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The Seasons of Sales
110 Plays4 years ago
In "Seasons of Sales" Max and Jake pontificate on some tricks and tips to help you get off of the "feast or famine" roller coaster of work and achieve a more sustainable workload.
Here are some of the things we touch on:
- Reach out to your best customers based on which seasons they are most likely to produce videos
- Build a calendar to help remind you when is the best time to reach out to your customers.
- Understand that hitting your customers at the right time is often as, or more important that hitting your customers with the right pitch.
- Utilize the "pre-emptive sales strike" to hit folks up when they've just started thinking of ideas.
- Understand that marketing departments and agencies LOVE IDEAS. They'll almost always be willing to meet with you to hear your ideas if the time is right.
- Understand that for some clients it's the time of year that is most important, and for others, it's when their fiscal year-end is.
- It only takes a few minutes each week, once you have your calendar in place, to touch base with potentials - even when you're super busy.
This podcast brought to you from the good people at Pipeline Video Production Platform (https://www.videopipeline.io). Pipeline is your all-in-one solution to managing the chaos of video production projects from budgets, to schedules, to deliverables and everything in between.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
Okay, welcome back to Crossing the Access, the podcast where we talk about everything related to the business of video production and what it takes to cross that one million mark in your sales and your revenue and getting the work you want. Man, that's a lot of stuff.
00:00:23
Speaker
That is a lot of stuff. I'm Max. And this is Jake. Yep. And we will be your hosts today. We're going to be talking about what we call the season of sales.
Challenges in Video Production Sales
00:00:36
Speaker
It's really how does how does the various seasons affect your sales outlook and how to keep that consistent?
00:00:45
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, definitely one of the things we hear the most from folks is that feast or famine with sales, we talked about it a little bit in our last podcast, hiring the first salesperson, but this is another sort of set of tips and tricks you can use to reduce that feast or famine roller coaster where you either have too much work to be out there looking for new work, or you have no work because you haven't been looking for any work because you've been so busy.
00:01:11
Speaker
We've seen a lot of people on that roller coaster of spending a lot of time getting, yeah, that's true. We've been on that roller coaster where you spend so much time trying to get to work and then you get it all and you're super busy that you totally forget about getting the next batch of work for six months down the road. So as soon as you catch your breath and things start to slow down and you're not doing the work anymore, all of a sudden you look around and there is no more work.
00:01:41
Speaker
Exactly. And it's not a happy time. So they spend another month or two trying to reignite those sales engines.
Understanding Client Cycles for Consistent Sales
00:01:50
Speaker
So we call this the season of sales because it's about how you can build a calendar for reaching out both to your current customers and to the prospects that you really want to work with.
00:02:01
Speaker
based on seasonality, based on the changes in the seasons and people's fiscal calendars and so forth that allow you to get a jump on things and sort of be a little more consistent even when you're busy with your work with reaching out to your clients. And so I, go ahead. What do you see those seasons as?
00:02:26
Speaker
Well, I see the seasons as primarily, you know, they are just the main seasons. It's sort of like, basically, you've got your Christmas season, which we know is retail. And so for that, we see you reaching out to your clients that have a lot of retail products, let's say like,
00:02:45
Speaker
REI might be one of your clients and you'd want to be reaching out to them in the mid-summer to be saying, hey, what do you guys got planned for this Christmas for your release and for your sales? Let's start putting those videos together now. Some of them have to be shot in the summer. If you live in an area like we do up here in Washington where the season's changed quite a bit, you need to shoot that stuff in the summer. But a lot of times the marketing team need that material
00:03:14
Speaker
for other parts of their advertising than just the videos. They might wanna use the stills from your shots and so forth. So getting a jump on that, reaching out to those clients that you know are retail and they know have products for Christmas sales, that they're probably not gonna start advertising until November, but nevertheless, you're gonna wanna jump on that a lot earlier than that.
Strategic Client Engagement
00:03:40
Speaker
And that's a great point about the weather too aspect.
00:03:44
Speaker
Yep. Outdoor on the flip side, outdoor is folks that are going to be advertising in the spring for, say, you're working with another type of outdoor company. Sorry, I already said REI, but it might be a kayaking company or something that you're working with, a boat building company.
00:04:04
Speaker
They're going to be doing their big sales in the spring. Um, so you're going to be reaching out to them around Christmas to say, what do you got? What do you got planned? Or you might even be reaching out to them a whole year in advance so that you can shoot this stuff and edit the stuff, uh, over the summer and then have it for their next spring. So again, it's, it's just constantly, you know, I can't, I can't, I can't express enough how it just starting a little calendar. And this doesn't have to be in any fancy app or anything like that. Um,
00:04:30
Speaker
not like pipeline, but you can just do it in Google Cal. You can do it anywhere and just keep track of a marketing calendar that you say, this is when I'm going to reach out to so-and-so, this is when I'm going to reach out to so-and-so, spending a couple hours now just putting that calendar together and it'll remind you
00:04:49
Speaker
Even when you're busy, you're in the middle of shoots and editing and stuff. Oh, don't forget to call or send a quick text or email out to that kayaking company. It can be just all the difference hitting folks at the right time when they're starting to generate the ideas long before they started putting stuff in
Sales in the Nonprofit Sector
00:05:08
Speaker
mind. That is critical.
