Every year on ESPN’s Mike and Mike show, they proclaim the three days before Thanksgiving as the three least productive days of the year. Now, let’s throw in those last 10 business days of the year, and we’ve got about three weeks of laziness. Think about this for a second – it’s pretty true for everyone out there, including your competition. What if you could make these days the most productive days of the year? Which leads us to our last strategy…
Sales Strategy #3 for the fourth quarter: Take advantage of the holidays.
Yep, that’s right. The holidays offer a killer opportunity for you to get a leg up on your competition. Don’t be the coffee-house-crutch-guy that wines and complains about not receiving return calls. Do something. Below are several ideas of things you can do to take advantage of the holidays:
- Take a break, and completely recharge. If you’re customers are out, maybe you should check out too and lose yourself in the holiday spirit. Complete disengagement is extremely productive and necessary for great sales people.
- Use the three days before Thanksgiving to catch up on every stupid little task that’s eating away at your energy level because you know you’ve got to do it. Block off all three days and bang out those expense reports, CRM reports, desk cleaning, etc.
- Call the whales on Christmas Eve. You know those really important prospects that you can’t seem to catch? Try them on Christmas Eve when no one else is calling, and they’re likely the only ones in the office. You’ll be surprised at your success rate. It won’t be astronomical, but it’ll be much better than usual.
- Use the holidays to drop off goodies. Buy or make something unique, and make your rounds the week after Thanksgiving. Don’t wait until the third week of December because action items that may come from the bump-in with the IT Director won’t happen until January – which might as well be four years from now. The Wednesday to Friday immediately following Thanksgiving, make your rounds to your top 20 customers with a batch of Grandma’s cookies.
What else? I’ve got more ideas, but I think you get the concept and I’m interested in what you do or plan to do. I’d love to hear from you.
