“Being an adult is saying, ‘After next week things will slow down a bit,’ over and over until you die.” 

I have laughed at that internet meme probably more times than I care to admit. I think it’s funny because there’s some truth to it — especially in agriculture. 

We often pretend like there’s a “slow” season — e.g., after calving, once all the pairs are out to grass, after weaning — but when we get to that set of days, we find just as much work waiting for us there. 

Your production sale may be the best example of this. Leading up to your single largest payday of the year, the list is long and often the nights are short. As you’re picturing bulls, readying the facilities and planning to host a crowd, it’s easy to think, “Ah, it’ll be nice to get a break when this is all done.”  

Yet, we all know that’s not how it works. You may celebrate ever so briefly, but then it’s back to work delivering bulls, completing follow-up paperwork, and on and on.

In the busy season leading up to the sale, marketing your program often takes a top priority. You are actively working to get buyers in the seats, so you’ve perfected the sale book, placed the ads, made the phone calls and gotten the word out. You’ve planned budgets and decided on your mix of media and hopefully leaned on your regional manager to guide you through the process. It’s a lot of details that all have hard deadlines for completion.

A post-sale plan

When sale day comes and goes, often the work shifts heavily toward logistics. Marketing may be the easiest chore to put on autopilot — most of the tasks aren’t time sensitive or they end up falling in the “nice to do” instead of the “must do” category. 

But you could set yourself apart by doing the post-sale follow-up well. 

When your buyers have made a significant investment in your program, communication after the purchase is a way to remind them that they’ve made the right choice. From “thank you” postcards to social media follow-up, there are dozens of ways to streamline communication but to make it personalized to your program. Take the time to make your customers feel important and help them get dialed into the Angus tools and resources.

Using the Angus Media Pathway to Sale Day Calculator to plan your timeline of marketing needs leading up to your big event gets you organized on the front end, but we’ve recently introduced an option to include post-sale suggestions in your to-do list. Check out the tool, get a customized list, and let us know if there’s anything we can move from your queue to ours. 

Life might not truly slow down, but working a well laid out plan can make it seem less chaotic. In this season of adulthood, I’d count that as a win.