00:05:10
Speaker
Another one is nonprofits. If you work with a lot of nonprofits, I know we used to at Handcrank, and if you work with a lot of nonprofits, they've got their gala season. Know when it is. If they always do their galas in February, all their fundraising dinners and so forth, we used to do tons of videos, tons of business on that. I'd say we did
00:05:34
Speaker
You know, probably, I don't know, would you say, Jake, like 50 to 60,000 a year on just doing videos? At least maybe 100,000. We had some clients that were just 50K alone. So I... Yeah, yeah. So I say 100 or 100 plus on just doing gala videos. And those can be really sweet. They're really fun to do. They're really meaningful to the folks that you produce them for. And the clientele tends to be wonderful to work with. Just nonprofits in general are so thankful for the work.
00:06:04
Speaker
But again, you just need to be on that. If their day is always in February, then you know you're reaching out to them at the end of September to try to get the get the thing in the can or help. And I'd say on that note, especially nonprofits, especially you need to reach out to them because I've known a lot. There are times the experienced ones that have been
00:06:25
Speaker
making video part of their gala for a decade, they have it down pretty well. But those new ones that are just doing the video for the first time or the first couple years that they're getting started, they have unreal expectations about what all goes into the video for
00:06:42
Speaker
their gala.
Proactive Client Engagement Strategies
00:06:43
Speaker
So they might reach out one month before. Can we do this video and you have to say, no, I'm sorry. That's just yeah. And let's talk about this is we call this we used to call this the preemptive sales strike. And what that meant was not waiting around till they called you. But you calling them this is typically with your current customers, and that you've done, you know, some work for and say, Hey, you
00:07:09
Speaker
What are you guys thinking about for this next season? What are you thinking about for the fall? If it's the spring? What are you thinking about for six months from now? We have some ideas for you. And let me tell you something. Marketing departments love ideas. They love them. They will take a meeting with you. If you say, I've got five cool video ideas for you based on other work that we've been doing.
00:07:31
Speaker
they'll take a meeting with you. They may not make the video, but they will meet with you and they will appreciate the generosity of the information you're giving them and the ideas you're giving them. And it will also allow you to dictate a lot more the type of video you might make for them. In other words, if you start the ball rolling, then the chances of you helming that thing more closely through to the end in terms of being able to make more of the video you think they need,
00:07:58
Speaker
which often I feel like we do know better for the client with the kind of video they need than they do. My experience, they love that. They really respond well to it, and it's a great way just to fill up that marketing or fill up that production pipeline over the course of the year. You'd just be amazed at how much
00:08:19
Speaker
being preemptive, being thinking seasonally like this changes your relationship with your client from being a sort of peon that does stuff for them to being a partner.
00:08:34
Speaker
That makes sense. I would add to that that along your notes about hitting them up for their type of customer, whether it's retail or outdoor or nonprofit, paying attention to their quarter end. And you may find luck if you reach out a month before their quarter end.
00:08:56
Speaker
when they have a budget and they're trying to spend all of that budget before the month. And that doesn't really make sense. At first, you think, oh, why would they want to spend all of their budget? Well, if they don't spend their budget, they get a smaller budget next
Timing Outreach with Budget Cycles
00:09:14
Speaker
quarter. So there is an incentive at a lot of companies to spend as much of your budget as you can.
00:09:21
Speaker
So a month before that quarter end is a good time to reach out, as is right at the turn of the quarter, because that's when they get their new budget, it refreshes and suddenly they have, if they didn't have money to spend at the end of last quarter, they have money to spend now in this quarter.
00:09:37
Speaker
Yeah, I remember Microsoft's fiscal year end is at the end of June, and it was always a big scramble to put together deals in mid-June and get them on the books as agencies would come to us saying, oh man, we got to do this because Microsoft's got to spend some money. And so we would be scrambling with them on
00:09:59
Speaker
obviously reaching out months ahead of time would have been far better because invariably you're you know out here in the on the west coast and in the northwest often our summers are much more filled with shoots than our our winter so again it can be a hard time to put those kind of deals together while you're in the middle of a lot of other shoots it's just so much better to try to just
00:10:22
Speaker
work preemptively on your timetable and setting up that calendar where you mark like, hey, Microsoft fiscal year end June 31st, just go back three or four months earlier and say, who are the agencies I work with that work with Microsoft? Let's reach out to them and make a plan together. If you're someone that works a lot with agency, those are agencies who love ideas too. They need them. And they often don't
00:10:51
Speaker
know the landscape of video as well as you do. They don't know what's hot right now. They don't know the latest thing you're working on. They don't know all that you might be watching and thinking of out there and the socials and so forth. So they're looking for ideas and they want you as that partner, I promise you.
