Begin Your Fall & Winter Planning This Summer

This has been one of the busiest sum­mer sea­sons for most of my paint­ing and remod­el­ing clients in over 5 years. That is a great thing, to be busy, right? The only prob­lem with being busy is that the mar­ket­ing plan begins to become a thing of the past. Plan­ning for the fall and win­ter is also the fur­thest thing from any­one’s mind. Yet, July and August are per­haps the two best months to real­ly begin think­ing and plan­ning for the slow­er sea­sons. You know they are com­ing. It hap­pens every year. 

So a few quick tips: 

• Cre­ate an event and do not move it: This is an impor­tant event that should not be rescheduled.
• Plan a meet­ing away from your office: It is too easy to get dis­tract­ed at the office. I’ve had some clients go away for an entire day with their staff to plan and catch up.
• Cre­ate an agen­da with things to dis­cuss: review cur­rent and past leads, your mar­ket­ing bud­get, how much are you ahead or behind for the year, when to put the plan into place, what hap­pens if we don’t hit…etc
• Brain­storm & Planned Dis­cus­sion: Dis­counts, Emails, Call­ing Clients, Adwords, Newslet­ter, Gifts to top cus­tomers, Appre­ci­a­tion Par­ty, etc.
• Action Items: Once the brain­storm­ing is done, begin cre­at­ing an action plan and time­line of when things should be done. Some com­pa­nies do this in a very orga­nized 30 to 90 day action plan. Decide on the com­ple­tion date and who will ​“own” the action. Make sure that the actions are doable and that a fol­low up plan is in place.

How do you pre­pare for the fall and win­ter time and when? What things would you add to the list and how has plan­ning ahead helped your business?