5 tools you can use to keep up B2B Sales during the Holidays

Shut down the company?

Most businesses kind of shut down their sales operations during the holidays. They figure that nobody will be buying anything anyway and they won’t miss anything if they shut down. That may be a mistake. There are quite a few reasons why sales may be happening just around the holidays. For example:

• buyers may have some extra time to browse offers and providers’ websites (during the boring lunch with the in-laws for example)
• managers may be more relaxed and willing to look over a sales proposal that you sent them a while ago
• international buyers may not even have holidays. Not everyone celebrates Christmas…

Bye bye holidays?

So does that mean you can forget about your holidays? Should you stay behind your desk and be ready for the phone to ring at all times? No it doesn’t. These days there are plenty of things you can do and tools you can use to make life easier. It is more than possible to be available, close that sale if you can, and still enjoy the holidays with friends and family.

So let’s have a look at 5 things that anyone can do to keep up business sales:

1. Stay in touch with the team: sales is teamwork. You may need to get in touch with a colleague to quickly check an outstanding client proposal. Or ask a question about that last prospect call. Whatever it is, there is no need for emails and meetings during the holidays. Great new team communication tools like Slack, allow you to fire away a quick message to team member and allow them to answer it on their phones when they have a moment.
2. Make yourself heard: don’t go into radio silence. There are plenty of tools that allow you to keep sending out your message during the holidays. With Hootsuite for example it is possible to schedule social media messages to come out at a later date. And with services like Mailchimp, targeted emails can be sent out on future dates.
3. Make customer service mobile: if your messages are being heard, chances are that prospects and customers will reach out. You want to be there for them. And these days it does not mean that you have to sit behind your PC, waiting for messages to arrive. Modern customer service products like Zendesk offer mobile Apps which allow you to fulfill basic customer service needs right from your phone.
4. Get a mobile CRM: there is no need to remember every prospect and the status of the sales process. Mobile CRMs like our own Salespoint allow you to have all this information right on your phone. Combined with a solid preparation, you should be able to use the CRM to give you timely updates and, if necessary, send that final proposal over to your client and close the deal.
5. Meet online: being away from the office should not mean that you don’t see your hot leads and clients. There are many tools nowadays that facilitate online meetings, also from your phone or tablet. Join.me has a free tool that works great and that has all the typical features such as screen sharing and audio-conferencing.

So go ahead and enjoy those holidays with your family and friends. Hopefully you will enjoy them even more knowing that you have closed a sale or two!