Kids, Deadlines, and Sales

Are you in sales? And do you have or interact with children?

Because there's a lot to be learned about sales in dealing with kids.

I don't know about you, but more often than not our kids don't actually get off the couch and clean up the mess until they're about to reach the breaking point of our patience. We implore the 1-2-3 parenting method at our house and it usually turns into "1 . . . 2 . . . two-and-half . . . two and three-quarters . . ." and finally there's action.

Not until there is a deadline with some sort of consequence do we really see progress made.

Call it procrastination, busyness, laziness, whatever, but if we as humans don't see an urgent or significant need to act, we usually don't. It's just easier to do nothing or put it off until tomorrow. Set a deadline, though, (i.e. if I count to three then no T.V. for the rest of the day), and all of sudden there's urgency.

Deadlines make us prioritize our limited time or resources.

Same thing in sales.

As a manager of a small business, sales is the key driver of our engine: ad sales, subscription sales, event sales. No sales means no cash flow and no profit. No cash flow and no profit mean no business.

So how do we drive sales?

We start by using one of my Dad's (@mjstoddard) foundational marketing principles: AIDA.
Attention
Interest
Desire
Action

If you want to get a response from a direct mail letter, an email, a flier, or whatever marketing piece you're working on, make sure you grab their attention, get their interest, create a desire for your product, and include a call to action.

It's that last item where deadlines have become of paramount importance. I have found that nothing drives action quite like a good deadline.

We can send a fantastic email to our potential advertisers listing all of the wonderful benefits we offer a month ahead of the deadline . . . and nothing. Maybe a sale or two, but nothing too significant.

Then the day before a deadline, we send out an email to advertisers saying today is the last day to get a special deal and . . . BOOM—$5,640 in new sales.

People don't act until they have to—either because of a time deadline or a scarcity of product. It's something I count on every month or year for whatever sales cycle I am working on.

So rather than bemoan the fact that we're all procrastinators in one degree or another, embrace it. Plan on it. Make the most of it.

Set your deadline to take action.