We are in the middle of the most important three months of the year for B2B services companies. It’s budget season, and your clients and prospects are making their plans for 2021 over the next few weeks. Do you have a plan to get money allocated to projects you can complete for them?
1. Budget Season is an immense pain in everyone’s butts.
Your client has a job, but then in budget season, they have a whole other job – working on the budget! They guess at what folks want; they get feedback about what’s available, they submit revision after revision– one likes it (except the CFO).
Your clients are going to be a little more crabby unless you are there to help them with their budget!
2. You client needs good ideas to gain budget for their team
If budgeting is a battle, ideas aligned with the organization’s strategic initiatives are the ammo. The more ideas you develop for your client showing that you and they are working hard to achieve the organization’s stated initiatives for the following year, the more chances you and they have of gaining budget support.
3. Politics matter – they matter a lot
In many organizations, the budget process comes down to who has the ear of the CFO and CEO. If your client doesn’t have it, who does? How can you become part of their plan?
4. Getting in the budget is only round one!
Lots of things that are budgeted don’t get started. But if you don’t have money in the budget, approval to get started is more problematic.
My number one tip for managing budget season is to ask each client what their budget process is like. Get the details; when are their deadlines, what do they need, what are the company’s key initiatives for 2021? Become a part of their solution to this pain-in-the-butt process that they have to navigate.
How well is your account team navigating the budget process with your clients?
