Happy New Year

Those of you who have been with us for a while will (hopefully) have realised that we’re specialists in sales and marketing communications training for b2b companies.

That’s because we’ve learned just how much

• Asking the right questions
• Of the right people
• In the right companies
• At the right time and
• Listening to and acting on the answers

all combine to play a big part in the success of any business.

Not exactly an Einstein breakthrough.

The points above are all pretty straightforward and you’d think that they’d be addressed within a much broader business basis where common sense would figure strongly, too. Yet, for some strange reason that nobody’s come up with a credible theory for, and I’ve certainly not so far fathomed, common sense sometimes goes right out the window just when it could do most good.

So we’re going to start off this year with a bit of navel gazing and a series of questions, ideas and suggestions to check out ways we can use our some common sense to move our businesses forward if we just stopped to think for a moment. Then we could prioritise our time, energy and efforts to produce best results in our businesses.

Sound like a good idea? To start us off we’ll have:

Decide what skills are essential to the success of your business

Whatever the core nature of your business let’s take it as read that you strive to provide the best products, services or solutions you can. And you’re bound to have additional support skills you’ve picked up along the way to help you.

Yet, no matter how capable at multi-tasking you are, you’re unlikely to possess all of the skills or have the time needed to run your business smoothly and successfully on all fronts without some additional help. And, in the early days of a business especially, there often isn’t much spare money around to pay for it.

But let’s not think about the money side for now. Just to get the little grey cells working after the festive break, why don’t you list the skill sets you believe to be essential to the success of your business.

Then across the top have 3 columns: “Excellent”, “Competent-ish” or “Useless” and put your tick under each to indicate your assessment of your ability in each as a really rough and ready start point.

That should begin identifying your prime focus areas, the ones that are causing you heartache and that need to be addressed and propped up. You’re not taking part in a test – this is purely to help you focus your time, attention and energies. Throw everything you can think of into the mix.

I’ll put together a list of the areas where existing skill sets (or lack) have proven to have a strong impact on the health of any business in our next blog. Some may make you think about things in a slightly different perspective – Let’s wait and see!