As I write this blog, it is towards the end of February. On February 18th, Americans observed Presidents Day, and in Canada most provinces celebrate Family Day. What possible relationship could these holidays have with prospecting in the B2B sales environment?
With most business plans, emphasis is placed on achieving goals, being effective and managing one’s use of time for the greatest return. This is a principal that should also be applied to prospecting.
Think about it, how much vacation time are you entitled to, and how much do you take within the year? What is the relationship between holidays and vacation time?
Ask around and you will discover no shortage of friends and colleagues that use vacation days adjacent to holidays. Why? Because it “stretches” the value of vacation days allowing for more time away, more time to refresh one’s batteries.
Prospects are no different. They opt to book vacation days book-ended against a public holiday.
If you’re a retailer, your business plan allows for buying cycles, inventory cycles, and making sure many of these tasks don’t take place in the busy November/December retail rush. Their focus is on getting product out the door during the holiday season, not on functions that can be handled during less strategic times.
If you’re in B2B sales, you too likely have seasonal obligations. Month end, quarter end, and year end, where emphasis is usually placed on closing opportunities that offer immediate reward, leaving less time for other tasks like prospecting.
If you were going to write a business plan for business development, that plan would most certainly include prospecting.
Back to vacation days. The weeks of February 11th and 18th are key to this plan because they abut a public holiday, and your prospects are taking additional vacation days. How often have you tried to contact a prospect or even a good client during these two weeks only to find they are “on vacation”?
Frustrating, isn’t it.
If you’re beginning to see where this is going, then you will have already figured out that the weeks of February 4th and 25th would yield far greater success in finding people in the office. Less “vacation alerts” on voicemails, emails, etc.
If you’re writing a business plan for prospecting, then you want to be strategic about all the functions that will yield a better result for time and effort invested.
What about Easter, Memorial Day in the United States and Canada Day up north? Thanksgiving, Labor Day? All periods on the calendar that you can bet your prospects will be taking extended time outs. How about the last three weeks of December? Ever encounter a prospect asking you to “call back in the new year?
If you want to work smarter and become way more effective at prospecting, then follow these few easy principles.
Be strategic. As you plan your year, get a calendar and pick the weeks that you can reasonably expect to find more people at their desks. Last two weeks of June? I don’t think so, “getting ready to go on vacation.
- Exercise discipline. Make sure you’re prospecting hard during the good weeks. Avoid distractions or tasks that can just as easily be handled during non prime prospecting weeks.
- Be prepared. There is work and preparation that goes into identifying and compiling a good list of prospects. The time to be doing this is when prospects are away. Don’t waste valuable prime prospecting weeks figuring out who you’re going to prospect.
- Set goals and stick to them. It takes time to develop a good prospect. Don’t wait for the first week of December only to discover that your pipe line isn’t where you want it to be. It will be too late.
Many organizations focus on results as defined by “proposals made” or “new business about to close”. Unfortunately, those that do only exercise oversight and judgement of your sales ability based on these types of metrics.
If you wait until your production is under that kind of scrutiny, it may well be too late.