As you might expect around the end of financial year and for a couple of months after is our office’s (actually the entire profession’s) busy season. Everyone has one – yours might be Christmas, or maybe it’s Spring or March.
No matter when it is, when you’re that busy, it’s hard to see anything else but the workload in front of you. And whilst it’s great to be really busy, it can also have a downside.
Let’s just assume that your busy season, by the time all is said and done, is three or four months long. At the end of those busy 12-16 weeks, you return to your desk only to find that all that busy-ness has resulted in a rather quiet new business pipeline.
Cashflow is king in business and without a healthy new business pipeline that’s constantly replenished – your business’ cashflow might suffer some nasty troughs. And also, you, like some of our clients, may have noticed that your business conversion lead time is getting longer. 90-180 days is becoming more the ‘norm’ particularly if you’re in a service business.
So what can you do to ensure that you keep your business ‘busy’ all year round?
Here are our best 4 tips – none of which take terribly long, but if you do just a couple, you’ll be surprised at how well they can fill a pipeline;
Ask for a testimonial:
Busy season is the best time for you to ask your clients for a recommendation or testimonial. Particularly if you’ve gone above and beyond, delivering more than the client was expecting, or in a timeframe others couldn’t match or have spent a lot of time with your client – that is THE time to ask. Find out if your clients are on linkedin (you should be connecting to them anyway) and ask for them to give you a LinkedIn recommendation. That way, everyone they’re connected to, gets to see their recommendation of you. Or if they’re not on LinkedIn, via email testimonial is still great – and then put it on your website (de-identified as just initials if required by your industry body for privacy reasons).
Get referred:
If you’ve done a great job, provided a great service or have sensational products – ask your happiest clients and customers if they know anyone who might benefit from your products/services. This is best done face to face, but if you’re more of a ‘phone friend’ with your client – phone will do (just don’t send out blanket group emails). Certainly some people won’t know anyone, but very few will flat out say no. If they do, respect their decision, but ask to know why – maybe there was a problem you weren’t aware of.
Do the time:
Make sure you still set aside a minimum amount of time for new business development. Whether that’s networking, cold calling, spending time following up on updates on linkedin, putting together a promotional campaign – just do it. It’s entirely too easy to focus on the immediate task at hand and forget about the larger picture. Set a reminder on your phone, ipad, computer or in your desk diary. Tell others that’s what you’re doing too and make sure they know not to interrupt you during that critical time.
We knew of a great business owner, who, no matter what was on his plate for the day, would do 10 new business calls before 10am. He’s been immensely successful. By 10am, all his new business is done and he’s free to get on with servicing his business.
Have everyone in the business involved:
New business development isn’t just the task of you the owner or the ‘sales person’ – it works best if it’s a business wide initiative. Ask each of your staff members how they’d like to be involved in new business – you might be surprised. Or you might try a scheduled new business development hour once a week where everyone focusses only on that on a Thursday afternoon between 12-1pm. Then everyone comes together to say who they approached, what happened and what outcomes were achieved. Don’t forget to reward those who are really trying.
A couple of weeks later, it will be part of your business’ culture and everyone will have a much greater respect for how customers are won (and you might find customers are ‘lost’ less often. Best of all, that one hour each week is likely to pay dividends for months/years.
If you have any other suggestions you’d like to share on what you do to keep your business funnel topped up, please feel free to share below or on our Facebook page. Or if you’d like to have a conversation about how your business is going, please feel free to give either Kerry or I a call on 6023 1700.