I often see small business owners who wait until the last moment to take advantage of the leverage of a moment. Every May is Small Business Month. With eleven days left in May, you should capitalize on the rest of the month with three sales plays that will generate revenue for your small business.

Play 1: Convert The Attention Into Direct Asks

Small Business Month offers small businesses an opportunity to get in front of customers, providing a warm introduction to people in your community who are ready to reach out and specifically seek out small business services and products. However, even with the spotlight, you still must ask for what you want. Research shows that only 44% of salespeople make a follow-up attempt on prospective customers. To get your customers to convert, you must ask for the sale and follow up.

If you want referrals, ask for referrals; if you want reviews, ask for reviews; whatever your request, use the rest of this month to build a system that creates opportunities for engagement with your customer base and pushes them to take action with your business.

The structure of your customer ask should be relevant to your service or product. For example, you should ask for a testimonial immediately after a person enjoys your service, encourage them to leave an honest review, and ask for direct feedback on how they felt about the service. Using a time-bound request attached to a discount is crucial to getting potential customers to act; for example, giving a prospective customer 48 hours or 7 days to buy before the price is increased is a great way to motivate them to pull out their credit card.

Don’t forget to email your customer list. As the month winds down, increase the frequency of your direct outreach and measure your customers' response rates. You might find that your customers respond well to more frequent communication.

Play 2: Use Cross-Promotions To Strengthen Authority

One of the strengths of Small Business Month is the network of locally owned businesses that business owners can build. During the rest of the month, seek out strategic partnerships with businesses that are industry-adjacent to your own. As an example, if you owned a massage therapy business, you could partner with a nail salon to create special packages to create a symbiotic relationship between customers who are likely to purchase at both types of establishments.

Create a pitch script and the partnership structure. Sketch out what it would look like for your business to establish a referral relationship that will increase traffic to both of your businesses. One of the most notable examples of this is back in 2010, when Airbnb formed a partnership with Craigslist to cross-post its listings.

Airbnb gained access to the millions of Craigslist users, and Craigslist got inventory, content, and user engagement.

Partnerships can be temporary or long-term; however, they should be win-win for both businesses. Carefully planning what each business brings to the partnership is crucial to creating a successful partnership.

Play 3: Use This Opportunity To Fix Broken Sales Processes

Putting effort into marketing during Small Business Month may result in your sales increasing rapidly. When sales increase sharply, it can put a business under stress, inevitably putting pressure on your sales process. This is a good problem to have, not a bad one, because it will expose the parts of your sales process that need refinement or complete rework.

This is a golden opportunity to plug leaks that could cost you money, time, or stress as your business grows.

You may notice things like lag times in responding to inquiries. Research shows that if you wait 24 hours, you’re 60x less likely to qualify a lead. Understanding factors like your salesperson’s response time can be transformative during a small business's crucial growth phase.

Look at your sales process from the beginning and assess how you induct clients into your business, convert them to paying customers, have your salespeople follow up, and handle referrals. Tomorrow’s sales start with yesterday's customers, so building a well-oiled sales program is crucial to both cash flow and long-term viability with small businesses.

When you notice that there are changes that need to be made to your sales process, you should apply what I call the “hot potato principle,” which states that when you’ve decided to make an organizational change, you’re holding a hot potato; get it out on the plate immediately, execute on the initiative without delay.

The faster you implement, the faster you learn. There is no better time than Small Business Month to springboard your sales for the rest of the year in Q3 and Q4.