this week, they’ll understand it next week, but they’ll be annoyed the week of the 12th and later.
You’ve got less than 13 days left. Go get ‘em!
