Time to increase your activity while your competition sleeps!

Floridians use to look at the summer time as vacation time.  If you owned a business in Florida you would close up and wait until tourist season came back.  Retailers would stop advertising, restaurants would close up and the owners would open their summer business up north.  Those few people that worked outside the tourism industry would know that the roads and movie theaters would be empty.

Well, that’s not how Florida operates today.  We are a year round business environment that is thriving during the summer months.  Our population has skyrocketed and the number of people working in the tourism industry does not make up the majority of our economy any more.  We have grown up and it is time to acknowledge it.
This means that local businesses must continue to advertise; they must continue to network, they must continue to cold call and they must continue to grow their business.  Many organizations used to limit their networking events or cancel them altogether, not any more.

Sure, lots of decision makers take their vacations during the summer, however that does not mean you can develop more business.  It means you need to work harder and smarter than usual in order to take business from your competitors.

Summer Time Action List

Put together your summer time action list now.  A summer time action list is the actions and activities your will do during the summer that will continue to grow your business:

• Create a summer business plan – this plan should consist of all the projects you don’t have the time to complete during the busy season.  It may include getting all your contacts into your contact management system, or developing that media kit you have been working on, or even conducting that sales training you never seem to get around to doing.  Don’t limit the items, list everything you have been wanting to do or have started but have not finished.

• Identify what will help you the most – once you have your list, you must identify which projects will help you the most.  

You should use the following criteria for making these decisions:
1. Will this project by itself solve one of my biggest issues or increase business substantially
2. Do we have the resources to make complete this project during the summer months
3. Will it cause disruption to our regular business
4. Is this the best time to complete the project
5.  How will we measure success

• Create a basic project plan – during the summer, even you and your employees take time to go on vacation, so use the project plan to make sure all the resources required to complete the project will be available when you need them.  Your project plan can be as simple as listing the tasks, related tasks, resources required, start and finish dates, time required and person the task is assigned to.
• Take action – seems obvious, however this is the one step that is often overlooked.  Hard to believe, however many companies like to plan and plan and plan, they just find one excuse after another why they don’t implement the plan.

You Competition Is Probably On Vacation

No, not all your competition.     They may still be in town, however they expect the summer to be slow and they aren’t paying attention to you or the fact that you are advertising more, networking more and selling more.  This is the perfect time to let your customers know that you are serious about business and that you are here year round to service them.

The networking events you attend will be with other businesses that are working through the summer and they will enjoy working with companies that are working as hard as they are.
You competition may not run their advertisement in the summer, leaving more room for your ad to stick out and stick in your prospects minds.  There is less direct mail, there is less telemarketing, and there is less cold calling.  This means that your increased efforts will have a much greater impact on your prospects.

Other Dedicated Businesses Like Yours

If you are still out there doing business this summer take the time to respond to this blog and let us and the other 4,000 entrepreneurs that visit mybizuniverse.com each month that you are dedicated just like them. 

Please tell us your company name, type of business and what you are doing during the summer.