Just Say No to Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Thanksgiving week in the US has never made much sense to me as a Canadian.

I understand the desire to spend time with family and friends, but the insane efforts people make to travel for one day of turkey is only exceeded by the absolute insanity of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. 

(Which have spread to Canada, BTW, even though their Thanksgiving is in October.)

Now stick with me, because I’m going to illustrate how shopping over the next week is not how you want your clients to buy from you. 

Better than Black Friday

If you’re using Black Friday as the start to your holiday shopping, it can be the perfect way to get a loved one exactly what they want, at a really decent price.

Keep in mind you would never discount your work in the way that retailers are doing this week, but taking this analogy into the creative services space, it’s like a client calling you up and saying, I need X, completed by Y and my budget is $. If you have capacity and can meet these terms, great! You’re both satisfied.

Now what happens if you’re shopping for your nephew and you have only a vague idea of what he’s into these days, but you need to be budget conscious this year. Are Black Friday or Cyber Monday shopping offers going to be a good idea? Probably not. 

You don’t know what you’re looking for so you’re not even sure which retailers you should be considering, let alone which ones have the best deals that are worth standing in line to get. This is like a potential client who doesn’t really know the problem he needs solved other than a vague idea of a need to ‘generate more leads’. 

Less Consumerism, More Problem Solving

If you instead decide to ask your sister for a suggestion of a category of what might interest your nephew and you go along to an actual bricks and mortar retailer that specializes in this type of thing (I’ll even allow for an online merchant with a real, live salesperson on the other end of a chat), you’ll encounter an expert in this category who will ask you some questions about your nephew; perhaps his age, what items in this category he already owns, other interests he has etc. to be able to make a recommendation that is likely to be a winner with your nephew. And it may even be on sale!

This is overly simplified, but it’s akin to a client mentioning in a weekly check-in call that her boss has been talking about building a loyalty program that will probably need multi-channel exposure. Your client contact has only a vague concept of what’s needed because the real, underlying problem to be solved hasn’t been defined. 

If your account manager asks the kinds of questions that flesh out the ultimate goal of this loyalty program, eventually leading to a recommendation based on the services you offer that your client didn’t even know you offered, you suddenly have the very real potential of signing six months of work for your agency that was never part of the original scope. 

Even better, this kind of service can take place all year long, turkey or no turkey. 

Your Account Team is Your Front-Line Salesforce

Have you trained your account team how to ask the kinds of questions to uncover and develop opportunities within existing client accounts? 

Don’t rely on a Black Friday/Cyber Monday mentality to bring in business. Seek out ways to serve year round instead.