Most of us treat the weeks before Christmas as wind down time. If you sell to other businesses, I think that’s the wrong way around.
The work you do now decides who picks up the phone in February. Here’s why.
The decision starts before the call
6sense surveyed more than 4,000 B2B buyers and found that 94% of buying groups had ranked their preferred vendors before first contact. They bought from that favourite 77% of the time.
By the time someone calls you, they’re often checking they were right. The real decision started in a room you were never in.
Most of your market isn’t buying today
Professor John Dawes at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, here in South Australia, found that only about 5% of B2B buyers are in the market at any one time.
The other 95% aren’t a no. They just aren’t looking yet. When they start, they’ll think of the names they already know.
The sum that changes December
Dreamdata put the average time from first touch to a won deal at 105 days in commercial and professional services. That’s a 2022 benchmark, and your market will vary, but the sum is worth doing.
Start in November and it lands in February. Start in February and it lands in May.
In the United States, DesignRush also found that 22 of 27 B2B service categories hit their search peak in January or March. Buyers are looking early in the year, and you want to be known by then.
Everyone else turns up in January
January is the busiest month for new LinkedIn campaigns. Expandi counted more than 10,651 launched that month. If you wait until then, you’re starting at the same time as everyone else.
What’s different in Australia
Most of the research above is from overseas, so two things need adjusting.
First, most Australian businesses budget to 30 June. January isn’t a fresh budget here, so don’t plan around one. What you do have is a chance to build a pipeline that pays off before the financial year ends.
Second, our year starts late. South Australian schools go back on 27 January, and a lot of business only gets moving after that. Anything you start before Christmas has a real head start.
What I’d do before the break
- Write down the people you actually want to work with. Start small and be specific.
- Share something useful with them. A point of view beats a pitch.
- Connect with a short note. Belkins saw 8.2% replies with a note and 5.3% without.
- Keep your follow up to three messages. Expandi saw 9.8% replies at three messages and 5.0% at five or more.
- Go back to them after the break. The conversation you started in December is much easier to pick up than a cold one in February.
You don’t need a big campaign. You need the right people to know your name before they need you.
If you’d like a hand, that’s exactly what our LinkedIn lead generation service does. Until 18 December, December is on us when you sign a six month term. Send me a message and we’ll see if it’s a fit.
