With a little more than a month to go, the clock is running out for any additional revenue this year. At the same time, the holiday season distracts many good prospects from your outreach. It’s an anxious time for business development people as the days seem to pass in slow motion. What can you do during this time to lessen the anxiety? Why not turn the table on this quiet period by doing some or all of these things to help ensure next year gets off to a great start.
- Flush the bottom ten percent of your prospect list. It is oddly liberating.
- Pick out and hand-write a personalized thank you note holiday card for the top ten percent of your prospects.
- Pick out and hand-write a thank you note holiday card for agency people who support your new business efforts throughout the year.
- Take your best media rep(s) out to lunch and pick their brain for hidden possibilities next year
- Set up lunches with former clients to keep the relationship warm. You never know.
- Create an ebook, pdf, or digitally print a collection of recent work, new people, and capabilities for your account people to share with their clients.
- Take a good look at your top ten competitors and top ten similar agencies by size and capabilities to see how your agency stacks up. Identify opportunities to sharpen your positioning.
- Refresh and update your stable of case studies. Add new ones from the agency’s most recent work.
- Create a content calendar of things you believe will help support your new business efforts and share it with the traffic department for early scheduling.
- Dedicate an hour a day for twelve days to watch or listen to webinars, TED Talks, and podcasts that will make you smarter, better, and more confident next year.
- Set aside time to develop business rules in your marketing automation platform that will free up your time.
- Make a list of all your business development tactics in the past year. Do anecdotal effectiveness and cost/benefit assessment of each and vow to stop doing the least effective one next year.
- Map out the first thirty days of next year to make sure you’ve thought of and planned everything you need to get the new year off to a roaring start.
Next year is going to be busy. The economy will continue to grow, brands will have bigger budgets, and agency changes could be unprecedented. Doing as many of these as you have time for will put you in a much better place to capitalize. The agony will be just a little more tolerable and a lot more productive. And you will feel much better prepared for what is to come.
Happy Year-end!
I’ve got a lot of advice on how to make your business development efforts more effective and would enjoy sharing what I know. If you like this post, click the thumbs up, so I’ll know, and then sign up for my new business newsletter. Let's connect on LinkedIn for daily tips, tricks, and insights. And, please share your new business advice, successes, and failures. #LetsGrow!
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