Will you be looking at hiring a management consultant in the first half or second half of 2025?

I have had the same conversation with clients five different times in the last week, which means I should post it on LinkedIn for the benefit of my network.

I have been encouraging them to send out an email asking all their prospects if they will be looking for their services in the first or second half of next year.

December 15th and June 15th are significant dates to email all of your prospects because you can use the calendar's full effect as a flanking mechanism to set up appointments with your target audience. Because if you ask someone about two halves of a year and the answer is neither, then are they really even a prospect??

You also get a chance to flush out the crap in your funnel, which naturally shows up as we dream up ways that a casual conversation really might mean business in the future :)

In professional services of all types, the first business meeting, where the prospect discusses and shares details, is the true leading indicator of future success.

People don't like to track it because it shows just how few they actually have in a year, but we must track it, as performance measured is performance enhanced!

This brings us back to why Dec 15th matters: You get to write the following email to your "prospect" list.

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Email Subject: Checking in on the First Half of 2025 - Should we schedule a call?

We are officially in the Holiday season, with functions and events almost every hour, so I recognize that you may not get to this email right away.

However, as things calm down around the new year, I wanted to get a quick response from you on a simple question.

Will you be looking at (insert your services) in?

A. The first half of 2025
B. The second half of 2025
C. Not in 2025

We will pattern our follow-up with you based on your answer.

Thanks so much,
Drew
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This type of email may be hard for you to send out, but it does tie in nicely to our recent post on When is the right time for a hard conversation question??

For all business owners, the answer is "Now would be fine".

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