Depending on where you live, you are either nearing the end of summer and getting ready for the kids to go back to school in a couple of weeks, or you are at around the midpoint of your break (for those that go back to school after Labor Day).

Continuing on the theme from my last blog series, we are going to focus on the inevitable slowdown that can occur during the summer months.  As clients go on vacation, or their colleagues go on vacation, others are often facing the same challenges that you are within your organization (read my last series of posts for recommendations to make the most of the summer vacation season) and so “doing business” can often slow down as it is hard to get time on your client’s calendar in July and August.

As we come out of the summer break, for those on a calendar fiscal year, we will be nearing the end of Q3, and heading into Q4.  If we want to finish the year strong we cannot limp out of the gate in September and start to think about filling our calendars with meetings.  If we do, we likely won’t even start to get meetings until October at the earliest, meaning that September can become a lost month if we don’t start to think about it now.

Recognizing it is hard to get meetings or get new business going during the summer, I would recommend that instead you focus on getting meetings into your calendar immediately following the summer slow down.  In fact this year, I was even focused on getting meetings scheduled for September in April/May.

I had a few clients that I was working with in the Spring that had busy summer schedules as they are in higher education and were trying to get a lot of renewal and maintenance work done on campus, while juggling staff vacations.  I knew I wasn’t going to be a priority until after the “back to school” time frame.  However, rather than say “I will call you in September”, I focused on getting a date firmed up in their calendars for very shortly after the students returned to campus.  I now know that we will reengage as early as possible as opposed to attempting to reengage months later.

The other benefit of this approach is that by scheduling something shortly after the most recent discussion there was still a level of interest/excitement following the last conversation.  If we had parked it and came back in September asking for a follow-up meeting, they may have forgotten some of the details of the conversation and therefore lost interest in the follow-up meeting.

The key message here is that if you want to get the Fall season off to a good start, you need to be laying the foundation now.  Review your connections and look to reach out now to get time scheduled for September or early October.  This will start to build momentum as you head into the end of the year.

I recommend the same approach to folks as they are heading into the end of the year.  As the winter starts to set in and people start to think about the holiday season, don’t hibernate too early.  Start booking your meetings for early January in November/December so you hit the ground running first thing in the new year.

If you want to be getting face time with customers or key stakeholders next month, you better start laying the foundation today.  Get out there and set some meetings!!!