The Summer Slowdown: Debunked

In the early days of Leadership Dynamics, Inc., a number of people in the training and development business told me that June, July, and August were usually the slowest for sales due to “the summer vacation mindset.”

They said that companies didn’t want to commit to training and development during these months, because their people were more relaxed and less focused.

Business owners were afraid they just wouldn’t get the same return on investment if they held training in the summer. It seemed that this was the prevalent belief among people in our industry. As a result, many of them took their foot of the gas and adopted the “summer vacation mindset” that they attributed to our clients.

About 15 years ago, I had the opportunity to attend and present at a worldwide industry convention. The title of one of the speakers’ talks was “The Summer Time Is the Best Time for My Business.” The speaker, Pete Morrell, from Denver, Colorado, told the audience that for many years the summer months were the slowest in his business. Pete shared that after taking time to think about this, it just didn’t make sense to him.

He stated that many of his clients also experienced a lull in their productivity and performance results during the summer. He got to thinking that if he could help his clients understand that training in the summer months was actually an opportunity to improve their productivity and performance during this usually slow quarter, it would dramatically increase their results for the whole year. This would substantially improve their return on investment in the training they implemented.

Instead of giving in to the summer slowdown, Pete decided to adopt the affirmation “the summer months are my best months.” It turned out that through this change in mindset he always managed to make the summer months his best quarter. He was consistently one of the top performers in our industry. 

After hearing this talk, I decided to displace the mindset that clients don’t invest in training during the summer months, and instead adopt Pete’s affirmation that “the summer months are my best months.” The result was the best quarter in the history of our company. 

Through Pete’s insights I was also able to disprove the industry myth of the “summer vacation mindset.” More importantly, I was able to help many clients achieve remarkable improvements in their productivity and profitability during the summer, which dramatically improved performance results for the year. We were able to turn what was for many clients their worst quarters into one of their best. That was truly a win for all parties.

We welcome the opportunity to help you bust the myth of the “summer vacation mindset” in your company and break through to higher levels of productivity and performance results in 2021. You can view our upcoming course schedule or contact us using the buttons below. We think that it may be one of the best business decisions you make this year.

Enthusiastically,
Paul