Stay relevant, better yet, indispensable!
I tend to worry a little about business in the summer. I know myself and I know human nature. Summer in New Hampshire is like paradise if you’re an outdoorsman. The calls of the lakes, mountains, golf courses and beaches pull us from our office 
chairs on beautiful afternoons and sometimes even weekday mornings…
If this summer has taught me anything, it’s that you can maintain strong marketing and sales activity even when you or your shop gets very busy with customer demands. Okay, maybe I’ve been short a newsletter or two in the last couple of months but I’ve managed to maintain rigorous social media marketing and networking activity along with a little paid advertising. The best part is that outdoor summer fun hasn’t been compromised and business goal benchmarks are right on track. Steady growth is being maintained instead of the common peaks and valleys many companies experience in a typical marketing/selling cycle.
The Sales Yoyo
A common marketing/selling cycle looks something like this: Business is slow so new business with current and new clients becomes the top priority. The sales team revs up prospecting, follow up and closing activities while marketing scrapes together the resources for a campaign surge and executes it. Lo and behold, a few months later the shop or office is humming! It’s all hands on deck to satisfy customers’ needs and keep them happy. Meanwhile, salespeople become a bit complacent, enjoying the recent business surge and marketing resources are shifted to help meet other administrative costs. The inevitable business slowdown follows from the lack of new business prospecting and reduced marketing communications. The anxiety of drying revenues starts this stressful up-and-down cycle all over again…
Steady as She Goes…
Steady, manageable business growth results from maintaining good value delivery to current customers and keeping firm consistency in your core messaging to your target audience. It’s not so much about the volume or frequency of impressions 
as it is about your messages themselves. Avoid the temptations to shift your messages toward perceived new opportunities. Stick with your core values – the business value that you can confidently promise to your customers as well as the human and cultural values that you and your team share and bring to work every day.
If you maintain consistency in your marketing and sales messages (with complete integrity), you’ll tend to attract new business that fits well and that you can better manage. Your clients will know they made the best choice. At some point, you may find yourself with a list of clients whose business you chose to accept rather than chase after and potentially scare away.
So, having a solid message strategy in place, go ahead and enjoy another beautiful-day break while it’s mid-August, and don’t worry about that extra social media campaign you were going to work on. Plenty of business will be there when you get back!
Hi Chuck it’s very nice article and I’m reading it during eight days in Newport . I did keep all my deals running in today I was in the surf the waves were humongous at beach 2.
I even shared your story with my son Tom Hill for from pure power electric as he’s a young master electrician and needing any help you can get on consistent marketing ..
Thank you
Cordially
TH3
Thank you Tom!