Are You Hibernating For The Summer?

By now, you will have experienced the all too regular response from prospective customers… “Call me back after the summer holidays”. With this response you are effectively being told not to call back until September.

Are you pushing back deals until after the summer or have you decided yourself that no business is conducted during the summer so you have given up marketing?

Yes, it can be more difficult to connect with business owners in the summer, and yes, sometime decisions are deferred to a later date. But this is not true for everyone.

Here are a few tips to avoid complete hibernation for your business:
1. Plan your summer sales and marketing activity. Focus on the results that you need to get and then establish the level of activity required to achieve this. On the basis that some people may be on 1 week or 2 weeks holiday, your own activity levels may need to increase slightly to combat this. Communicate this to your team.
2. Target customers who are not as tied to the summer holidays. Most parents of school going age children will take their holidays between July and August. Many other people avoid these times because they can, and because they can get better deals outside peak times.
3. Spend more time if you have it testing and measuring marketing. The world of marketing for new customers is changing all the time. There are new strategies that really work. How is your marketing working right now and how much are you spending per lead.
4. Ensure that all prospective leads are being followed up. They already know of your existence. Having the deadline of a holiday can be a good time to get a decision. Whether the decision is a yes or a no – at least you know and you are not deluding yourself.

The three months of summer can be very profitable for you and your business, if used correctly – start planning today and reap the results in the Autumn.