The Christmas Effect On New Business Prospecting

read

by rob

Having been at Alchemis for almost 22 years now, I feel I can say with some level of confidence that I know a thing or two about how the company operates (what with that being my actual day job) and how a myriad of external factors affect both us, as an individual new business agency, and the wider marketing industry as a whole.

Now, whilst being a bit of a glass half empty person by nature (which is why I’m not on the phone representing our clients and driving sales forward), I am going to take my Scrooge hat off and replace it with a Santa one to bring some Christmas cheer.

And it’s all to do with statistics.

Let me set the scene. A common objection we hear when people are looking to start a new business campaign in the winter is “maybe we would be better waiting until the new year.”

The reason behind this is based on seemingly  good logic. A lot of companies you may want to target would have key decision makers taking time off, there are less working days to target these people and large swathes of certain industries wind down a bit over the Christmas period.

However, our stats seem to defy this logic. On a pro-rata basis we have set more client meetings in December than any other month. It’s not just this year either that sees this positive trend. What causes this spike? I can only put it down to a Christmas feelgood factor across the marketing industry. Maybe Brand Managers and Marketing Directors are in a joyous mood and more receptive to approaches at the time of goodwill to all men? I can’t pretend to know the reasons, only the numbers.

So, if you can put in the outbound calling activity early in the month (based on us being exactly halfway through at the time of writing this), the chances are you will get a decent meeting or two booked in the diary with a senior decision maker at a company your agency would like to work with.

And whilst the meet itself is statistically more likely to take place in January the later in December it is booked, it does mean you can hit the ground running in the new year with a new business pipeline starting to fill up, just like Santa’s belly after a load of mince pies.

So, some food for thought… is there ever really a bad time to start a new business push? Not in our experience.

Let me sign off for 2023 by wishing our readers, clients and contacts a very merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous new year!