When you work in B2B sales or marketing, you’re largely reliant on your customers. That means that when they’re slowing down over Christmas, it can have an impact on you. The same is often true during the summer holidays.
This can lead to a quandary for sales and marketing teams. After all, it’s hard to sell to people when their decision makers are out of the office or when they’re busy thinking about their work Christmas party. At the same time, there’s no point just shutting up shop completely. Sales and marketing are notoriously fast-paced and so while it can be a little unnerving to suddenly have some free time, it’s also a great opportunity.
That’s because you can use the quiet time to play catch-up, even if it’s just for the couple of working days between Christmas and the New Year. You should already have your 2019 marketing plan prepared and in place, but it can be a great time to revisit it and to give it an update. You can even get started on some of the content, creating it ahead of time to ease some of the pressure when you head into the New Year.
Upgrading your foundations
Another great use of time is to clean up your databases and to update your CRM systems. That’s because data is the new oil and the data that you have on your prospects is what’s going to determine whether your company is a success or not. Throughout the majority of the year, we’re too busy to spend time updating the data that we hold, but the holiday period gives both sales and marketing an excuse to do just that.
The same is true for proactively carrying out research into the latest industry trends. Too often, we expect people to stay up to date with what’s happening without actually giving them any time to do so. True, we tend to learn a certain amount while on the job, but it’s also a good idea to use the end of the year as an opportunity to reflect on what defined your industry this year and what’s likely to come next. Of course, it also helps that this is when most people are publishing their yearly roundup and prediction articles.
One final thing to consider is proactively creating content ahead of time. If your copywriters or designers have some downtime, put them to work creating social media updates, blog posts and infographics. As long as you make sure that it’s not time-sensitive and that you’re creating evergreen content, you can keep the assets and have them ready to go whenever you’re too busy to create content once the New Year begins in earnest.
Conclusion
It can be tempting to take the quieter time around the holidays as a reprieve and an opportunity to take it easy. Instead, it makes more sense to look at it as an opportunity and as a chance to either catch up with your work or to get ahead with it. It’ll help to take some pressure off and to make your time in the office more enjoyable. So what have you got to lose?
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Dane
Dane Cobain is a published author, freelance writer, book blogger, poet and (occasional) musician from High Wycombe, UK. Before going freelance, he worked as a social media marker, now specialising in writing about publishing, technology and marketing.