Feast or Famine: The Age Old Problem

I find that within my industry there is a never ending cycle of feast and famine. Some months you will be swimming with work and then the next month have little to no prospects of additional work. We have been able to flatten the troughs through site maintenance for large companies and organizations, but the core problem still remains.

From the time I first talk to a prospect to the time that they "pull the trigger" and begin a project typically takes 1 -2 months. What ends up happening is that during down time, I spend a lot of time trying out new marketing campaigns and ways of soliciting customers. Then about 2 months later I see the fruits of the effort but I am overwhelmed with work to continue my promotional efforts. Some of the problem may be that we have a tendency to see promotion work (like this blog, and the book I'm writing) as things that don't pay the bills. It's then easy to push aside this important work for the customers who are paying us to develop their online store.

Almost every industry suffers from this cyclical nature, whether it's traditional retailers, health clubs, the greeting card industry or car dealers. The trick is to minimize the down time, and control the pace of the uptime. Since starting this blog, I've deployed 6 new online stores, developed 3 custom application and had 2 major product rollouts, and the frequency of posts can be tracked to how many hours / day were occupied with all of this development work.

Do you have any suggestions on how you've reduced the feast / famine nature of your business? I would love to hear your experiences.