How to use a quieter summer to prepare your business for Q4 success

Want to know how to use a quiet summer to prepare your business for Q4 success? Seasonality in business means there will be times when business is busier than average and times when it is quieter than average. Summer is a season that splits businesses. There are some where it is the peak, but for many businesses, it is a quiet season. But a quiet summer can be a blessing in disguise if Q4 is a peak in your business. Keep on reading to find out how to use a quiet summer to prepare your business for Q4 success.

 

 

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Why a quieter period is a blessing when used wisely

When things start to slow down in business, it’s likely your instinct is to panic, but if you are like the majority of service providers your version of fully booked will mean your working days are spent predominantly working in the business. You are focused on being a great service provider and keeping your clients happy, and there is very little time left for you to work on your business.

 

A quieter period, for a limited period of time, is a blessing because it gives you the opportunity to work on your business. It gives you the opportunity to get into CEO mode, make strategic decisions and then take strategic actions that will improve how your business runs and grows.

 

HOW TO USE A QUIETER SUMMER TO PREPARE FOR Q4 SUCCESS

 

1. Review your annual goals and progress to date

 

If you set annual goals back in January, that will have been over 6 months ago. So, it makes sense to review your goals and ensure they all still feel right. Hopefully they do, but if they don’t, you can check out this blog post – What To Do When Your Business Goals No Longer Feel Right. If you are still happy with all the goals you’ve set the next thing is to review your progress to date. When you are head down working in your business, it’s easy to not have an accurate understanding of exactly what is happening in your business. You might not have been tracking your key metrics as much as you should be, or you’ve been tracking them but not taking a proper moment to compare with your goals and identify if you are on track for achieving your goals.

 

This doesn’t have to take you long, but taking a moment to properly review your goals and progress to date will mean you have clarity on what you need to achieve by the end of the year.

 

2. Create your plan for Q4

 

The point of this blog post is to use a quieter summer to prepare your business for Q4 success. Now that you have an accurate understanding of where your business currently is, it’s time to create your plan for Q4. This might seem weird because there will be a gap, time-wise, between the time you reviewed your progress to date and when Q4 starts. Don’t worry too much about that. Hopefully, you’ve already got a Q3 plan that you are following so just make your best judgement about where the business should be at the end of Q3 and assess whether that feels achievable based on where the business is right now.

 

Creating your Q4 plan further in advance is key for Q4 success because when you are doing the plan it might identify actions that need to be taken in Q3, and since Q4 is often the most financially the most important quarter of the year you want to make the plan in advance so you’ve got enough time in advance of Q4 starting to get any actions done.

 

For example, it might be whilst creating your plan you realise that you need to get a photoshoot done and have a range a marketing assets created. Knowing this sooner rather than later means you can hire the photographer, have the photoshoot and then get your designer to create the assets ready to go on the 1st of October. Another example is you might realise you can’t hit yoru revenue target based on your current offer suite, pricing and capacity. As a result you might decide you want to create and launch a scalable offer (if so, you should check out my 1:1 programme Fully Booked and Scaling). Or you might decided that to increase capacity you are going to hire a VA or marketing assistant. Creating and launching a scalable offer or hiring someone takes some time. It makes much more sense to be sorting these things out during the quieter summer so they are in place ready to go as Q4 starts.

 

DON’T LEAVE YOUR SUCCESS IN Q4 TO CHANCE. GET A PLAN IN PLACE. Whilst I’m known as the Annual Planning Queen, I help business owners with annual, 6-month and quarterly plans. So if you’d like support to plan for Q4 for maximum success don’t do it alone. Work with me. DM me on LinkedIn or  Instagram saying QUARTER.

 

3. Review your offer suite and pricing

 

Your offer suite and pricing are the foundation of your business. They have a direct impact on the money your business can generate and the hours you’ll have to work in the business. Given how important your offer suite and pricing is it makes sense to ensure you review them ahead of Q4.

 

When looking at your offer suite you should be considering whether you enjoy delivering all of the offers, are all offers still getting clients good results and have you got the right combination of offers.

 

Then when looking at your pricing you’ll want to consider are your charging enough so you have healthy profit margins, are you confident selling at those prices, does your pricing match your brand positioning and messaging, and do your prices across your whole offer suite make sense.

