Are you feeling like this?
Ice cased (moulting) Adelie penguins after a blizzard at Cape Denison, Antarctica, c.1912. Photograph by Frank Hurley. State Library of New South Wales, Australia.

With all respect to my west coast friends, the rest of us are freezing. I flew over Washington DC yesterday to look down on a frozen river, snow and ice. It was snowing, blowing and frigid cold when I got on the plane in the Midwest, frigid cold when I got off of it in the East, and cold cold cold in between. Schools were closed from snow and below zero temperatures. A coworker from the often balmy southeast had frozen pipes. Businesses were closed, and even our media customers were working from home.

A snow day means a vacation day, right? Not in media sales! We are too connected to let it go on a day that is not reserved for a true vacation or illness. And even then, who among us doesn’t check email or take that quick call from the client? Make the best of your homebound snow/cold day!

• Use technology. You can work on presentations, send emails, and even make phone calls (YES, ACTUALLY TALK TO SOMEONE!) and no one will ever know this was done while you were in your footy pajamas.
• Break your routine. How cool is it to be wearing fleece-lined sweats and a hoodie while working? Relax and look at the business of the day differently. You may come up with some good copy ideas or not care so much about that account you have been clinging to when you are in different surroundings and a different mindset.
• Clean your “house.” Not your real one, although you ARE but a few steps away from the vacuum. Clean up your House of Accounts. Make a list of those to drop and those to move to a higher priority. For the latter, make a plan to move them through the sales funnel. You never have time to do this at the hectic station. You do now, while those daytime tv shows keep you company in the background.
• Do a Facebook brainstorming session. Ask for ideas for kinds of businesses that will need advertising after temperatures warm up. Plumbers will have plenty of calls to fix broken pipes and roofers won’t be able to keep up with repairs needed to shingles or rot from icy moisture. So who else will have needs? As your “Friends.” They are bored, too, and like to offer their opinions.
• Be ready to hit the ground running when things thaw. You made appointments on the phone, you caught up on your paperwork, you made plans for top priority accounts, you have ideas for new categories. Spring into life once your clients are back to normal on their ends.

Hang on, most of America. Make the best of snow days. Work a little, relax a little, work some more, then go out and build a snowman (doesn’t have to be a snowman!).

By Kitty Malone, Efficio Solutions Manager of Client Services