
It is hard to relax and really take a vacation, if you know you're missing sales. Every business owner understands this feeling. You want to pull yourself away from your work, but you can't. You feel the gravitational pull of your business sucking you back into a 12+ hour workday the minute you even think about the word "vacation." However, vacations serve an important purpose. They help you refuel and re-energize. While putting in long hours at your business is necessary to achieve the kind of success you want, a vacation gives you time to reflect on your values, settle your mind, and reduce stress. A little R&R can actually make you more productive.
Establish The Vacation Mindset
To get into the vacation mindset, you have to come to grips with the fact that there will always be problems for you to solve. Business problems, customer relations problems, supply problems, and employee problems. You'll never solve all of them in a day, and even when you do manage to solve some, more crop up eventually. That's not a bad thing. It's actually good. Having problems to solve means that you're still in business. When you run out of problems to solve, you know you're dead.
With that in mind, train yourself to accept the fact that taking a week off, or even a weekend, is perfectly fine. All you have to do is prepare your employees, customers, and prospects for your absence.
Set Expectations For Customers
If you have any existing customers that you're personally working with, give them at least a week's notice. Two weeks notice would be very generous. Then, let them know that one of your employees will be taking over for you while you're away. Ensure your customers that they will get the same level of service that you've given them in the past, and that you will personally assign your best employee to them. Make sure you come through on any promises you make in this regard.
Give Prospects a Heads Up
Prospects aren't paying customers, but you should still let them know you're going to be gone on vacation. This is especially true if you have any "on the fence" prospects. Offer a discount or special pre-vacation price for products or services, and let them know that this will help you out as well since you'll want some spending money for vacation. It might sound a little audacious to say something like this, but think of it from the prospect's perspective. They won't buy your products or services because they want to give you money. They're going to buy products and services from you because you're helping them solve a problem. If you're offering them a discount, and a reason for the discount, now you're helping them in two ways.
Prepare Your Employees
If you have employees, you should give them clear, specific, instructions about what to do while you're gone. Don't leave anything to chance. If you have "A-Level" clients that you want taken care of, then choose your best employee to take over for you. Leave your personal cell number for at least one person in case of an emergency.
Conclusion
While taking a vacation might make you nervous, leaving your business in the hands of trusted employees can actually teach you something new. It can instill a higher level of confidence in the people you've hired as well as boosting employee moral. If they don't have to be watched over all of the time, and can run the day to day operations of the business without you, they will feel empowered. More importantly, you'll get the rejuvenation you need to set higher and more challenging sales and revenue goals to drive your business forward when you return.
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