The next couple of weeks will be dominated by two main themes:
- Annual contracts; both having customers agree and working on logistics involved.
- Customers saying, “Let’s connect after the new year.”
For the purpose of this Time to Win, I want to focus on the second point above. During this time of year, many customers are quite busy professionally and personally. Thus, it might be totally legitimate that they are pushing you off to after January 1st. The challenge is when we call them the first week of January, they are also very busy and may push us off to the next week, or even the next month. This brings all the momentum you have built up to a screeching halt!
Because of this, my suggestion is to set a goal for ourselves to keep the relationship momentum you have built. Below is the challenge I gave our team:
By December 31:
- (10) face to face or video meetings scheduled for the first full week of January.
- (5) face to face or video meetings scheduled for the second full week of January.
The key to being successful in getting these meetings is being overt with your customers that the reason you want to schedule a meeting is to respect their time and help them reach their 2025 goals.
- Their Goals: When you ask for the meeting, you can say something like, “I am going to get with my team about your challenge and we will have some specific ways you can reach and exceed those goals we discussed for 2025. How does January 7th at noon work?”
- Respecting Their Time: Steve Politziner has always emphasized to our team that if we don’t schedule a date/time/place when you’re together with the customer, then you will be sending each other emails, calls, texts, DM’s just to schedule something. By putting a date/time/place on the calendar, you are saving them the inconvenient hassle of having to go back and forth over email/text/calls.
Once you have set a meeting, make sure you are getting with your teammates immediately for any ideation, creative brainstorm, etc. Remember, the holidays are coming up for your teammates too, and it’s not fair to dump the work on them when they get back in January. The momentum should not stop on 12/31 and then start from zero on 1/1. Keep it rolling and go into 2025 with 15 meetings already scheduled for the first two weeks.
