Surprise!  Surprise!
The leaves are falling in Vermont!  

When I was in in Vermont last weekend cranking up the leaf blower, I realized that the natural rhythm of the Fall was well underway. 30% early color in my woodlot and lots of buses full of leaf-peepers. Stratton's ad this morning featuring this picture marketing the fall festival next weekend and early discounts on ski passes made it official for me. 

 In the very unique state of Vermont, 25% of the annual tourism dollars happen in the next two or three weeks with busses from Ohio rolling in daily filled with seniors waiting to buy tiny, overpriced jars of maple syrup.  Right now, the rhythm of the seasons in Vermont is all about marketing as it should be!The Fall marks the natural rhythm of the seasons that make us unique as New Englanders...in addition, of course, to Dunkin', the love of the Bruins and the Celtics, our undying hope for the Sox and our use of "wicked".

October kicks off the Planning season 

In the natural rhythm of business, just as leaves fall in Vermont, every CFO and CEO kick off the annual October-November planning requirement.  Product plans, engineering plans, sales and marketing plans...all of which need to add up to a final 2025 business plan complete with financials and hiring plans.

At this time of year, we're deep into working with customers facilitating those plans.  It's always exciting and often a bit challenging working with senior managers who are working hard to balance revenue growth and financial requirements for net income and cash flow with the reality of market conditions and competitors.

Here's what we're seeing so far this planning season:

• Caution in General.  Not about recession, a bit about the outcome of the election, but mostly about the global unknowns of Ukraine and the Middle East. Until this morning, I would have added the fear of what could have happened if the dockworkers had continued to strike, but at least that decision has been kicked down the road until January...but with a hefty 3-year pay increase agreed on yesterday. 
• AI Everywhere.  Detailed use of AI is being planned into every component of every department with the most major impact being designed into Sales at the BDR level, into Marketing at every level, and, of course, into Engineering development especially in software and mechanical prototyping.  Comparatively, in our current thinking and use of AI, we're at the dial-up modem stage of the Internet. 
• Hiring.  With the exception of hiring senior salespeople and seasoned regional sales managers, there's a wait-and-see attitude being extended through the first quarter as to adding people in general. Having said that, there's more and more discussion about making immediate change at the end of the year surrounding underperforming heads of Sales leading to more and more of ..."let's quietly look around now and not wait."
• Sales & Marketing Tech.  For those companies who are already fluent in the use of their Sales and Marketing platforms, there's a general feeling not to add anything more, and that they probably have too much that is overlapping and not being used today. For those companies who are fluent, we continue to see large ROI results and 20%+ productivity gains being baked into 2025 plans.
• 60-65% of the discussions are about Sales & Marketing with a mix of longer-term 24-month strategies (25%) and short-term very detailed quarterly Sales & Marketing tactics.  The next largest category of planning time we're seeing is focused on 12-18-month organizational changes with more and more discussion than we've heard in prior years about succession planning at the various C-levels.   

working on your 2025 Planning!

For a few ideas on your own sales and marketing planning for 2025, click here for our Writing the Winning Sales Plan, and Writing the Winning Marketing Plan, outlining a few ideas on structure, models, process funnels, and productivity tools. 

Give me a call and let's discuss having us facilitate your 2025 planning process. I drive a ton of miles every week, and there's nothing better than having a call to talk about your current thinking about 2025 as I challenge the wicked end of day commute out of Boston.

www.derbymanagement.com  
Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts.