Sales and taking advantage of Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales

This is Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-newer podcast. We will accomplish our goals through sharing experience, improving tech skills, increasing business knowledge, and embracing life. Let's dive into the next episode. Well, hello and welcome back. We're continuing our Between Seasons special topics, looking at the week of Thanksgiving, and some things a little more Black Friday and thankful kind of oriented. Just knowing what time of the year we're at, what kinds of things are going on. There's a couple of these things that I want to cover this week that maybe just fit well here and are definitely not a season unto themselves. Now, this episode, I want to focus on sales and something being on sale, not selling a product. I think we tend to, and I get this from conversations with other small business people and entrepreneurs and even side hustling people, it feels like a lot of time we wait till the end of the year and get into December and then we look at budgeting for the next year and also trying to essentially, I guess, spending, what do we spend this year? If you've got a budget, then you may look at it and say, hey, I've got X amount of money left. I need to go ahead and spend that. Particularly if you're in a company where that's part of the deal. You've got a budget left over. You can use that and you want to, whether it's for training or for products or services, whatever it happens to be, so that you hit your numbers, that you spend what you said you were going to, you take advantage of it, and you don't leave stuff on the table. Well, particularly inside hustles, we don't run into that as much because basically if we don't spend it, we have it. I don't think we tend to tie ourselves down to a budget. We don't say, hey, if I set aside $100 this year for something and if I don't spend it, then that's somehow something I've left on the table. Instead, you simply say, okay, well, I'll spend it next year. But there are things that we look at where we say, hey, we have this plan or we have this growth or we have this approach that we want to take that's going to require X, whatever that is, whether it's a service or a product. Then as we're getting into the end of the year, we're looking at our budget and things like that, then we spend that. Particularly there's tax implications and all that kind of stuff that just makes sense to do so. The thing I want to look at this episode though is taking advantage of sales that occur, particularly towards the end of the year, but not at the end of the year. Black Friday in particular, and now it seems like now it's sort of grown to the whole month of November. A lot of places are running Black Friday sales as early as, I think I saw some in mid-September this year. Definitely as you got into October, there was a couple that would show up here and there. Then as we're getting into November, several places are already just saying, well, the whole month of November is going to be sales. That may have to do with the COVID-19 stuff that has slowed sales for a lot of companies. It may just be that they've decided, hey, let's not just take a day or a couple of days. Let's turn this into something where we can try to go black as far as sales. Through the month and maybe even get a jump on some people. Instead of waiting until that Black Friday sale thing, maybe we'll get some customers earlier because we'll run our sales a little earlier. Now you do have stuff as you get into December, and particularly if it's a service or product that's not straight off the shelf. This includes software and things like that. If there's some sort of a licensing agreement that you need, then waiting until December, sometimes you can work some deals there. Take advantage of that time as part of your negotiations and say, hey, we're thinking about buying it, but we're not really sure. Maybe we'll wait until next year because they probably want to hit their sales numbers. You're probably going to be more likely to get some sort of a deal. I think most people know that there are times or seasons where the salespeople are more likely to get, they're going to push for a deal. They're going to be a little more on your side because they want the sale so that it accounts for that month, that quarter, that year, whatever it happens to be. Or maybe that they just want to make sure they get enough sales in so that they have the commission payments to pay for the holidays or a vacation that's coming up, something like that. Sometimes you do get situations where organizations or salespeople will allow you to essentially buy ahead. Pay now for something you're not going to use for another six months, but you get a discount because one, they get to count it on this year's sales plus you're paying some money upfront maybe, things like that. Or maybe it's even just an agreement that you're going to do it. You don't have to pay until June when you're going to use it, but you do an agreement now that allows you to get some sort of a discount. I think that's what our focus should be is to have, as we do with a lot of stuff, plan a little sooner. We need to be ahead of ourselves when we're planning. That's the whole point of a plan