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Next week the United States celebrates its independence on July 4, and Canada celebrates Canada Day on July 1, meaning many businesses in Canada will be closed on July 2.

For many people, this means the week will be somewhat of a busted play when it comes to trying to make sales calls.  Consequently, expectations will be low, and with expectations being low, the level and quality of work will wind up matching it.

All of this might be fine if your job didn’t depend on making sales.

But your job does depend on you making sales. That being the case, let’s all go out and make next week incredibly productive.

Here are a few things you can do to make your sales and prospecting efforts count:

1. Reach out, call and email prospects, not only today, but also early next week, with the objective of setting up some meetings for next week.  Be upfront and say that because business may be slow, this is a great time to meet and look at how to kick start the second half of the year.

Proactive prospects and customers are going to like this approach, and if they’re working, they will be much more open about setting up a meeting.

2. Schedule time to do research and to gather information about prospects, including contact information for people with whom you want to connect in July.

3. Use the time to make follow-up phone calls to existing customers and share with them one critical piece of information they may not know.

Yes, a lot of people will be out, but those people you do reach will be impressed you’re contacting them in what is seen by many as a throw away week for business.

4. Review your CRM system to identify those contacts you’ve not been reaching out to.

Rather than email them, call them and revive the relationship.  If they’re not in and their voicemail says they’re going to be out all week, I recommend you not leave a voice mail message.  The last thing somebody wants to come back to is a ton of voicemail messages from people with whom they have little or no relationship.

5. Finally, set aside an hour or so to review your accomplishments in the first half of the year, and use this as motivation to refine your second half goals.

If you’re going to make your annual numbers, you need to know where you’re at.

If we were to not worry about making anything happen on holiday weeks throughout the year, we would find ourselves with 10-12 fewer weeks in our year.  I don’t know about you. but I couldn’t afford to lose 12 weeks of selling time.

Yes, not all weeks are equal, but regardless, I still have to make sure each week counts.

Copyright 2012, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.

 

 

 

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