November and December, Slow Months?
Written by: Dave Goates, Director of Human Capital
How many times have you heard from your sales team, “No point in calling during November and December, everyone’s just so busy?” I saw this topic on a discussion board recently. There were a lot of responses. Here are a few I liked:
1. Start out with a social greeting wishing your contacts a happy holiday season.
2. Slow times are often lucrative because it’s easier to connect with people who are slowing down for the holidays. Great way to tee up the New Year with an appointment.
3. Is someone just being LAZY when they assert it’s “impossible” to connect?
4. If November and December are slow because of Christmas, then so are January and February due to the New Year getting up and running, and June, July, August and September must be slow because of summer vacations, so that leaves March, April, May and October as the only productive months, right? And maybe October is slow while people get ready for Halloween. You know, it takes time to round up the perfect costume to hide bad sales numbers.
5. Great time for planning the following year, review successes from this year, survey new customers, ask them why they chose you over the competition, etc.
6. People have time to talk, good time to engage them when they aren’t so busy with meetings.
7. Good sales people are never looking at a calendar to judge their success, because they are never “out of season.”
8. Sales is a simple game, and you get out what you put in.
9. “I am not judged by the number of times I fail, but by the number of times I succeed; and the number of times I succeed is in direct proportion to the number of times I can fail and keep on trying.” (Apparently, Tom Hopkins is never out of season).
10. One comment reported: “I love getting three ‘no’s’ in a row! It means I am just a few dials away from a ‘yes.’ Positive outlook is crucial this time of year. Spread cheer and it will come back tenfold in the New Year…just sayin’. . .”
11. Take the time to try and build a relationship with the gatekeeper. You would be surprised what can happen. Another poster said, “I have closed many customers purely with the help of the gatekeeper. This time of year you need to plant seeds. Sales won’t be like Oct or Aug, but the thing I love about this time of year is setting up my first quarter.”
12. Here’s a savvy marketer: “It looks like my competition is not making the changes needed to keep their customers happy. I know that because a mutual customer said they had cut their sales force and replaced them with merchandisers as a cost cutting measure. My sales staff has upcoming promotions while our competitor does their ‘do nothing’ holiday thing. And our improving numbers show it’s working.”
Happy Selling during “the most wonderful time of the year!”
