The business is driven by the imperative of making sales. Without sales, there is no survival. The market is approached in a random way initially. Low-hanging fruit is the objective. Successful business sales patterns eventually replace ad hoc experimentation and not knowing where the next piece of business will come from.

If you believe your company or business is at this stage you may find some very helpful articles and videos with all sorts of advice in the Emerging section of this site. You may also like to hear from some other entrepeneurs telling their stories from Newstalk Podcasts or why not have your own say on the lively smallbusinesscan.com Forum

Innovation is essential for business survival. Use this to score your innovation ability.

Innovation has become a polluted word with a lot of different meanings. It a one of the buzz words in current management speak, government policy, etc. But everybody seems to have a different interpretation and it is getting in the way of what innovation should be about.

Innovation is the systematic development of new opportunities. And is not only the 3Ms, HPs and IBMs of this world that need to innovate. It is becoming essential for business success.  Product life cycles are getting shorter, the speed of change is ever increasing.

As your company develops, you will need different sets of skills. The skills you used several years ago to propel your company through the start-up and early growth phases are not the same as the skills you now need for growth and maturity

Ask yourself the question; if you would apply for the job of CEO if your own company would you get it? What happens if the answer in “NO”?

You would be mad not to use the advice, insights, experience, knowledge and contacts of experience directors and advisors. Advisory boards are like friends you go for advice, ideas and feedback, they view your business from far, far away.

The average reading time for a business plan is 30 seconds and is getting shorter. If your plan or presentation does not capture the imagination in that time frame, you are wasting your time. In the same goes for the executive summary.

You have been through the start-up stage and it is now time to bring your company to the next level, including increasing your turn over to a million and more (the first million is the hardest). Here are some tips to consider:

You need to be able to translate your plans and targets into the resource implications for your business. Use this template and translate your planned actions into time, money and people.

If you are in a growth phase, please be aware of some of the traps:

You need to establish a business model that will support your plans for growth. If your business strategy changes, you may need to modify your business model to align with it.

Take stock of your business achievements, your resources and current market position, before you raise decide on your future direction. Do this (very) regularly.

The first stage in developing growth plans for your business is to determine where you want to go in a personal context – in other words, why you want to grow your business. You need to decide this in a personal context, before you can approach the business context – otherwise, the two may be out of sync, and lead to disaster.