Your Q4 Winners Close Now - Even If Everybody Is On Vacation

I know, it sucks...but it's the way things go....

Author

Tim Kilroy
27 May • Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes

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I Don't Really Like Pina Coladas - But This Is The Table Of Contents

We’ve Entered The “After Vacation” Season

Even in the best of times, there is a lag between “Hello” and “Let’s Go” in the agency biz dev world. There are times when it is worse than others…as we inch our way towards June…we enter into one of the biz dev dead seasons.

It doesn’t mean that nothing closes now - in fact a bunch of things might…BUT there is a built in “excuse” to delay closes:

VACATION

It isn’t an intentional slight, or a rational reason for delay, but it is real. If someone on the prospect side has a vacation upcoming, they want to delay the EMOTIONAL INVESTMENT of doing something new until after vacation.

Why is that?

Launching a new relationship with a partner is an emotional effort. It requires thinking differently, adapting to new work styles and new thoughts…and it just feels DAMN hard. So even if vacation is WEEKS away, it might feel “safer” to your prospect to delay until “after vacation”. So clients will

Is it a valid reason to delay? Probably not.

Is there likely a real cost of inaction? Yup. It’s going to delay the benefit by the length of their delay.

Are you going to logic your way around it? Doubtful.

You Need To Be Targeting Immediate Launches, But Know That Some Significant Portion Are Going To Be Pushed Until After Labor Day

Does it suck? Yes.

But let’s look at a couple of ways to look at this:

  1. An Obstacle To Overcome: You can use logic (like cost of inaction), or FOMO (oh, geez, we are already pretty well booked for post Labor Day - I will have to talk to Ops to see if we can slot you then - if not, it might be closer to end of Sept.) to push against the vacation mirage…but in my experience it is hard to get past the emotional safety of “after vacation”.

  2. Turn It Into A Foot In The Door Opportunity: Instead of fighting your way through the obstacle, use it to your advantage. If your prospect is going on vacation in a month - suggest that you can get started on some “hands off” potion of the project right now - research, audits, landing page development - some kind of meaningful work that is discrete, delivers value and takes away any doubt that they want to work with you. (And it generates revenue now and cements your “post vacation” start opportunity.)

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Here Is Some Things You Can Do For The Next 60 Days To Build Up A Huge August/Sep

  • Pick 30 warm leads (past clients, past calls, lurkers, fence-sitters).

    Send each one a simple, personal “What changed?” email. Ask what’s different, not what they need.

  • Launch a ‘Fun In The Sun’ offer.

    Short, sharp, time-limited. Designed to kickstart engagements - a micro-foot in the door - small, strategic, high-value.

  • Start every day with 5 outbound messages.

    Not pitchy. Just start conversations. Use insight or signal to open the door.

  • Post 2x/week with a POV that creates urgency.

    “Here’s what’s working right now…” or “If your pipeline is dry, this is why…”

    (Yes, LinkedIn still works if you say something useful.)

  • Follow up with every open deal from Q4/Q1/Q2.

    Unless they said “GTFO”, they didn’t say no. They said not now. Now’s closer.

This Is What We See Working In Our Programs Right Now

In GTM OS & Fire Yourself From Sales we are seeing two things work REALLY well:

  1. NO PRESSURE: In GTM OS, right now, our best performing messaging (across multiple clients) is not FOMO, or “AMAZING SUPER OFFER”, but rather permission-based pitching. Offering some kind of really good checklist or a REAL diagnostic that gives a peak at at path forward, something like our WTF Reality Check or a question-based diagnostic that s fast, like this one or this one. (BTW, both are betas from Clients.ai - they DEFINITELY have some rough edges.)

  2. SIMPLE TEST: Prospects are having a hard time pulling the trigger on bigger engagements. Short, discrete tests are paving the way for bigger wins. (For instance, I’ve been working on a super-sized Fire Yourself From Sales opportunity, and the winning approach was a 4 week trial with a modified deliverable. We just got the thumbs up for the remainder of the engagement…

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