By Tom Woodcock
Winter is approaching. Work conditions will decline, ground will harden and everyone goes from holiday mode to winter blah. No one is spending any money and projects are scarce. Time to hold your breath and ride your line of credit through this annual recession.
Not so fast!
Throwing in the towel before the season even changes is awfully defeatist. The real course of action is to dig down deep and drive your sales effort. Opportunity may slow down, but it doesn’t disappear.
I’ve worked with enough contractors to know the difference between those that thrive through the winter and those who starve. The firms that go hungry are those that resign themselves to the norm and do nothing to move the bar. The true winners are those that look for every sales vehicle possible to get in front of the customer base therefore, opportunity. They gain a presence physically, electronically, and proactively. They’re not sitting by the phone waiting for it to ring or surfing the Internet for hours at a time. They understand that it takes work to find the projects that break over the winter. Not just those that bid this time of year, but also those that begin.
There is always pressure to go with the historical processes that the construction industry has sustained. Get fat over spring and summer then hibernate over the winter.
I refuse to let my clients accept this logic. We sit down and develop aggressive sales schedules and implement them. We keep the company accountable and review the results. Areas that we feel are the most likely to produce opportunity get the greatest sales attention. We then attack from a selling perspective and don’t let up. These opportunities may take more face-to0face customer time but often we’re the only ones actively pursuing them. This presents a great opportunity to steal a regular customer from a competitor.
Most people think that when they are actively engaged with a customer on a project, they’re selling. Not true. That’s servicing.
It’s what you do with customers when there isn’t a project on the table that falls into the sales category. It’s easy to communicate with a customer in the middle of a summer project. There are details to cover and schedules to meet. That’s a main component of a contractor servicing their client. It’s much more difficult to communicate when you’re not reviewing those elements, to actually talk to your customer on another level. Because of that difficulty, few people actually do it.
So this is the scenario: few people are actively calling on customers, you have time, and projects exist. Seems like an ideal situation for securing some business.
The challenge is to have the discipline and the plan to go after it. The first step is eliminating the “slow season” mentality. I’m not sure about you, but I prefer to be busy year-round. It can make sales projections easier and growth more possible when you gain business every month of the year instead of just nine.
Once this becomes part of your sales program, it tends to grow stronger year after year. You begin to recognize the vertical markets that produce opportunity during the winter months. You can then continue to develop your approach and marketing efforts to capitalize on the seasonal opportunities.
It is kind of like landscaping in the spring and summer and plowing snow in the winter, a common practice in property maintenance. Translation in construction terms: ground up in the spring and summer then renovation in the winter. That is just an example.
You can superimpose that formula on almost any construction trade of dynamic, if you’re willing to. That’s the rub. It’s easier to simply ignore this opportunity and kick back. Some see it as a time to catch their breath business wise. In reality, it’s more like holding your breath.
Investigating which market segments are progressing indicate where projects exist. Developing a sales approach to those markets and enacting it can unveil opportunities. Few people do this kind of sales work in the proverbial slow season.
The size of your company is irrelevant if you truly prioritize the sales effort. Breaking the trend is the most difficult part in conjunction with extending patience till results begin to occur. Selling is never a situation where you simply snap your fingers and the business magically appears. It requires planning, effort, and diligence, especially in a season that traditionally is not productive.
Anyone can secure business when there’s plenty for everyone. The real sales professionals secure it during the leaner times. When the bit players disappear and the field opens up, more commonly known as the Slow Season!
Tom Woodcock, president, seal the deal, is a speaker and trainer to the construction industry nationwide. He can be reached at his website: www.tomwoodcocksealthedeal.com or at 314-775-9217.
