Sales team during the holidays: how not to lose leads

Many businesses simply shut the sales team during the holidays: "everyone is resting, customers too." But the ads keep running, and on days off people actually spend more time on Instagram and send more DMs. This article gives a 6-step plan and a checklist for not losing leads between 31 December and 3 January.

Why a sales team loses leads during the holidays

Under Presidential Decree UP-257 of 24 December 2025, 31 December 2026 (Thursday) is a non-working day for everyone; on a five-day week, the day off from 12 December has been moved to that date (Buxgalter.uz). 1 January is a public holiday and falls on a Friday. So a team on a five-day week has four days off in a row, from 31 December to 3 January. A separate decree may add extra days off in early 2027 — check official news in mid-December.

Four days is a long time in sales. Leads usually get lost for three reasons:

• No reply. A customer writes on 1 January and gets an answer on the 4th. By then they have already bought elsewhere. We covered how much response speed affects sales in a separate article.
• A reply, but a weak one. The person on duty does not know the price, the delivery terms or the opening hours and says "I'll get back to you."
• The lead is not recorded. The person on duty talked to the customer by phone but never added them to the CRM. On 4 January nobody remembers this customer.

The plan below closes all three gaps.

Step 1: estimate how many leads will come in

Plan the rota with numbers, not guesses. Open the end of December and the start of January last year and write down the number of leads per day from your CRM, Direct and Telegram. If you have no data for last year, use the average for an ordinary weekend.

Illustrative example: a furniture store in Tashkent gets 20 leads on an ordinary Saturday. One manager can handle 6–8 conversations an hour properly. So one person on duty clears the day's flow in 3–4 hours, and a second person is needed only as backup.

Factor in your ad plan too: if a promotion runs through the holidays, there will be more leads. How to split a December budget into periods is covered in December ad budget.

Step 2: build a duty rota

Draw up the rota in mid-December and announce it to the team in advance. For each day, state who is on duty, during which hours, which channels they cover and who is backup.

(Illustrative example — set the hours according to your own lead pattern.)

A few rules:

• One day, one owner. "Whoever is free will answer" does not work on holidays.
• Duty is working time. Under Article 263 of Uzbekistan's Labour Code, work on a non-working public holiday is paid at least double or, at the employee's choice, compensated with another day off (Anhor.uz). Agree the calculation with your accountant in advance.
• Short shifts work better. A 4–6 hour shift beats "phone in hand all day": people do not burn out and reply quality holds up.

Step 3: set up auto-replies for hours with no one on duty

When nobody is on duty, the customer should not be left in silence. Auto-replies help here — but they should offer a next step, not just "please wait."

Instagram and Facebook. The Meta Business Suite inbox has automated responses: instant reply, away message and frequently asked questions. Menu names may vary by account, so check the setup in early December.

Telegram. If leads come in through a bot, it keeps working over the holidays: it collects the name, phone number and product of interest and forwards them to the person on duty. Setup is covered in Collecting leads with a Telegram bot.

A good auto-reply says three things:

1. When you will reply: "Today before 17:00 or tomorrow at 11:00."
2. What the customer can do now: catalogue, prices, address.
3. What to send: "Tell us the model and the delivery district — we will come back with a ready offer."

Step 4: prepare a "holiday folder" for the person on duty

Nobody wants to call the owner on a holiday to ask "is there a discount?" So everything the person on duty needs should be in one place:

• Prices and promotion terms: when it ends, who it applies to, what is excluded.
• Delivery and installation: do they work over the holidays, and from which date.
• Instalments: which partner and on what terms. The rules for advertising instalments are in a separate article.
• Opening hours: when the store, warehouse and service centre are open.
• A short script: greeting, finding the need, offer, next step. Start from the sales script structure and add holiday phrases.

Also write down what the person on duty cannot do — for example, "discounts above 10% only after 4 January, via the owner." Then the customer hears a specific date instead of "I don't know."

Step 5: log every lead in the CRM

What gets lost most on holidays is not the conversations but their trace. The person on duty called, agreed on something, wrote it down nowhere — and on 4 January the customer "does not exist."

A simple rule: every lead is a CRM card with a stage and a next-step date. If you have no CRM, keep at least a shared spreadsheet. Which CRM suits a small business is covered in What a CRM is.

Ask the person on duty to leave a short report at the end of each shift: how many leads, how many answered, how many turned into sales, who asked to be called back on the 4th. Both the owner and the next person on duty need it.

Step 6: on 4 January, clear the backlog by midday

If the first working day after the holidays starts slowly, four days of leads wait yet another day. Write the plan in advance:

• In the first hour — a list of all unanswered messages and "call me later" leads.
• Split the leads evenly among managers: warm ones first (asked the price, chose a model), colder ones after.
• Before lunch — a first reply to every lead. After lunch — follow-ups.

Also look at ad results for the holiday days separately: which days brought the most leads and where replies were late. That is the best input for the next holiday plan.

Pre-holiday checklist

• Lead volume estimated from last year or ordinary weekends
• Duty rota drawn up and announced to the team
• Holiday pay or days off agreed with the accountant
• Auto-replies set up and tested on Instagram, Facebook and Telegram
• The person on duty has prices, promotion terms, delivery and opening hours
• Limits of authority written down (discounts, returns)
• Every lead goes into the CRM, with a report at the end of each shift
• A plan to clear the backlog on 4 January is ready
• The ad schedule matches the duty rota

Questions and answers

Should I pause ads during the holidays?

If nobody can answer leads — yes, lowering or pausing the budget makes sense. If you have a rota, keep the ads running and match the budget to the lead flow. Money should not go into leads that never get a reply.

Is one person on duty enough?

For a small business it often is, as long as one person can handle the flow in a short shift. But always have a backup: the person on duty may fall ill or lose internet access.

Does an auto-reply keep the customer?

A bare "your message has been received" does little. An auto-reply with a clear reply time and next step keeps the customer: they know what to expect and are less likely to go elsewhere.

Can the rota be run remotely?

Yes, if Direct, Telegram and the CRM open on a phone. Just do not share logins in personal chats, and give the person on duty only the access they need.

Conclusion

A sales team does not have to shut down during the holidays — it needs to work differently: a clear person on duty, short shifts, a useful auto-reply, one "holiday folder" and a CRM trace for every lead. Plan it in mid-December and on 4 January you start with a ready list instead of a pile of unanswered messages. At Level Marketing we plan the pre-holiday ad schedule together with the client's sales team rota, so the budget does not go into leads nobody answers.

More on this topic

• Lead response time: how it affects sales
• Sales script: a structure for calls and Telegram
• What a CRM is and which one suits a small business