Hooray for Summer! It’s the time of year that we all start to think about vacations whether that means 2 weeks away in the Bahamas or a 3-day weekend at the beach nearby.
It’s not like it was during school, when everyone took their Spring Break the same week and there was nothing to worry about because no one was getting more ahead or behind. Your networking group needs to think about how to keep the momentum going for leads and new members.
Sharing your summer plans with your group is important. You don’t want them to send you that great lead that you have been hoping for the same day you get on an airplane heading to Dallas to see your niece graduate from TCU. If there is someone to follow up on leads while you are gone, make sure they are on your email distribution list for leads (you should be able to control this in your settings of your lead sharing software – at least LeTip members can). Similarly, you don’t want to tell one of your clients that Janice will reach out to her in the next 24 hours to help solve that problem with their website when Janice won’t be answering emails for the next 10 days. Use a group calendar to keep these issues top of mind.
Now that you won’t be tripping over each other passing bad leads, lets talk about how to make sure that the momentum you gained from January to May for growing your group doesn’t come to a complete halt.
We know from 40+ years of history doing this that if your chapter goes dark for more than a week, it will take 3-5 times as long getting back up to speed in the leads that you pass to each other. In other words, if you all decide to stop meeting for 3 weeks in August because its just too hard to schedule around the people who are on vacation, then its going to take you at least 9 – 15 weeks of down business before you can recover. Your new members that joined will think that there is no reason to be there and not even stay through a year.
Once your group has a calendar with anticipated vacation times, your Program Director can start scheduling Speakers and Showboaters that you know will be there. Don’t worry if you get scheduled during this timeframe, it actually works out great for you because the people who are in attendance will be focused on growing their business the same way that you are.
