During the course of my work I get to see the inner workings of many companies and how their respective owners operate. As an exercise, I thought I’d list the most common areas of work I help my clients with, and to be honest all of these are pretty serious business sins!

Here are my first four, in no particular order, but all highly important if you want to grow your business:

1. No sales lead management. As the saying goes “another day older – another day colder!” I am constantly surprised that companies, be they one person sole traders to large corporations, have awful lead management. Ask yourself, if you filled in an enquiry form or webpage or left a message, when would you like to be called back? Your answer is how your business should operate, but so many delay in contacting their leads? And worse still, these leads will have cost them money!
2. Owner Focus and Time Management. I’ve written about this before, but I see too many leaders be anything but! It’s too easy to get caught up in the day to day running of the business, and perhaps in your particular line you have too, BUT… you are the one who has to guide the company to success, and the only way to do that is to be strategic sometimes and plan what you want your company to do.
3. Poor Sales Skills. I once worked with a company that had never invested in any formal sales training, and yet they kept wondering why their competition constantly beat them on new business opportunities. Whatever your products or services, good sales skills will make your business better – you will win more business and lose fewer customers – it’s that simple.
4. Cost Management. Do you ever make a significant purchase e.g. a car without doing some research and probably haggling over the price? Well, now consider your business – do you review and keep your costs under control and your suppliers on their toes? Business cost is straight off the bottom line, it takes away your profit, and often the fastest way to increase your profits 10% is to reduce your costs a similar amount.

Now, any of these seem familiar? If yes and you want to expand your busiess, I would suggest resolving them as soon as possible.