Squirrels With Nuts

A customer of mine shared some winning insight during a delightful half-hour chat late last night about how to avoid problems with seasonal downturns.  There is a month in the year during which none of his prospects ever find time to see him.  For ease of description, let’s call this particular month January.

As this month approaches, people often give the fob-off during the preceding month, “call me in January”.  Yet everyone knows that won’t happen, so his prepared response is simply with a wink and a nudge, “now now, we all know no-one will take my call in January…”

So to avoid the expected sales bath for that month, he preaches being a squirrel and gathering your nuts beforehand.  He explains to his fellow reps that you can make all kinds of excuses for January being a write-off, “everyone’s busy elsewhere”, “it’s always been the same at this time of year”, “the month’s got an ‘r’ in it” and they’re all nonsense.

Prospects could even say that they can’t do anything from a long way ahead of this supposed blanked out month, as they themselves prepare for it.  Again, it’s all rubbish, and if this is politely pointed out to prospects, extra work put in upfront can ensure the signatures keep coming in during these ‘lean time’ expectations.

Such pre-planned and regular troughs hit all sorts of industries.  In my own past I recall traumas trying to encourage buying during prospect exhibition seasons.  And the old ways still stand firm; timeline selling is a good way to have your agenda take precedence over their lock-out dates, and make time for more prospecting a couple of months before the potential drought looms.