Automate Your Holiday Sales Pipeline
Holidays can be stressful for small businesses. You may be preparing for an influx of sales and revenue. Or, you may be wondering how you can stand out and compete with bigger players in your industry.
The holidays bring the reality of a feast or famine sales pipeline to light for many business owners. You may have a great sales day on Black Friday, but you may then struggle to keep that momentum going throughout December.
Or, perhaps your business isn’t well suited to holiday sales. In that case, you may be expecting a quiet November and December, as you struggle to reach your revenue goals for the year.
The good news is you don’t have to ride that roller coaster. When you automate your sales pipeline, you can keep communication with your customers flowing and encourage sales through the end of the year.
Why You Should Automate Your Pipeline
Automation reduces the need for human action within a process, and creates more time for you to run your business.
It’s important to automate your sales pipeline, especially for the holidays. If you’re dealing with a large number of Black Friday or holiday sales, you’ll need your process to be ready. You need to ensure that everything happens smoothly and that you can keep up with orders.
If you are expecting a slower November and December, an automated sales pipeline can flip your expectations around. If you communicate with your customers frequently, offer specials, and continue to encourage sales, you could have an incredible year end.
Either way, the key to having success in November and December is automating your sales pipeline so that no one falls through the cracks. Automation allows prospect nurturing, sales fulfillment, and customer service to happen easily.
Three Ways to Automate Your Holiday Sales Pipeline
No matter what you choose to automate, the key is to start now! You don’t have time to wait if you want everything functioning smoothly for the holidays.
1. Automate Lead Generation
Lead generation is a great place to start. Especially during the holiday season, you simply don’t have time to manually enter new leads into your email marketing system and personally send out your lead magnets.
Building your list at the end of the year not only sets you up for January, but it gives you an opportunity to begin the nurturing process on new prospects. Whether you use e-books, trials, samples, or product guides for your free giveaway, be sure to automate the process.
2. Automate Social Media
Posting frequently on social media is an important way to stay visible during November and December. Your social media strategies will depend on your business, but the bottom line is that they must be automated.
As a business owner, you have a lot going on during the holidays. Not only do you need to manage your sales and specials, but you have personal and family obligations as well.
You want to make sure you post promotions, tips, or inspirational messages. Since you don’t have the time to do it manually, you can automate social media, but be sure all of your automation tools integrate well with each other so everything works seamlessly.
3. Automate Content Marketing
The nurture section of your sales pipeline is often overlooked, and it shouldn’t be. The majority of your prospects are not ready to buy immediately when they meet you. Through content marketing, you can engage them, educate them, and help them get to know you.
Automating your content marketing allows that to happen consistently through the year, not just when you have time to put up a blog post. When your content marketing is consistent, your presence in your prospects’ minds will be consistent as well. Then they’ll trust you more and move toward buying.
Automating your holiday sales pipeline is more than wishful thinking. It’s an essential part of your preparation for the holiday season.
If you expect November and December to be busy, you need to have plans to keep certain processes moving smoothly without your attention. If you expect it to be slow, you need to effectively nurture your prospects and encourage them to buy from you.
Either way, you need automation. When you’re ready to get things off your plate, I’m happy to help you automate your holiday sales pipeline. Contact me today for a free strategy session!