Summer - Sales Suck to Selling Success

What’s your best month for sales?

Mine is August.  Yeah, I know right, August?!  

It was the result of sales success in August that converted me from a whole-hearted believer in “No One Buys Anything during the Summer Months” to “Summer Rocks for Sales”.

I hear it all the time, and I used to buy into it.  The summer excuses are plenty:

• All the decision makers are away on vacation
• Calgary shuts down from Stampede till September
• People just push off their decisions until the fall
• There is no point in calling people, they don’t want to hear from me when its 30 degrees outside
• With all my vacation time I can’t stay in touch with my prospects and clients properly
• People aren’t thinking about business in the summer months

 Am I missing any?

 The thing is, on the surface, I completely get the fractional validity of those arguments. Yes, people do take vacation, people aren’t usually making quick decisions and often reaching people is tough. Yet that doesn’t mean you can’t be laying the groundwork.

My success for August sales developed out of fear.  “If I don’t sell something quick, my summer is doomed and so is my cash flow”. When May long weekend came along I often persevered out of desperation and not because I thought it was going to actually work.  I was living on hope.  

June came and went and I’d just keep trying to move people forward in buying or thinking about it.  

July would come and it seemed everyone was on vacation and so I would leave voicemails for EVERYONE - or so it felt!

Then in August people started to come back to work.  Some of them called me back by phone or emailed me.  I booked some meetings with decision makers and by the end of August I had a few deals in place during the last 10 days of “summer”.

But when I started to look at the stats over the years, I realized August was a good month every year – always peaking in the last 10-12 days.

Suddenly, my belief in the Summer Sales Slump shifted.

I started to recognize that all my consistent follow-up and efforts from May 20th, through June and July and into August was paying off with consistent sales at the end of August.  My efforts through the summer were creating a 10 day sales tidal wave!

So I started getting aggressive.  I started to manage people through the late spring and into summer so we kept things scheduled.  We planned next steps together into the summer months.

By the time I started to direct the sales cycle and sales process through summer, sales started creeping into the whole month of August, and then into July.  I also started getting more closed deals before summer even started.

So now, I know all the work I put into Spring and the early months of summer are going to pay off.  Now I leave messages and book meetings 7 weeks out with enthusiasm.  I talk about what CAN be done over summer instead of instantly giving up on it.

 Here are some keys to Summer Selling Success:

1. Explain the Season and Cycle- people don’t naturally think about the summer months and the upcoming issues or delays proactively.  Often summer is just upon them and their lack of planning often stalls your sales process. So remind them of the number of weeks left till kids are out of school, till the end of July, etc.  Talk to them about their holiday plans and summer plans of their company (summer shutdown?).
2. Expect Delays Instead of Failure– yes, we all get surprised with someone’s out of office message when they never even mentioned being away.  Go into the summer season expecting delays, but not complete failure. People are away, give them two days back and then re-start your conversation.  Know that what might close in June is likely July and move it in your projections.
3. Book Meetings into the Distant Future– You’re on vacation, then they are on vacation and suddenly it will be July 15th.  So, book a meeting now for July 18th.   Their calendar is completely open right now for July and August so book them up. Yes, some people cancel or need to reschedule but it is a short-term delay and not you trying to get onto their radar again cold from months of non-contact. 
4. Plan with Your Prospects– Proactively plan out the steps you’re going to need to take on your side and understand all the steps and process the target client is going to need to take.  Often once you have all those steps clear, you can look at a calendar and cooperativelybuild out a summer timeline to suite you both. This makes a soft commitment to next steps and getting to a decision date.

 Start talking and planning out the summer months with every client and prospective client you have, NOW! Think about how to keep them engaged and presume success.  If you start now, in May, you ensure that summer 2018 is a goldmine for you in terms of sales success.

evolvebusinessgroup.com