00:11:10
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And if you know, like you said, if you know that you have a lot of work in June or July, that's your hot season. Do whatever you can to spread some of that work out so that you're not totally bombarded in June and July. If you can move some of that to May, move some of that to August, you can have a little bit of breathing room and
00:11:30
Speaker
keep on your sales. Yeah, because nothing looks better on you than being busy. I mean, it's great for your clients to feel like, oh, it's tough to get to those guys because they're so busy. But if you play it right, you can be
Avoiding Sales Slumps
00:11:44
Speaker
busy all year round. And I think that's what the season of sales is really all about.
00:11:49
Speaker
just putting together that calendar, really spending a day or two, really thinking through your client list and thinking about who might be, what are those dates for those clients, making those emails, and also not just limiting it to your current customers, but also your prospective customers, the ones that you feel like you're a good fit for, that you feel like, I've
00:12:12
Speaker
I've done a lot of outdoor video. I know these guys are heavy into outdoor video. I really think I'd be a good fit for them. That's always going to be your best angle. If you feel like you've got video that matches their style of video, your prospective client style of video, you've got a really good chance of getting an in and getting a meeting with them. But I had a friend at an agency that said,
00:12:36
Speaker
I never get calls from video production companies. I never hear from them reaching out to me to get a meeting. And I couldn't believe it. And I thought, geez, man, everyone's always complaining about not having enough work. And yet there you have, you know, people are just not even reaching out to these agencies to show them their stuff. And so I, again, people want to meet, they want, particularly agencies love having these meetings. So I'd encourage you if you've got the stuff that fits,
00:13:03
Speaker
But don't do it at the last minute. If they're an agency with a client that sells outdoor batteries or something, don't reach out to them in June because they're already going to be swamped. Agencies are always going to default to the same people that they know and trust. If you're not on top of mind for them and you're not actively reaching out, they're just going to stick with what they know.
00:13:24
Speaker
Yeah, but again, with agencies, they tend to get real slow in like November and December, because they've already done all the work for Christmas, all the books are already closed, and they're worried about the next year and thinking about that. That's a great time to reach out to agencies to get them to meet with you and say, we'd love to work with you in 2022. Would you be happy? Would you be willing to meet with us? I promise you, that's a really good time. That's an excellent time rather than when everyone swamped in the middle of the summer.
00:13:53
Speaker
So let's say I'm a video production company and I have my calendar together and I'm reaching out to people, but I still have this problem where I get too busy and I forget about sales.
Evolving Beyond Current Clientele
00:14:06
Speaker
I'd say block off a time in your calendar every week. And even if you have to shift what time
00:14:14
Speaker
or what day it is in that week based on your shooting schedule, just make sure you have re-afford dedicated hours in there and keep yourself accountable to reaching out. That's the biggest part and knowing what deals are potentially in your pipeline and just not forgetting to not touch those every week.
00:14:33
Speaker
Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, I think too often in our business, I think folks are just reflexive. I think when we start working, we often, when we started our companies, we were, you know, doing one or two shoots a month and people were reaching out to us and it was really easy. But then we decided we're going to grow our company or more likely we decide we want to grow the type of video we want to make, the quality of the video.
00:14:55
Speaker
And when you do that, often you have to break free of your old clients because they're kind of stuck in the old type of videos that you made. And again, if you want to start crossing that access into better, bigger work, you're going to have to be more proactive about it. And that's just as Jake, just as you say, you're going to have to be reaching out to those folks to be make, to sort of make that change because your old clients are probably not going to change the type and the budget of videos that you've been doing with them.
00:15:25
Speaker
So you're absolutely right. You're going to like the same deal that they've always gotten. And they're not going to get. Yeah, the same deal. And they're less likely to be down with some fancy new style that you might be working on or something like that. So but I agree. I'm just being proactive, getting that schedule together. These are the ways to to win at the season, the sales and break out of that roller coaster, that feast or famine that plagues us all in this business. So I hope you will
00:15:53
Speaker
You will try that out and remember to try out Pipeline, our all-in-one software that will
00:16:03
Speaker
has incredible scheduling powers. So you can obviously build these schedules and reminders right in Pipeline, but it also does a lot of other stuff like- And it will also help you be not so busy during the busy times. It will, it buys you time. It's the app that truly buys you time. And as you all know, your time is your
Time Management and Podcast Promotion
00:16:22
Speaker
money. What might be our best tip is make sure that when you're busy, you're not as busy on the little things that end up all your time.
00:16:32
Speaker
But yeah, absolutely automate some of those. Yeah. So we look forward to having you back again. Remember to like and follow our podcast and we will talk to you again shortly. Good talk to you. Thanks. Bye bye.