Merry Christmas! Here's some more money.
My dad had a talent for buying my mom the wrong Christmas presents, and after a number of failed attempts, he resorted to writing cards with cash inside. Sometimes the cards would say here’s $x for the spa or $y for some clothes, but eventually he ran out of ideas and resorted to poetry. My all-time favorite:
Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
Here’s some more money.
(I’ll try to desperately link that anecdote to the topic of this post, but it’s really just a Christmas story I wanted to share.)
As the holidays approach, searchers often wonder whether they should pause or continue their outreach to business owners. After all, these business owners are unlikely to be in their offices responding to emails. I will answer this question with another anecdote.
In the summer of 2008 I began selling Manhattan real estate. As you may remember, these were not boom times. In fact, of the 40-odd people working in my Chelsea office when I started, no more than five were still there a year later. Pickings were slim, losses were frequent, and morale was low. So when the weekend came around, the allure of being anywhere other than the office was strong, and sure enough, everyone avoided work like the plague come Friday afternoon.
I might have done the same were it not for Vasilios, one of the rougher, more veteran people in the office. Early on in my real estate career, Vasilios once told me “Come in on the weekend. It’s like shooting fish in a f*%&ing barrel.” So I took him at his word and came in on Saturdays and Sundays.
I typically arrived before the office manager, who held the keys, so I would grab a donut from the food truck and wait outside until her arrival… alone. When she arrived and opened the door, I would settle at my desk in a quiet office… alone. Vasilios would come shortly after, and aside from his gruff voice on the occasional phone call, the office was silent. I would post some ads, review some contracts, and post some more ads, and daydream about the future. Most of every Saturday and Sunday was like this - absolutely dead, a zombie apocalypse.
But then, almost inevitably, someone would come in the front door and ask for help. (We had a well-positioned storefront office that enjoyed good foot traffic.) This person typically needed something urgent and was hoping for someone to help them right away. Being a relatively junior salesperson, I would never be given these leads on a weekday when more senior agents were in the office. But on a weekend? Just me and Vasilios. And Vasilios was often busy, so the client was mine by default.
These clients were serious; otherwise they wouldn’t waste a Saturday dealing with a schmuck like me. They knew what they needed, and they closed quickly. Thinking back, I can’t be sure, but I think I likely made at least as much money from these impromptu weekend clients as I did all my other clients. Simple supply and demand.
The same can be true of contacting business owners during the holidays. True, not many will respond to you. However, other buyers will also be slacking, and the owners who really need to sell will get back to you. Plus, the holidays, and the family time they bring, tend to have a polarizing effect. Depending on the quality of that family time, the holidays can force owners to realize either that they’re missing out on family time by spending their lives at the office, or that losing that office would result in their insanity and an early death. The former will result in a call; the latter won’t.
While it’s almost impossible to quantify this effect, my observations have shown this logic to hold water. And with the automation tools at your disposal, there’s really no reason not to send one more email during the holiday season, and then to continue the outreach into the new year. Just be ready to receive the calls whenever they come.
Action Items
Make sure your prospecting drip has enough steps to cover 6-12 months of outreach. You can keep it season-agnostic.
Prepare and send a holiday message to any close contacts, including your investors, advisors, attorneys, bankers, interns, and any sellers with whom you are in discussion. Roses are red, violets are blue, sell me your business?
