The holiday season, the time from Thanksgiving to New Years can be more challenging than usual for B2B sellers. While sales teams still have end of quarter goals and quotas to achieve during the time, buying cycles and budgets are usually put on hold with a keener interest from prospects to engage in further conversations in the new year in most cases.
The holiday season can actually be a good time to start prepping for the first quarter of the new year and to also set up a base with prospects even if they aren’t going to make a buying decision until the next year.
A few changes or optimizations to your outbound sales prospecting process during this time can actually help you win some deals and drive pipeline for the new year.
Here’s what to keep in mind:
The Holiday Season is a Great Time to Plan for Q1 of the New Year
It’s not impossible to clinch a deal during the holiday season. The difference is that it can be more challenging than other times. Many times, sales people can actually benefit by tracking down prospects who are in-market for their product or service during this time to drive a closure.
Most prospects end up being in a sort of holiday mode, pushing all budget and buying decisions to the new quarter. This is where sales people can effectively optimize their processes to put building a foundation for Q1 as a top priority.
Booking meetings or follow up calls for the new quarter, automating email sends with the right message with an aligned goal, revisit processes for the new year, this is the time for sales people to try to maintain healthy pipelines in the follow up to the holiday season while also optimizing their core strategies for the next year.
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It Helps to Dive into your Prospects’ Current Buying Sentiment
Based on recent email clicks and engagement metrics as well as other buying signals, sales people should try to segment audiences based on their buying stages or buying interest. Not all prospects will be ready to buy during a prospecting cycle, many might want to invest in a product like yours down the line, some might want to wait until a current subscription with another provider ends, there are so many factors that can influence a prospect to hold off on making a purchase.
Understanding current market and buyer sentiments during the holiday season, based on what triggers your audiences, what are they hoping to achieve in their business before the holidays set in, what is their current pain point are all important to driving a more robust sales outreach and prospecting campaign until the year end.
Offering Up Special Holiday Offers and Discounts
A lot of leading SaaS platforms offer yearly / seasonal discounts if a brand takes up larger/annual packages or if they buy before a certain period of time.
The holiday season might not be a great time for sales teams as not a lot of prospects reach the final B2B buying stage, but it is a good time to still drive interest and find other ways to get prospects there. Customized holiday packages and discounts that can offer up specific value-add features or services based on your prospects’ core pain points and challenges can drive a sale while also leading to better long-term customer loyalty. A customer/prospect that sees how a brand is careful about personalizing services to meet customer needs will have a higher change of re-engaging with the brand repeatedly.
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It’s Not Over!
The holiday season does not signal the end of the sales season in B2B sales. It is actually a crucial time to focus on rebuilding processes, strategies, plans and goals for the new year.
Sales people can use an array of prospecting methods to keep their pipelines healthy during the holiday season. Being a little out of the box with campaigns and their CTAs, using personalized messaging and offers to garner more engagement, meeting prospects core challenge areas can also be drivers in building closures despite most prospects being on holiday mode.
