As the 2nd quarter draws to a close, I have the distinct feeling of what the great American football coach Yogi Berra called deja vu all over again.  The business owners I work with report that this quarter has been more like last year than the first quarter was - things seemed to slow down ahead of the budget and don't seem to have picked up.

I think we have to work on the basis that this is what things are going to be like for a while.  This is what slow growth looks like.  I call it a soggy recovery (not a term you'll see economists adopt any time soon).  I'm probably being conditioned by all the rain we've had and the state of my lawn, but I see a lot of businesses having invested in growth strategies such as renewed advertising, additional sales and marketing resources and generally trying to get out and about a bit more.  But to date, progress and results have been slow in coming.

There are a number of points to make here.  First, we're in a post-boom, post-doom environment.  What worked for us in both of those phases won't work for us now.  Perhaps markets are not quite so price-driven as they were in 2008/09, but they are far from being feature or status driven like they were in the boom.  So we have to come up with offers that reflect the preferences of our A class customers as they stand today.  

The second point is that I don't think many of us have taken the time to go back to our marketing plan and really refresh it.  To some extent it's become a bit of a forgotten art.  In retrospect we didn't have to think about it too much during the boom and during the depths of the recession the focus was on reducing costs and holding on to as much of the top line as possible.

I've just been through the exercise myself, and it's been a real challenge to let go of some of the comfortable assumptions I had about my market, and to let go of my attachment to some of my pets that no longer serve the business or that don't fit as well as I would like them to.  Some core things were re-affirmed, including the need to focus on core products but repackage and reposition them.  And in re-affirming some things I already knew, I have invested new energy and purpose into the old strategies.

The final point is that when we make investments in marketing in this kind of environment, results are not going to be instant.  There is a lag between flooring the accelerator and the turbo kicking in.  We have to be patient, disciplined and focused.  And we have to believe that if we keep doing the right things, practicing new and better behaviours, and pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone, we will prevail.  It's only a question of when, not if. 

I had the pleasure of hearing John Anderson tell the story of Con-Tiki not so long ago.  He's publishing his memoirs shortly, and I recommend you get a copy - it's a great story and he's a great story-teller.  

The story began when he was a young kiwi on his OE in London in the early 1960s.  He'd been to Paris, fell in love with it and wanted to get back there but had no money.  So he decided to organise a trip for a bunch of other people as a way of reducing the cost.  He put up a notice in Earls Court, which was frequented by young New Zealanders and Australians.  He advertised it as a 3 month camping tour of the continent for 19-25 year olds at 120 pounds.  As he was putting it up a young woman from Adelaide told him that she liked the sound of it and would like to go.  In a flash he said "Well you'd better hurry because there are only two seats left!"  She said she would call her parents that night, and he told her that she would have to pay 50% in advance.  Sure enough she turned up the next day with the money, which he used to buy the bus.  

He sold all the tickets in a few days and was thus able to buy the camping equipment needed.  His book is aptly titled "Only Two Seats Left", and I have no doubt it will be a great read.

There were a couple of other things he said which struck a chord.  The first was that his top priority all through his career was his health.  His observation was that if you didn't have your health you didn't have anything and you certainly couldn't run a business if you weren't physically well. 

The second was that he built the business - which grew at an extraordinary speed - on the people he employed.  But more than that, he would deliberately give them massive challenges.  He described it as throwing his staff "hunks of meat".  He hired people who were ambitious, and he gave them jobs that matched their ambition.  For example when he decided to move into the US market, he charged his trusted operations manager with the job of building it from scratch.  While he was involved in monitoring progress and providing support, the job of launching the company was his manager's responsibility.  That individual went on to head a large organisation, and to this day he put it down to the culture of "hunks of meat".   

It takes a brave person to hand over the exciting bits to someone else.  But then, how else are your people ever going to learn to be as good as you - and ultimately replace you?