Peak month is a month at the high point of the year, when work or deadlines are more concentrated than in regular months. It is also commonly called the "busy season" (a peak in the seasonal fluctuation of demand, or seasonality). There are two types: those decided from last year's order records, and those fixed in advance by the calendar or by regulations. Pages are not rebuilt in a peak month.
What you'll learn in this chapter: How should you set a peak-month goal? Use the same month's results from last year as the baseline, and let the multiplier decide when preparation starts (30 days, 6 weeks, or 8 weeks ahead). Don't use it in performance reviews.
Once you've seen what's missing in Chapter 1, the next step is to decide "by when to fix it." The marker for that is the peak month. This chapter is the foundation of the book. "The Chapter 2 Rule" decided here does not change through the last chapter.
Because this chapter covers a lot, here is the flow up front: (1) why peak months are decided from records; (2) the pattern in which rebuilding fails, and what this book means by "rethinking how you attract customers"; (3) the idea of setting goals by multiplier, and how that relates to performance reviews; (4) how the preparation start date changes with the multiplier; (5) the rule kept throughout the book; and (6) how to run regular months.
Where, and how, should an ambitious goal be set? This chapter is the foundation for stretch goals. You set the goal using last year's results as the yardstick, and separate it from performance reviews. In digital marketing terms, it corresponds to building an annual marketing plan by reading the peaks in demand (seasonality) from your records. The decisions in this chapter are the foundation of what this book calls Annual Quota Optimization.
Scene: The Website That Was Rebuilt Every May
At a company that sells interior building materials, May is the busiest month every year. And every year, at the end of April, the president says, "This year, let's finally get the website right."
When May began, the sales team stopped selling. They hunted for photos, revised copy, and went back and forth with the web design firm. Meanwhile, replies to quote requests slipped by a day, then another.
When they counted in June, inquiries were almost the same as the year before. The only things that had changed were the colors of the website and the tired faces of the employees.
You might say they were spending the busy month preparing to be busy.
Make your peak months the months that appear in your records, not "months that feel busy somehow." And treat a peak month as a month for using preparation, not for creating it. That is all there is to this chapter.
What happens if you make "months that feel busy" your peak months? Before you know it, almost every month is a peak month. If every month is a peak month, there is not a single month left for preparation. The more limited a company's people and time, the harder this hits.
One more thing. Rebuilding pages in a busy month eats into the time that should go to deliveries and quotes. And if the facts inside don't change, a rebuild changes only the container.
A Common Pattern: You Rebuild, but the Substance Doesn't Stay
There are surprisingly many companies like this.
• They renew their website every few years.
• Every time the assigned employee changes, the Sheets left from the field disappear.
• Each time they rebuild, telling themselves "this time for sure," updates stop after a while.
On the day a new website goes live, it feels somehow as if the company has been reborn. But if you get a new lunch box and the food inside is the same as yesterday, it's the same lunch to the person eating it. The "container" here means screens, design, and systems. The "substance" means the sentences and the Sheets placed in it. Even if you change the container, if the sentences inside are the same old "with heartfelt care," nothing has changed in what prospects see.
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