The Dog Days of Summer – There’s No Better Time To Be Out Selling

It has been one of the hottest summers in memory, filled with all of the distractions we normally find this time of year including this year’s phenomenal World Cup. If you are like me, as much as I enjoy the heat, it is exhausting and it makes you crave time on the beach, at the pool or whatever else takes your mind off the heat… and off of work.

However, through my many years in business – from the first summer I started knocking on doors as a neophyte sales rep just out of school, to the most current summer at the helm of the Wish Group of companies – I have proven time and again that the height of summer is probably the most productive selling period of the year.

I know it sounds counter-intuitive, and believe me I’ve heard all the excuses such as:

“No one is around – everyone is out of the office on vacation.”

“Decisions just don’t get made – people kick back and relax and try to get caught up on work rather than moving new projects forward.”

“I’ve been so busy – I need a break and given everyone else is on vacation, that’s when I’ll take time as well.”

And that’s just a sample of what I’ve heard over the years and believe me, there are dozens more.  And that’s all that they are – excuses. In the three examples I list above, one of these excuses is an outright fallacy, one is true but hides an underlying opportunity, and one is just, well, an excuse that lazy, unmotivated sales people like to trot out when the days get longer and warmer.

“No one is around – everyone is out of the office on vacation.”

So when is the last time you met anyone who had the entire summer off?  Granted, many people try to take a couple, maybe even three weeks off during the summer.  Fine.  But that means that they are at work for the other seven or eight weeks that comprises what we call the summer season.  So, while it seems like a good excuse, there is absolutely no merit to the argument that “everyone is out of the office on vacation”.

“Decisions just don’t get made – people kick back and relax and try to get caught up on work rather than moving new projects forward.”

This is the excuse that I would characterize as being true on the surface, but that masks an underlying opportunity.  There’s no question that companies tend to make a majority of purchase decisions in late to mid fall, and early in the year. However, their purchase intent is typically formed well in advance of this time and for that fall period buying time, what better window to influence the purchase decision than during the summer?  If you are hard at it and meeting regularly with your clients (while your competitors are relaxing at the cottage), guess who the client is going to remember when the time comes to buy?

I don’t have to look back any further than this very summer for evidence to support this assertion – one of my companies, Wish Mobile, wrote their highest volume of business ever this past July.  Another one of my companies, Peoplesource Staffing Solutions, had their second and third highest revenue months in the past year this June and July.  While our competition to a break, our team had their shoulder to the wheel and brought home deal after deal after deal.

“I’ve been so busy – I need a break and given everyone else is on vacation, that’s when I’ll take time as well.”

This one is a flat out cop-out, full stop. For many of the reasons I listed above, what better time to be on task than when your competitors are not?  As the saying goes, when the sun is shining make some hay.  Even if you had a great first or second quarter, imagine the additional momentum you can garner by driving up your activity level through the summer.  Instead of coasting during the summer as everyone else does, put the pedal to the metal and win business or get to the front of the line for those fall orders. Why save it for the fall when everybody else comes out of their summer hiatus and has to fight tooth and nail for every order.

The equation is quite straight-forward:  work harder than you ever have when the calendar flips to July and August, and I can guarantee you that you will have the luxury of taking December off because all that effort will have paid off. So while your competition is sweating it out in the dying days of the year, struggling to make quota, you are sitting on a beach in the Caribbean buoyed by a knock-out year.  And you’ll be sitting beside the folks from my sales teams, margaritas in hand, big smiles on their faces, grateful that they, too, did not relent.

Advertisement