is that you've actually thought about something before you do it. Instead of thinking about it immediately before you do it, let's talk about planning a little further ahead. Particularly when you're looking at Black Friday and Cyber Monday, or now I guess it's Cyber Week sales, there's a lot of software and services that, although you would think they have nothing to do with the holidays, they still have discounts. A lot of times, the last couple of years, there have been some great deals on places like Udemy and Packet Pub and some of those kinds of places that do training where they say, hey, if you buy a year worth of training, you get it. A lot of times, it's like 50% off, things like that, which works really well if you're thinking, hey, I'm going to, in the next year, learn X. Maybe I'm going to get a certification or maybe I'm going to focus on a new technology that I want to learn. Well, if you're looking in that November timeframe the year before, then you may see some really good discounts that makes it really cut your costs as far as actually getting that done. In some cases, the certification itself, you can essentially buy ahead and get some sort of discount. When we're talking about some of the products we're talking about, that can be substantial. If you're talking 50% off of a product that's costing hundreds of dollars, that's saving you hundreds of dollars or thousands of dollars and it's going to save you close to $1,000 or more. Keep an eye out. Don't just use this time period for gifts and personal items and things like that. Think about it from the business point of view as well. Your side hustle, your business, there may be some really good deals out there. Honestly, there probably are really good deals out there. Take a look at what's... Check out the sites of products that you are going to use on a regular basis because the sales messages, the marketing and stuff like that may not reach you. It's not as likely, and what happens on what your Google background is and stuff like that, obviously places like that will push ads to you that seem to make sense, which I'll follow up on that in a second. If it's something that's an outlier product, particularly if it's something that you're thinking about working with next year, but you haven't really spent time really thinking about researching or anything like that, that nobody's going to know that you're thinking about it. Nobody would know to push an ad. Now, swinging back around to that whole Google advertising and things like that, a benefit of these tracking pixels and remarketing and some of the kind of stuff like that is that if you go visit a site, a lot of times if they put an ad up, then it's going to suddenly start showing up wherever it can be displayed. For example, if you're thinking about let's say a JIRA and Atlassian JIRA Confluence subscription next year, go check out the Atlassian site, take a look at a couple of the products, and you'll start seeing JIRA ads in the days and weeks ahead, which normally can be a pain because you keep seeing that same ad over and over and over again. But if you go touch the sites of the products that you're thinking about, then that's going to put you on a list of interest or something like that, which means that when those places run sales, you're more likely to see an advertisement for that, which can be great because sometimes, particularly as you get into the Black Friday, Cyber Monday kind of stuff, sometimes there's sales that are 24-hour, 48-hour sales, and those things disappear pretty quickly. This includes training and similar kinds of mentor classes and stuff like that. There's a lot of these places that they'll throw something up, but there'll be a limit of first 20 people, first 50 people, first 100 people, something like that. You want to make this intelligent advertising stuff work for you. Go out, spend a little time, just five minutes, hit a site, do a little research, take a look at a product or two that you're thinking about, and then that will get you on the list that you'll start seeing advertisements related to that. That means that if there is a big sale, you're more likely to actually have that push to you, be notified that it's coming, as opposed to you having to go bounce around on sites and see what's out there. You can do the same thing actually just as easily in some cases by doing some sort of comparison. If you want to go in and compare hosting providers, do a search or two related to that, and the next thing you know, you're going to start seeing some ads related to a lot of different hosting providers. Take advantage of this time and the sales that are out there for your business and professional development, as well as buying gifts for friends and family and things like that, which is a follow-up to that. Maybe there's some things out there that make sense to purchase as maybe a gift for customers or co-workers or people that have helped you out in the side hustle world. Maybe you've got a couple people that did some work for you this year, and it was a side hustle. They did it basically for free. Well, maybe this is a chance where you go get a product for yourself. Sometimes you can even get like a buy one get one free, or instead of buying one, you can buy four licenses and the