Every industry has the seasonal ebbs and flows for sales and customer acquisition. You can either take up meditation and accept it or work to minimize the damage the slow months have on your goal. One of the most popular fixes is having your marketing plan for lead development established well in advance of the forecasted blips in sales. In media, you already know your summer months are going to hurt. If you don’t know your industry trend line for revenue distribution, read a book, look through old sales numbers, ask a seasoned veteran, and come back and read this blog.
The two options to minimize the impact of these months is increasing marketing during the slow months to mitigate the slowed revenue, or amping the big months to ensure you make up your gap to goal. The main point is having a plan for additional help moving the revenue needle well in advance of needing the revenue. My opinion, do both. One action has never been a silver bullet. For either to work, you need a sound marketing plan. The best time to build the marketing plan is at the beginning of the year. If you do marketing planning on a quarterly basis, it will not provide enough time to orchestrate the components. You can adjust through the year, but you should have the resources allocated, and the work executed well ahead of time. For most organizations, demand generation for leads to funnel to your salespeople will be the best ROI. Five things to prepare:
- Materials are done and ready for the market distribution – This can be done internally with the right tools and a marketing team. This is also readily done on a contract basis with an external organization. If you wait until the last minute, the cost will be higher, and the collateral will show it. A beautiful piece is easy to understand, comes in a variety of collateral pieces, sizes and designs to fit in different marketing initiatives. Plus, the nuances will make a difference if you are doing an email campaign versus a handout.
- Market/reps/industry/organizations selected, and method of attack outlined – Not all attacks are the battle of Normandy. Sometimes you use a sniper, or you may need a coordinated ambush. Understand what marketing push is necessary to maximize the market, not overwhelm it. Remember, you are looking to neutralize slow months and increase large months.
- Analytics that show you the optimal start date for marketing – If you already know an average deal takes eight weeks to close. Well, guess what? In slow months it will take longer. Add weeks to drive the same deal velocity and prepare for smaller average deal sizes. An average is just that, an average. You are looking at the bad months. Average close times, deal size, etc. The stats do not give you the real picture of when you need to start to drive revenue.
- Schedule time to inform reps on the marketing initiative – I have fallen victim to forgetting to tell the reps we were going to run a special. What did this do? We lost money from our best clients who already booked work during the time we were running the promotion. They called and asked why they didn’t get the discount advertised. I learned providing them ample time to call their best clients to inform them ahead of time or scrub a list so they do not lose a deal is essential for optimal impact.
- Address the sellers concerns through call scripts, and additional training for the seller – Not all reps are going to be comfortable talking through the details or understand how to handle common objections. Maximize these marketing initiatives by practicing how to handle the call and discover trigger words to push the close. Having a session where you let them voice objections that may come up before they start calls will save you time and headaches later.
