On Thursday I wrote about a 90-Day Push, meaning working terribly hard on specific goals between Memorial Day and Labor Day. If one or more of your goals is focused on selling, we’ve got a problem – you don’t have 90 days.
If you do the math, we have 15 work weeks between Memorial Day and Labor Day in 2015 (Memorial Day is as early as possible, and Labor Day is as late as possible this year). So, do you really think you have 75 days of productive selling this summer?
Let’s do the real math…
If you estimate one week of vacation for your decision makers and your two primary influencers at each client, two weeks surrounding the vacation to get ahead or catch up, and one week for the 4th of July, you’re down to 11 weeks. Now, add the same for you if you take vacation and you’re down to nine weeks (I only took one total week for getting ahead and catching up). Now, let’s consider all the surrounding people involved in the buying process and their time off this summer and remove at least one more week.
So … you really have about eight weeks of selling time this summer. (If you sell into Europe or the Middle East, eliminate July August).
Do yourself, your management, and your customers a favor and plan appropriately. Below are a few ideas.
- Consider these numbers when providing a forecast. Be real now, and your boss will appreciate it later.
- Ask now – meaning today – about your customers’ vacation time. Simply ask them if they have any weeks that are bad and whether the opportunity you’re working on will really happen this summer. Start planning now.
- Remember – your competition is probably not doing this type of math and likely pressuring your customers. Be aware of these tactics and take advantage of their unprofessional behavior. It’s as simple as this: “I know your team is busy this summer and our project might slip to the fall. However, our competition sometimes pressures customers so they can make their monthly numbers. I won’t do this, but please keep me in the loop.”
Finally, plan a relaxing Labor Day weekend and be prepared to kill it between then and Thanksgiving!
