On December 23rd, a company sends an email. We’ll be closed December 24th through January 2nd. Happy holidays. The campaigns go live. The team goes home. The calendar says the year is over.
On December 27th, a buyer reads that email. She has three tabs open. A search. An AI answer. A competitor’s page. She is comparing options with more care than anyone showed all month.
The company’s clock ran out. Hers had just started.
Hi, I’m Jeff Payne. You’re listening to The Jeff Payne Show, Episode 108: The Deadline Was Yours, Not Theirs.
Every business has a December 25th.
For a retailer, it’s literally December 25th. For everyone else, it’s the fiscal close, the enrollment deadline, the end of the season, the last day you can use insurance benefits, and the event the whole year was built around. You put a date on your calendar, and everything you say to the market is organized around getting people to act before it.
And then the date passes. And you go quiet. Not because the buyer left. Because your reason to talk went away.
Google just published a study on what happens in the two weeks after that date. They were studying holiday shoppers, so the date was Christmas. But stay with me, because what they found isn’t about retail. It’s about what a buyer does the moment the seller’s urgency disappears.
Here is what changed on December 26th.
The buyer stopped shopping for others and started shopping for herself. In Google’s study, more than half of post-holiday buyers were buying for themselves — up thirteen points from the peak season. The gift list was done. The wish list wasn’t.
She did more homework, not less. 93% of post-holiday store visits began with online research. Deals, reviews, hours, and where to buy. Almost nobody walked in cold.
She bought with more conviction. Impulse purchases fell to their lowest point of the season. Purchases the buyer described as highly confident reached their season high — half of everything bought.
And she bought across more of her life. Not one gift. Four and a half categories, on average. She was resetting her home, routines, and year.
Now, the part that matters for this show. When Google asked people who use its AI search tool what it did for them, post-holiday shoppers were far more likely to say it helped them take the next step toward buying than peak-season shoppers. Same tool. Same people. Different week. When the deadline lifts, the buyer stops grabbing and starts verifying. And what she verifies with is an AI.
Put those together, and you get a buyer who is more intentional, more confident, more thorough, and more reliant on an AI answer than at any other point in the season — showing up in the exact window when most businesses have decided nothing is happening.
That’s the whole episode. The urgency was yours. The deliberation was hers. And you built your calendar around the one that was yours.
Think about what that means outside retail. The person who refreshes their professional headshot in January, after the year-end rush, because they’re the one changing jobs. The patient who finally researches the procedure in the first week of the new year, after your office spent November shouting about the benefits deadline. The executive who moves money the week after the close, after the advisors have stopped calling. They didn’t miss your deadline. They were waiting for it to pass so they could think.
And here’s the uncomfortable part. When that buyer opens an AI tool on December 27th and asks it to confirm a choice, whatever was out there before you went quiet writes the answer she gets. Your silence doesn’t show up as silence. It shows up as someone else’s name.
So the move is a question, and it’s not “Should we spend more in January?”
The question is: Whose calendar is this?
Take every date your business organizes around. The close, the deadline, the season, the event. For each one, ask what the buyer is doing the week after. Not what you’re doing. What she’s doing.
If the honest answer is she’s researching, comparing, and asking an AI to confirm —Google’s data she’s doing exactly that — then the week after your deadline isn’t your quiet week. It’s her loudest one. And the question of whether you’re present, findable, and in the answer during that week was never a budget question. It was about whose clock you were reading.
Two things to check before the year ends.
One: Look at your calendar and find the date when you go quiet. Then ask whether a buyer anywhere in your market is more deliberate the week after that date than the week before. If you don’t know, that’s the finding.
Two: ask an AI tool the question your most careful buyer would ask in the first week of January. See whose name comes back. That answer was written in October.
The deadline was yours. The decision was theirs. I’m Jeff Payne. Thanks for listening. See you next time.
On December 23rd, a company sends an email.
We’ll be closed December 24th through January 2nd. Happy holidays.
The campaigns go live, the team goes home, and the calendar says the year is over.
On December 27th, a buyer reads that email with three tabs open: a search, an AI response, and a competitor’s page. She compares options more carefully than anyone did all month. The company’s clock ran out. Hers just started. That picture is hypothetical. The behavior behind it isn’t.
