Moving on from Step 1 last week we start with the basic premise that:

• What you’re doing is decent, honest and legal
• You have the product/ service/ solution knowledge to underpin your business growth activities
• You know you need to learn how to use ethical sales and marketing skills more successfully to increase your company’s performance

You’ve had a week to mull over Step 1 and now you probably need to take a pace back and get physically away from the daily hassles of running your company.

So why not take yourself off somewhere quiet and devote time to some big picture strategic thinking. It can be at the weekend or over a couple of evenings if you can’t yet be spared during the working week. We’ll pick up from the earlier soul searching with some more ideas to focus your thoughts:

• What is your business really about?
• Is your original core business still viable or does it need rethinking?
• What direction do you want it to head in?
• Where do you want the business to be?
• How about a timescale – By when do you want it to be there?
• How about your existing resources?
• Is everyone in your company a positive asset that will help the achievement come about? – This can be a very difficult question to answer, as loyalty, while a tremendous virtue, tends to get in the way of impartial judgement
• Conversely, are there skills in your team that currently aren’t being utilised? Once you acknowledge that we human beings only use 5% of our brainpower, that’s not as unlikely is it may at first appear!
• What practical steps can you take that will help get you where you want be?

Are you getting excited about what you could achieve or are you thinking: “I’ll never find the time to do what needs to be done”?

Don’t be like the chap in Who runs your business? The worst thing you can do now is nothing.

Check your business progress – Step 2