Your Prospects Don't Want to Lose Another Summer

Hi H Client!

The second season isn't a revelation to anyone reading this. The fall season can drastically help fill in revenue gaps, and some of you have seen this before many times. What's worth talking about now is why the fall client behaves so differently from the spring one, because it changes what should be in front of her over the next ninety days!

The homeowner who reaches out in September just finished a summer in a yard that didn't work. Memorial Day through Labor Day, every cookout, every weekend the kids were home, every evening she wanted to be outside, spent looking at the same patio she's been meaning to do something about for three years. She isn't planning abstractly for next year. She's making sure she doesn't lose another one. That's the most motivated version of that person you'll meet all year, and she surfaces on her own for several weeks.

What she needs to hear is that finishing now is how she starts next summer ready. Build in the fall and the first warm Saturday in May is a weekend she spends using the space. Wait until spring and that same Saturday is a job site, behind the queue and into June, half the season gone before any of it is usable. In year-round markets the case is even simpler: fall and winter days are the best working conditions you get, and the outdoor season never really closes, so a project finished now is one she uses through the best months of the year instead of during the stretch nobody wants to be outside anyway. Either way, nobody wants to spend another run of good weather looking at a setup they've already decided they're done with.

That's where our attention goes heading into the fall and the rest of the year: making sure what's in front of her carries that urgency instead of "let's plan for next year." Same client, completely different ask, and a much shorter path to a signature.

Until Tuesday,

Anna Halstead

Co-Owner, Halstead Media Group