Get It While It’s Hot !
Summer comes and we look around, we’re thinking to ourselves, “What do we do?” Everyone has told you that summer is a time to rest, relax and reflect because there’s no money to be made. I can’t tell you how many entrepreneurs and business owners I’ve either met around the country or those of my peers that have told me over the years that summer is the slowest season of the month. Over the last decade on my journey in building businesses, summer has always been a time for me to stack cash. When I say “stack cash” I really mean make money, bring in the dough. You know, multiply bacon, however you want to say it, it’s an opportunity for you to add revenue to your bottom line with ease. I’m going to quickly give you the three things that you can do right now at this very moment with what you have, where you are, to not just add money to your bottom line, but really and truly to plant the kind of seeds that are going to yield dividends for you, come the end of quarter three and as you’re walking into quarter four.
# 1 Go backwards.
Over the last six months you’ve spent countless hours talking to people, going to networking events and visiting conferences, You had some conversations, or some you agreed to meet for coffee. You went home, put that business card on your desk, and you did what with it, absolutely nothing. Somewhere, somehow, I know for a fact that you have a stack of business cards and probably a stack of either sticky notes or notes in a notebook, and you have people that you promised to connect with, and you haven’t. Now is the perfect time to make that connection. You can do one of two things. You can gather the contact pull put all of those emails into one simple place, and I’m not talking about sticking it somewhere like your Infusionsoft or your MailChimp or any of the above.
I really truly mean going to your simple your email account and doing a blind copy and saying, “Hey, how are you doing? Do you remember me? We connected a couple of months ago and life has gotten past me, and I haven’t found the time to reach out to you and connect, and I’m super-sorry but I’d love to do so now. Do you have time for a quick chat?” Don’t invite them to coffee. Don’t invite them over to your house. Don’t go to their office, unless it’s a really big opportunity. I’m really and truly asking you for the opportunity to just connect. This is where you get a scheduled time on the calendar, and you spend a few minutes saying, “Hey, how are you doing? What are you doing? How are you doing it?” And what can you do, and what’s possible? So that’s number one, go backwards. Who haven’t you spoken to? Who were you supposed to follow up with and you didn’t?
# 2 Confirm It. Was That A Yes OR a No?
Did you get a yes or a no? I know for a fact that you’ve put out proposals, you’ve sent offers, you’ve given people your pricing, and there are some people out there who just never got back to you. They didn’t respond, they never gave you a clear “yes” or a clear “no”. Absolutely not. You can’t stand for that. Let me tell you something, a prospect doesn’t come off of our radar in our business until I get a firm “yes” or a firm “no”. Youve got to do the same. You owe it to yourself, the time, the effort, the energy, the money that you’ve invested. You owe it to yourself to make sure that you’ve got clear direction on that opportunity. Look back at your last six months since the beginning of the year. What proposals have you given out? Who have you made an offer to? Who have you given an offer to and not heard back from.
I’d really like you to make a list. Search high and search low for every single one. If you have to go back through your emails, awesome. If you’ve got to go through your downloads file or your documents file on your computer, so be it. It really doesn’t matter to me, I just want you to get it done. Get a copy in front of you of every proposal that you’ve created or offer that you’ve given in the last six months and put it into a folder. Then create an excel spreadsheet and name each opportunity, and do these two things. On column A, have the opportunity, column B, I want you to take some notes on the response you get when you re engage them.
One by one, I’m going to ask you to reach back out to that person and say, “Hey, how are you doing? You remember me? I don’t think I got a response. Can you tell me where you are in your business? Do you have a few minutes to chat?” It’s an opportunity for you to make good inside of a conversation that has simply gone stale, but more importantly I know it’s an opportunity for you to make some money.
# 3 Where Can YOU plug In?
I want you to think of where haven’t you been yet? Who haven’t you connected with? During the summer, there are countless opportunities for you to connect with people who are either taking it easy, or they’re on vacation and they’re thinking about what is the second half of the year going to be like. If you haven’t done a webinar, you’ve not tried a Facebook Live, you haven’t gone to a local meetup group to talk or plan a conversation, this is an opportunity for you to do one of two things.
It’s an opportunity for you to either create the webinar, schedule the Facebook Live, or it’s an opportunity for you to reach out to a meetup group who has your ideal client, and for you to say this one key thing, “Hey, I see you don’t have a meetup on the calendar for this month or maybe the month after that. It could be July, it could be August, I want you to spend a few minutes with them and say these key words. I’d love to come out to your group and have a quick conversation, or spend 10 or 15 minutes talking about this, x.” And inside of x, you plug in what you do, your solution, and more importantly for me, the problem that you solve. These are three things that you can do today.
I’m willing to bet that 20% of the people that you have reached out to, connected with, given offers to, forgot to follow up with, 20% of them right now are ready to make some form of a decision inside of your area. As far as I’m concerned, that decision should be with you. The stage, the place to speak to, I know for a fact that those people are waiting for you. So there is no reason why you shouldn’t be the one to share your expertise and more importantly, talk to them about the problem that you solve, because if you don’t talk to them about the problem that you solve, someone else will. And if you’re not the one to talk to them, you’re also not the one to sell the solution. If anybody is going to be making any money this summer in your area, in your area of expertise, it might as well be you.
