It’s that time of year again, you know, the one where apparently EVERYONE is on holiday and so there’s no-one to take a sales call.
It reminds me of a conversation I had once with a business owner who was complaining about how there wasn’t a ‘perfect’ time to make a sales call.
January is no good, he argued, because everyone was recovering after Christmas and in a bad mood. December was likewise useless as everyone had already switched off for Christmas. July and August were a no go because everyone was away on holiday, and Monday’s were out because people wanted to plan the week.
Don’t bother with Friday either, was his advice, as everyone has switched off for the weekend. Before 11am was no good because people were in meetings, 12 till 2pm would be pointless as everyone was on lunch, and after 4pm couldn’t be entertained as everyone was busy planning for tomorrow.
I think by the time he’d finished we’d whittled it down to one Tuesday afternoon in March between 2pm and 4pm.
OK, a tad obtuse perhaps, but you get the idea. Her at Newton Fox we work 8.30am to 5.30pm Monday to Friday, 50 weeks of the year. We do close for Christmas, not because we don’t think we’d get through to anyone but because almost every client we have insists we stop at this time of year. It really is ingrained in us for some reason
I recently put a call into a lady I’d been wanting to pitch to at 7pm at night on her cell phone because I know I’d reach her that way. Far from being annoyed she was impressed I’d gone to such lengths to get in touch and she readily agreed to see me.
So, my advice would be get on the phones first thing Monday morning and don’t stop until Friday night and you’ll see for yourself, just as we do, that time of day/week/year really makes no difference whatsoever to the number of people you can reach.
Happy selling!
