Dread it, run from it, the summer slump still arrives. 

Perhaps you’re experiencing this slowdown throughout the season, or maybe you’re only feeling the ‘slump’ on certain weeks, but every business, without fail, will have ‘down weeks’ when metrics decline, leads go cold, emails remain unanswered, and website visits hit their lowest point. Instead of reevaluating your entire operation and playing the blame game among different departments, it’s vital to understand that every organization will encounter a seasonal downturn, and it might not be anyone’s fault. 

Thankfully, you don't have to start from scratch and completely overhaul everything to recover your momentum. Sometimes, all it takes are a few tweaks and adjustments, and special events to recapture your audience's interest and get your sales motions back on track. 

Through years of research, customer interactions, and weathering discouraging summer slumps ourselves, we have compiled a set of measures that you can swiftly action to improve your season and gear up for a thriving fall.  

1. ENHANCE PROSPECTING 

Though it might sound counterintuitive to suggest more prospecting at a time when most of your leads are on vacation, our recommendation is about making prospecting more strategic and meaningful to achieve better outcomes. For example, HubSpot offers tools that enable you to track lead visits to your website in real time, empowering your sales team to swiftly determine the most engaged prospects and personalize their outreach based on lead behavior and interest level.

Instead of expending energy on pursuing unresponsive prospects currently vacationing at a beach, you can improve your targeting methods and customize your sales pitch by tracking the individuals who interact with your website and resources. 

2. Uncover Upselling & Cross-Selling Opportunities  

If the lead volume is on the lower side, you can pivot to maximizing the deals you’ve already closed or are on the verge of closing. It might be beneficial to contact existing customers and ask how they’re using your product/service.  If your customer wants expanded capabilities or is actively working to reach their goals faster, it might be the right time to mention how your other products or services can help get them there. You can even sweeten the pot with discounted rates, relaxed contract terms, and new promotions. 

Summer presents a tremendous opportunity to foster and strengthen existing customer relationships while assessing their needs and goals, which have most likely evolved since their initial investment. Also, be sure to take some time to review your product offerings prior to reaching out to your customers, as they might not be relevant to the customer journey at all. It’s all about building a solid connection with your customer and being attuned to certain signals.  

3. Change Content Strategy 

It never hurts to revisit your content strategy plan and make sure it's up-to-date, innovative, and engaging for your prospects and customers — no matter when or how they intend to buy. A lot of businesses add a seasonable flair to their content, emphasizing why their product/service is the best-suited investment for their summer quarterly initiatives.  

If you aren’t already doing so, run a seasonal marketing campaign through all your platforms — email, social, PR, blogging, SEO — and establish a schedule for each stage of the campaign. Ideally, you want to have your content prepared, built, planned, and ready to be sent to sites at least two months before peak times -- preferably sooner. 

Finally, no content strategy is ready to implement without a comprehensive CMS driving the performance and reporting. HubSpot’s leading Content Management System can create, manage, and track your content in an easy and sustainable way, all in one place. So, if you’re already brainstorming ideas to conquer next summer’s slump, investing in a CMS is an effective first step.  

4. Seek Referrals  

If you’re calling your customers anyway, why not ask if they know anyone who could benefit from your product or service? As you'll be launching your relationship with the referred prospect with a personal recommendation as opposed to forging trust from the ground up, the deal can close much faster. Outside of leveraging existing customer relationships, look to identify businesses that offer complementary products or services to yours and establish referral partnerships. By cross-promoting each other's offerings and referring customers to one another during the summer, you can seamlessly expand your reach and tap into new customer networks. 

With HubSpot, you can also set up and manage a referral program to incentivize and reward customers or partners who refer new business to you, automating the process of tracking referrals, issuing rewards, and nurturing relationships with referrers. 

5. Social Promotion 

The sluggish engagement and readership that come with the slow mid-summer can serve as the ultimate playground for experimentation. Why not create unconventional campaigns or one-off projects that you might otherwise shy away from during high-traffic months? With reduced stakes during this leisurely period, the right social content could boost your engagement and traffic, opening doors to exciting new opportunities in the fall. 

And, if you aren’t feeling too risky, focus additional efforts on whatever has been working so far! Let's say you take your current blog or website content and repurpose it into longer-form content on your social media platforms. This allows you to showcase customer profiles, share compelling tales from the trenches, and provide glimpses into your company culture — all while fostering conversation with prospects, customers, and potential partners.  

6. Update Sales Tech Stack 

You’d be surprised how many of your sales challenges can be solved immediately by automating some of your current workflows. With HubSpot's sales automation, your reps can be periodically reminded to follow up on any idle deals that stalled for one reason or another. For instance, you could set an automated alert triggered every two weeks if a deal hasn't changed status. So, during the lull, you can allocate your time to deals that need the most attention. HubSpot can also set up customized email sequences triggered by certain events or actions, so your sales team is spared from manually sending out welcome messages, order confirmations, tracking information, or any other type of email that fits within an automated sequence. 

Sales enablement and automation don’t necessarily pad your pipeline with more leads per see, but they can empower your workforce to manage their time effectively, prioritizing high-value activities that make an impact. Whether you want to audit your current process or make data more consistent across your organization, this is an excellent time to upgrade your tech stack. 

Use HubSpot to Mitigate Summer Slump 

As you can tell, there are numerous ways you can gain traction through the summer slump. Some can be actioned immediately and might even make a difference in the next few weeks, while others are longer projects that require more planning and consideration. Nevertheless, implementing HubSpot is a practical initial step to aligning your team to your most pressing priorities and setting you up for success during a hectic fall.  

Leads may come and go in waves, but your progress should not. It is vital that your team does not remain stagnant, but rather takes proactive actions rather than waiting for things to get better on their own.  

Let Flawless Inbound facilitate change in your organization — we’re a certified HubSpot Solutions Partner and can introduce you to all the tools you need to generate more leads and conquer the summer slump. Just reach out to us with any questions, and we’ll be more than happy to offer free consulting services to set you off on the right path.