An August 8th report in Chain Store Age suggests that 60% of retailers are “cautiously optimistic” about sales in the upcoming holiday season. In their “2013 Holiday Predictions Survey,” e-tailer Baynote reported 60% of retailers are forecasting revenue growth in excess of 10%.

The report also suggests that 30% of retailers will begin their pre-holiday promotions prior to October 1, with more than 40% waiting until early November.

While your sales people are boating, golfing and enjoying the summer weather, it can be difficult to have thoughts of sugar plums dancing in their heads.

But your clients and prospects are planning their Christmas campaigns NOW. You know, “the early bird gets the worm.”

Yet many media account executives will be panicked and running around like frantic last-minute Christmas shoppers.  They’ll be trying to pick up the crumbs left by more professional account executives who captured their prospects’ Christmas budgets while they were still in the planning stages.

I can still recall my rookie days when I called on my prospects with our newly-released “Christmas package” only to hear, “Sorry, but we gave our budget to the newspaper just last week.”

While it might no longer be “the newspaper”, you can bet there are countless traditional and new media reps who will be pounding the pavement around mid-October in the hopes of capturing lucrative Christmas advertising dollars.

If you want your competitors to hear that you have already captured their prospects’ Christmas budgets, you need to have your Christmas sales meeting NOW.

You can see our tips on facilitating better Christmas sales meetings in today’s Radio Ink by clicking:

http://www.radioink.com/Article.asp?id=2687157&spid=30800

A properly planned Christmas Sales Meeting can put your sales team in the mood to be the early bird, to be the first in the door to talk to their prospects about the important Christmas selling season.

P.S. Don’t forget the two worst months of your year, January and February, when you present your holiday season proposals. You’ll find it easier to book the post-season sales and events as part of your package NOW. Once the harsh reality of winter sales slumps set in, it’s much more difficult to talk about optimistic sales projections.