Every business goes through dry spells. This often leads to the team losing confidence in their product/service, or their ability to sell it effectively. It is a natural progression of how things work. We have two options when we  go through such spells :

1. Do nothing and hope things turn around.

2. Actively adjust strategy and keep plugging away with new approaches.

Option #1 is a no-brainer. However, I see way too many companies adopt this wait-and-see approach. The fear of actually making staff cuts, scaling back, and working out how to tell their investors, paralyzes executive teams from taking any sort of pro-active action that will yield results. At this point the management team only looks for quick fixes. The best being their ability to ramp up sales in a hurry to avoid any sort of backlash. Things however do not always work out so smoothly!

In the second option, the executive team realizes that a business does often go through cycles, and the best thing they can do for it is to continue plugging away, and focus on improving the value they provide their customers. The team must accept that quick fixes are not a long term viable strategy, and plugging away every single day will eventually yield larger upswing results when markets recover.

Unfortunately we live in a society which demands instant results and gratification. Taking paths that take months or years to realize their true potential are left to the side in lieu of faster get-rich schemes. The sooner we realize the wisdom in the ’slow and steady’ school of thought, the sooner we will end up achieving our goals and aspirations.