And other lies that we tell ourselves

I hear them all the time from salespeople.  Excuses why they aren’t prospecting in the summer months.

“It’s a waste of time.”

“I can’t get in touch with anyone.”

“Everyone’s on vacation.”

“People just don’t make decisions in the summer.”

Let’s look at why you shouldn’t take a holiday from prospecting.

Reason #1 – You’re in for a bad fall.

By “bad fall,” I mean both the season and the metaphorical sense of term.  A Harvard Business School study found that over 25% of selling cycles were 7 months or longer.  It’s rare to see selling cycles of less than 3 months.  With elongated selling cycles, you can’t afford to let your funnel get empty by reducing your prospecting activities.  Otherwise, the opportunities for closing in Q4 will be few and far between.

Reason #2 – When contact ratios drop, activities need to go up.

It is true that contact ratios, the number of outreach activities (such as calls & emails) compared to connections, goes down in the summer, especially in Canada and the northern U.S. where many people take summer holidays.  Recent stats show that connection rates since COVID have dropped considerably.  The rise of sales automation and the work-from-home revolution are the two main drivers of this fact.

Across all industries, the B2B average contact ratio is now only 7%.  In the summer months, it’ll be lower as most people try to squeeze in a week or two of vacation within the short 8 week window. Does this mean that we should back off on our prospecting.  Not at all.  In fact, you’d be smart to do just the opposite.  You need to increase your outbound activities to compensate for the lower contact ratios.  Yes, meetings are harder to set in the summer but that provides more time to prospect!  Remember that even if you don’t get through to someone live, your compelling voicemail and email will be waiting for them when they get back.  A voicemail or email is not as good as a live conversation of course, but it’s a lot better than no voicemail or email.

Reason #3 – Your competition doesn’t work as hard in the summer

Take advantage of your competition taking their foot off the gas during the summer.  With your prospects receiving fewer sales calls, they are more likely to engage with you.

The bottom line is that while summer is a great time for all us to enjoy nice weather and take some well deserved vacation time, it’s important that in the weeks that you are working, you keep those money-making prospecting activities going.

Enjoy the rest of your summer!