Contractors! Are You Getting Ready for the Slow Season NOW?

This is your chance to set your­self up for suc­cess, build­ing a proac­tive plan to keep those leads coming.

If you’re a home improve­ment con­trac­tor, you know all too well how much sea­son­al­i­ty impacts your lead flow. Espe­cial­ly in our cold­er cli­mates, sum­mer is the boom sea­son, then fall ramps up with inte­ri­or work, and then, well, things change… Win­ter puts a freeze on your pipeline.

It can be tempt­ing to just accept it, rid­ing the roller coast­er and assum­ing that it’s just the way it is. Sure, some of the ebbs and flows are inevitable, but there’s still a lot you can do to smooth it out and stay consistent. 

Here are three quick tips for keep­ing busy right through your slow­er season.

1. Iden­ti­fy your slow season

This may seem obvi­ous, but we’re not just talk­ing about ​“win­ter” in broad terms. Peel back the lay­ers a bit and real­ly take a clos­er look at the raw data. 

In fact, take a look at leads and sales by month from the last 2 – 3 years, and deter­mine when your leads begin to decline. This will give you a more spe­cif­ic time­line, which will then give you bet­ter con­text for build­ing a strate­gic plan. Don’t for­get to con­sid­er hol­i­days, elec­tions, and when your ide­al clients tend to vaca­tion too. Fac­tors like these impact con­sumer buy­ing decisions.

When you have a real han­dle on the spe­cif­ic time­lines, and cor­re­lat­ing fac­tors, you can then build a pre­cise plan to com­bat the slumps.

2. Plan ahead!

Some­times con­trac­tors know the slow sea­son is com­ing, but they’re so busy with the busy sea­son that they real­ly can’t do any­thing about it. And then, one day, it seems like some­one just turned off the cos­mic faucet on their lead flow, reduc­ing that water­fall to a drip. 

If you wait that long, you’ve wait­ed TOO long. Block off time to plan in advance, at least 90 days. At ADC we call this our ​“War On Win­ter” plan­ning, giv­ing our clients time to review their bud­gets, strate­gize, and imple­ment an effec­tive approach. 

You don’t accel­er­ate once you’re on the high­way, right? That’s what the on-ramp is for. So why wait to push the ped­al on your mar­ket­ing?

3. Start mar­ket­ing now! 

Now that you have a plan to com­bat the slow months, start mar­ket­ing now! Cus­tomers need time to see your com­pa­ny, research, and plan before mak­ing a large pur­chas­ing deci­sion. Don’t be afraid to fill your cal­en­dar a cou­ple months out.

And what­ev­er you do, please don’t cut mar­ket­ing dol­lars to try and con­serve funds before the win­ter­time. When you have a long road ahead of you, why would you jet­ti­son your fuel? 

Bonus tip:

We’re big fans of trans­par­ent mar­ket­ing. Send a mes­sage (text or email) to your core clients and let them know that they can plan their win­ter projects EAR­LY, sav­ing a spot on your sched­ule. Make it sound spe­cial and exclu­sive: some­thing only offered to exist­ing, val­ued cus­tomers. You could add an incen­tive too, if you’d like. Tell them why, too: you’re plan­ning ahead, ensur­ing that your team is kept busy and work­ing all win­ter, and you want to extend a spe­cial offer as a thank-you for being an awe­some cus­tomer. Word it how you want!

The take­away?

Don’t wait to mar­ket. Go now. Ped­al to the met­al. Coast­ing through sum­mer and then sput­ter­ing across the line into win­ter will guar­an­tee a deep­er slump. You’ve got this!