Planning your holiday communications

​Can you actually profit from your time off? Of course!
 
The holidays are approaching. Fast. Scan your calendar: How many available days do you have left to build up this year’s bottom line?
 
The end-of-the-year crunch can feel like a terrible obstacle. But only if you let it. It’s actually a tremendous opportunity to build business. It all depends upon your approach.
 
A double-edged sword
 
Depending upon your workload, you could see this dwindling number of work days as not enough time to get your projects done, or not enough time to book sufficient work to finish the year with momentum.
 
But think of it this way: Your clients—and your prospects—face the exact same dilemma. Their calendars are no different than yours. And therein lies your opportunity.
 
At its core, this is really an exercise in calendar-carving. Or production control. Or psychological gamesmanship. Call it what you like; it’s about planning, now, what you intend to be doing for the rest of the year.
 
Divide and conquer
 
Here’s a safe assumption: Your clients (and prospects) are just as anxious about these dwindling days as you were (before you started reading this article, LOL!). What a lovely gift!
 
Start with the lowest-hanging fruit: the clients you know best. That’s because you’re already familiar with their annual rhythms, from budgeting to trade-show planning. This lets you “climb into their heads,” look at that exact same calendar, and easily deduce the things that have them sweating the most—and where you're best poised to save the day.
 
Hold onto that thought. We’ll come back to it in a second.
 
Next, think of your slightly-higher-hanging fruit: hot (or at least warm) prospects. While you won’t command the same level of intimacy with them that you have with the first group, you can still put yourself into their shoes without too much effort: Research their company (the “News” section of their website, with its press releases organized chronologically, is a great place to start—see what they were doing at this time last year) to find out about what kinds of activities command their attention at year-end—and at next year’s beginning.
 
Now, look at that calendar again, and find all the “hot spots” you want to concentrate on. That’s where we’ll begin.
 
Map it out
 
By the way, we have zero intention of disturbing your nice Thanksgiving dinner. That’s the best part of this exercise. Make it work for you. The “hot spots” we referred to above mean the most propitious dates, between now and year-end, for you to interface with these clients to set up meetings/discuss new engagements/make plans for the end of this year and the beginning of next year.
 
These should be pretty obvious to you when you look at the calendar. The day before Thanksgiving? Nope. Scratch that off your list. Again, put yourself in the shoes of your prospect: When are they looking to get as much done as possible before settling down to a (hopefully) relaxing long weekend? Ditto for the end-of-year/New Year’s holidays. Factor in ample time for clients to respond to however you reach out to them (whether email, phone, etc.), and for you to reply in kind/make your pitch. You’ll soon see that you both want to spend quality time away from the office, secure in the knowledge that you’ve taken care of business before you left.
 
The outreach you make will be tailored to the needs of the client that you’d envisioned earlier (when we told you to “hold onto that thought”). The better you’ve anticipated their needs, the more receptive they’ll be to your offer. And the flawless timing, on your behalf, is the icing on the cake.
 
Eat, drink, and—by all means—be merry
 
So what on earth were we suggesting in the subhead of this article, namely about profiting from your time off? It’s simply this: You’re more productive when 1) you’re not stressing over filling your calendar, and 2) you’ve had a chance to recharge your batteries. When you map out and successfully execute your year-end biz-dev tactics, you’ll have accomplished both. Which is pretty profitable practice. 

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