Although December is a wonderful time of the year with Christmas, it is also a very frustrating time of year if like me you love winning new business! Unless you sell Christmas jumpers or tinsel, December can be a pain to get business confirmed and new orders issued. Although you may try and get your prospects to make decisions, the reality is that many people start to wind down for Christmas early in December and purposely choose to delay new projects until the new year. I believe that if you need a problem solving now then it makes sense to get that problem resolved straight away but I do understand that for some people, getting a new project started in January is how they choose to work. Many businesses plan for December to be quieter months and so are able to handle the lack of new orders in month, but if you have not achieved your sales targets for the year then these ‘delays’ you might be left feeling slightly frustrated as prospects say ‘let’s pick this up in the new year’. When you start to get these types of responses from your prospects, the natural tendency is to accept defeat and decide not to make any more calls but if you want to make January a success then you need to persevere now and carry on with your prospecting.