 

ENSURE YOU HAVE THE OPTIMUM OFFER SUITE AND PRICING When you book a Pricing Power Hour, I’ll review your whole offer suite and pricing. You’ll get an expert eye to share how potential clients are viewing your offer suite, as well as a pricing professional to tell you what changes need to be made. You can book a Pricing Power Hour here.

 

4. Refine your brand positioning and messaging

 

Continually putting your prices up is one thing, but ensuring you can sell at that price is another, and your brand positioning plays a key role in people being happy to pay a certain price. Brand positioning is something that businesses will look at when creating their brand, but then it doesn’t get much more attention until a major rebrand. Success in Q4 is reliant on your marketing converting so it makes sense before Q4 starts to refine your brand positioning and messaging. Businesses are constantly evolving. This isn’t about a major overhaul but just making sure you are confident your brand positioning is aligned with the client you want to attract and your pricing. You want to ensure your messaging is reflecting the business you have today, not the business you had a year ago. And that the messaging positions your business, and your offers, as the go-to choice.

 

5. Create your Q4 marketing assets

 

Given that you’ve got a Q4 plan, you have clear sales targets and you’ve refined your brand positioning there is no reason why you can’t get ahead and start creating your Q4 marketing activity. Q4 is known as The Golden Quarter and it is financially the most important quarter of the year for many businesses. Given how important it is to so many businesses it becomes a very busy time of year from a marketing and advertising perspective. For marketing activity that requires booking in advance, it will be booked out in advance. For marketing activity that has variable spend you’ll see the prices increase. And in content marketing (email, long-form and social media) more content that ever is being published. For that reason alone, it doesn’t make sense to get ahead, map out your launch plans or marketing campaigns, and then start creating the assets. But on top of that, if you are a service provider who is still involved with the marketing of your business, then you want to free up your capacity as much as possible. Success in Q4 is partially reliant on your maximising the number of hours you are working in your business to be working on income-generating activity. You don’t want to be spending an hour making an Instagram Reel when that could have been an hour getting paid by a client.

 

Creating your Q4 marketing assets only makes sense after you’ve got your Q4 plan, reviewed your offer suite and pricing, and ensured you are happy with your brand positioning. Now you should be clear on what your revenue targets are, what you need to sell in order to achieve that and now you can work out what marketing needs to happen to generate those sales.

 

This can be your ongoing marketing, a launch, a seasonal marketing campaign or it might be that your business is going to take part in Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Small Business Saturday etc. Create a marketing timeline so you can see exactly what marketing will be running, on what channels, and when. The majority of marketing can be created in advance and when you’ve got your marketing plan created you, or someone else on your team, can then start creating the assets ready to go.

 

6. Improve and document systems and processes

 

Success in Q4 is likely to mean you are busier and therefore you want to ensure your systems and processes are working as smoothly as possible. Technology is constantly changing and it might be that there is now a better way to do something than 6 months, a year, or let’s be honest a few years ago. Looking at your technology stack and seeing if it is still fit for purpose during a quieter summer is a smart thing to do. It makes more more sense to switch technology over when things are quieter than when you are busier.

 

Equally, if your business is growing and you are growing your team, then you’ll need to get processes that only lived in your head down into standard operating procedures (SOPs) so that other people are able to successfully do the work instead.

 

 

That’s it. You now know how to use a quieter summer to prepare your business for Q4 success.

 

Success in Q4 really relies on two things. Firstly, you need to have the maximum capacity to delivery and secondly, you need to maximise sales (of offers that are priced right). All of the suggestions I’ve shared on how to use a quieter summer to prepare your business for Q4 success will help you to achieve one of those two things. They’ll ensure you go into Q4 focused on what matters, having cleared the maximum amount of space for you to deliver, and ensure that you know what you need to sell, for how much, and ideally already have some marketing ready to go.

 

The suggestions I’ve shared will prepare your business for Q4 success and if you’ve got a quieter summer so more time on your hands it absolutely makes sense to use it wisely.

 

A quieter summer before Q4 really is a blessing when used wisely and I hope you decide to make the most of the opportunity.

 

I hope you’ve found this blog post useful. If you have, do let me know over on Instagram or LinkedIn.

 

And if you want help using your quieter summer to prepare your business for Q4 success, there are a number of ways I can help you.

DM me on LinkedIn or  Instagram saying PREPARE or fill in my contact form here.