How sales leaders navigate summer slowness

The summer months can impact any organization’s GTM strategy, with holidays and vacations stalling deals and slowing momentum. According to ZoomInfo, the summer activity lull could cost companies up to $400,000 in new business. So is there a way for sales teams to push through and avoid the seasonal blip?

“It’s not so much [that] deals slow down—activity kind of slows down and there’s a lag,” said Trindl Reeves, CRO at insurance brokerage and consulting firm Marsh McLennan Agency. “What we do today is going to help us in Q1, so it’s important that the activity, as far as new business appointments and those kinds of things, are happening now.”

CROs and sales leaders have taken note of this trend and factored it into their yearly planning.

Slow and steady

Some CROs are taking advantage of the slower period and refocusing attention on things they might not normally have the time to do. According to Bill Warshauer, CRO of rewards and incentives platform Tillo, this time can give CROs a chance to reevaluate priorities and make sure their team is on track to hit goals.

“It’s just a matter of how you prioritize what those items are and your expected outcomes…Close out the year strong, build your pipeline for the following year, put yourself in a position for a rocket-ship start, while at the same time trying to get deals both boarded and then actually operating, so revenues can be realized,” he said.

Some of Warshauer’s main priorities during the summer months are analyzing the business’s lead-to-cash (L2C) process to uncover areas of improvement. It also means reevaluating his team’s tech stack to experiment with new tools in the industry, and exploring new talent to add to his team.

“We still spend a considerable amount of time looking at pipeline hygiene, asking ourselves the hard questions on: Why this deal isn’t closing?” he said. “Once we get past July and then into August, we really have to start turning our attention to how we start building our pipeline for the following year.”

Summer incentives

Reeves’s strategy to combat summer slowness involves using the slow period to her advantage. Marsh McLennan Agency, whose parent company Marsh is a Formula 1 sponsor, is hosting a competition for its sales representatives this summer. Reps are broken up into several teams and to gain points will need to record meetings and show proof of client interaction. The winners get to take a prospect to a Formula 1 event later this year.

“We want to do it when it’s slow—that was the whole point. To do it in a down period to really fill the pipeline for the future,” Reeves said. “We’re going to track how much revenue we sell as a result of that through our Salesforce, so we’re super excited. There’s a direct correlation and activity to results, so it’s all about driving those new logo appointments.”

Reeves said the best practice for her team in acquiring these meetings during a slow period is personalization—making sure reps know clients’ pain points and needs and addressing those in their outreach. Her team also has “accountability meetings,” where she makes sure her reps are on track to hit targets.

The CRO believes these tactics will help her team stay on schedule to hit their 2026 goals, and will set them up for success entering the new year.

“What we do now is going to set them up for next year,” Reeves said. “That is why they need to really be focused on filling the pipeline with quality new logos now.”