6 Summer Business Trends Salespeople Can Take Advantage Of
Spring is coming to an end and summer is around the corner. This means that people will be taking vacations and that you’ll come back from lunch sweating through your business casual shirt. And while summer is a happy and warm season, it’s also the time of year when certain industries can slow down.
But, before you lower your expectations for this summer’s commission checks, you should consider whether there are summer business trends that you can use to your advantage. Of course, these won’t be applicable to every industry, and if you sell slip n’ slides or fireworks, you might not need any help. Either way, here are six summer business trends that salespeople can take advantage of this year:
1. Activities
Summer is a great time to take valuable clients or prospects on outings. Golf, a baseball game, a nice outdoor lunch, or any other number of nice-weather experiences become options during the summer months. Especially if you live in a four-season climate, the summer can feel like you’re in a completely different country and offers excellent opportunities to treat, bond with, and potentially impress your most important business connections.
2. Vacations
Most people take vacations in the summer, including both salespeople and prospects. While it might seem like this is a disadvantage to doing business in the summer, there’s also a way you can turn this around to your benefit. Use vacations as a timeline. For example, if a prospect has a vacation coming up, you can use the days or week before that vacation as a compelling event to close the deal. This means that you can tell them they should sign before they leave, since they won’t want to miss out on the deal you’re offering which might not be there when they get back. Similarly, you can try this approach with any vacation time you have planned, although it won’t be as compelling.
3. Availability
Because of summer vacations, companies will usually stagger the executive and manager vacations so that they don’t all take place at the same time. Since these are the people most likely to be the decision makers, you can bet that there will be people available for you to get in touch with. Especially for longer sales-cycles, the summer months offer a great opportunity to get everybody in alignment for the major decisions that take place as Q3 comes to a close. The salespeople who spend the time over the summer to lay the groundwork for the rush of activity after Labor Day will be a huge step ahead of their competition.
4. Mobile use
According to Google, mobile use spikes in the summer and warmer months because people spend more time outside and away from their desktops. This means that you should also modify your prospecting behavior, from the marketing process all the way to your communication efforts to correspond with your prospect’s behaviors. For instance, if your prospect is spending more time on mobile and is okay with texting, you should offer to communicate via text message. Making your prospect comfortable by using their preferred means of communication will make the process seamless and lead to a higher likelihood of you winning the deal.
5. Mood
People’s moods are better in the summer, there’s no doubt about it. The weather is nicer, the sun is out longer, and everybody is more cheerful and relaxed. This can be advantageous to salespeople, who in many cases are dependent on a prospect’s mood. Instead of worrying too much about whether business slows down in the summer, take advantage of your prospect’s access to sunshine and warm weather and match their positive mood with your own positivity. Try to give them another reason to be happy in the summer months.
6. Planning for Q4
There’s a flurry of activity that takes place in the business world during Q4. Everybody is scrambling to close out their year strong, and ensure that they’ll get their bonuses. This makes Q4 a mad dash where decisions are made and new products and technology are bought and implemented in order to increase sales (like Spiro’s proactive relationship management platform). But Q4 doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and Q3 is the absolute perfect time to gear up for the end of the year push. Spend the summer getting your ducks in a row, pushing while everybody else is lounging around and you’ll reap the rewards at the end of the year.