second, third, and fourth license all totaled. Your total cost is maybe what normally would be a second license. You can essentially get something at a discount for yourself, but also provide a discounted product or service or licensing for co-workers or the people that have helped you out. Don't be afraid to look at what's out there and maybe take advantage of a situation where you really you're thinking about getting something for yourself, but when you look at it, this is a perfect opportunity for you to get something for yourself plus as a thank you to some of the others around there and get some sort of a bulk discount out of the whole thing. Sales are all over the place, so this is a time, and again, not that last week in December when you're wrapping up your numbers and you're closing the books for the year, but instead when you're getting into November and early December, when all these sales are going on, let's go ahead and take a look at what you need. Maybe you can get a, and it can be very mundane. Maybe you get a discount on printer paper for next year or print cartridges or USB drives or batteries, you name it. There are places out there that everybody runs sales, Office, Max, Depot, Lowe's and Home Depot and places like that. Things where it may not be stuff you normally think about too much for your side hustle in particular, but there may be something out there that's like, hey, here's a time to maybe get a shredder that you needed a little cheaper than normal or a microphone headset or some sort of, like I said, a USB or external drive, licensing, software, hardware, all of it's on sale to some extent. It's worth it. Like I said, in some of these cases, it's pretty sizable amount of money that you can save by just thinking about stuff a little sooner, do a little planning further ahead, a little more advanced planning, and think through what you need. And the bonus with all of this is if, and how it lays out, sometimes you can get a lot of your purchases for a year done that November or December beforehand. Obviously, revenue and cashflow and stuff like that can be an issue, but depending on how things have worked out, you may be in a really good situation to go ahead and purchase in advance some of the things you're going to do next year. It works out from a tax purposes and expenses and stuff like that, that you spend what you wanted to spend on stuff, but now you're actually well ahead of the next year and you can adjust your budget for the next year. If you were going to spend $1,000 on office supplies next year, and instead you can spend $850 and be covered for the year, $750 you can put somewhere else. Plus, now it's done. You get that out of the way while you're in the shopping mode or whatever, because you're out searching for stuff for friends and family anyways, might as well kill two birds with one stone and pick up a couple of things for your side hustle or your business. Take advantage of them. Don't think that sales are just for regular consumers. They're for business consumers as well. Challenge of the week, what do you need? Have you looked ahead next year? What are the things that you're going to need or the putting together your budget for next year? Maybe there's some stuff that you can pick up sooner and at a discount and help reduce your overall expenditures and budget for the year ahead. Something to take advantage of and you never know. It may just be one thing here or one thing there, but at least that's a couple of things that you got taken care of and at a lower cost. That being said, I hope you go out there and have a great day. Enjoy the holidays. Try not to get too crazy out there with all the sales and stuff that's out there. Online is obviously the safest way to avoid that kind of stuff, but if you want to enjoy people, have a ball enjoying people. Have that great day. Have a great holiday. Have a great week and we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to Building Better Developers, the Developer Noor podcast. For more episodes like this one, you can find us on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon, and other podcast venues or visit our site at developernoor.com. Just a step forward a day is still progress, so let's keep moving forward together. There are two things I want to mention to help you get a little further along in your embracing of the content of Developer Noor. One is the book, The Source Code of Happiness. You can find links to it on our page out on the Developer Noor site. You can also find it on Amazon, search for Rob Brodhead or Source Code of Happiness. You can get it on Kindle. If you're an Amazon Prime member, you can read it free. A lot of good information there. That'll be a lot easier than trying to dig through all of our past blog posts. The other thing is our masterminds slash mentor group. We meet roughly every other week and this is an opportunity to meet with some other people from a lot of different areas of IT. We have a presentation every time. We talk about some cool tools and features and things that we've come across, things that we've learned, things that you can use to advance your career today. Just shoot us an email at info at developernoor.com if you would like more information. Now go out there and have yourself a great one.