Google published a study this month on what buyers do in the two weeks after the holidays. While it focused on retail, the finding is something every business owner recognizes: the gap between the seller’s calendar and the buyer’s.
EVERY BUSINESS HAS A DECEMBER 25TH
For a retailer, it’s literally December 25th. For everyone else, it’s the fiscal close, the enrollment deadline, the end of the season, the last day insurance benefits can be used, and the event the whole year was built around. You put a date on your calendar, and everything you say to the market is organized around getting people to act before it.
Then the date passes, and you go quiet. Not because the buyer went away — because your reason for talking did. The urgency was yours. The deliberation is the buyers, and it starts the day your deadline ends.
The urgency was yours. The deliberation was hers. And you built your calendar around the one that was yours.
What changed on December 26th
Google’s study, conducted by Ipsos across the 2025 holiday season, compared shoppers during the peak (December 4–25) with those in the window right after (December 26–January 7). Four things changed.
Buyers stopped shopping for others and started shopping for themselves. 57% of post-holiday shoppers were buying for themselves, up thirteen points from peak season. The gift list was done. The wish list wasn’t.
She did more homework, not less. 93% of post-holiday store visits were preceded by online research — deals, reviews, hours, where to buy. Almost nobody walked in cold.
She bought with more conviction. Impulse purchases fell to 24% of post-holiday purchases—the season’s low—while highly confident purchases reached the season’s high of 50%.
And she bought across more of her life — an average of 4.6 product categories, up from 4.1, as she reset her home, her routines, and her year.
When the deadline lifts, buyers stop grabbing and start verifying.
THE PART THAT MATTERS FOR THIS SHOW
Among holiday shoppers who use Google’s AI Mode, 59% of post-holiday shoppers said it helped them take the next step toward buying, compared with 46% of peak-season shoppers.
Same tool, same people, different week.
(A caution: that sub-sample is small — a few hundred respondents in each window — so treat the direction as the finding, not the decimals. The direction is consistent with every other number in the study.)
Put it together, and you get a buyer who is more intentional, more confident, more thorough, and more reliant on an AI answer than at any other point in the season—showing up in the exact window when most businesses have decided nothing is happening.
Think about what that means outside retail. The person who refreshes their professional headshot in January, after the year-end rush, because they’re the one changing jobs.
The patient who finally researches the procedure in the first week of the new year, after the benefits deadline your office spent November shouting about. The executive who moves money the week after the close, after the advisors have stopped calling. They didn’t miss your deadline. They were waiting for it to pass so they could think.
And here is the uncomfortable part. When that buyer opens an AI tool on December 27th and asks it to confirm a choice, whatever was out there before you went quiet writes the answer she receives. Your silence doesn’t show up as silence. It shows up as someone else’s name.
This is one of the best written, most informative email newsletters I’ve ever read!
Thank you for sharing your expertise, and hope you’re doing well.
Beth Zimmerman
Founder, Executive Director
The Move: whose calendar is this?
The move is a question, not “should we spend more in January.”
Take every date your business organizes itself around — the close, the deadline, the season, the event — and for each one, ask what the buyer is doing the week after. Not what you’re doing. What the buyer is doing.
If the honest answer is that she’s researching, comparing, and asking an AI to confirm — and Google’s data says that’s exactly what she’s doing — then the week after your deadline isn’t your quiet week. It’s her loudest one. Whether you’re present, findable, and in the answer during that week was never a budget question. It was a question of whose clock you were reading.
The week after your deadline isn’t your quiet week. It’s the buyer’s loudest one.
Two things to check before the year ends
FAQ
Sources: Selin Song, “Why post-holiday shopping is your highest converting window,” Think with Google, October 16, 2026, drawing on the Google-commissioned Ipsos Holiday Shopping Study (Oct. 2025–Jan. 2026; U.S. consumers 18+; peak season Dec. 4–25, 2025, n=1,724; post-holiday Dec. 26, 2025–Jan. 7, 2026, n=1,078; AI Mode sub-samples n=295 peak / n=230 post-holiday).
https://business.google.com/us/think/consumer-insights/post-holiday-shopping-behavior
Keyword notes: primary — post-holiday marketing strategy; secondary — buyer intent after deadlines, post-holiday buyer behavior, AI Mode shopping research, January marketing for service businesses, when buyers research most, seller calendar vs buyer calendar.
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