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Blog/Uncategorized/How to Improve Business Performance: What to Fix, Keep, and Stop

How to Improve Business Performance: What to Fix, Keep, and Stop

Tuesday, June 17, 2025

Something feels off. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but you know the business isn’t performing as well as it should. The goals you set aren’t being met. Progress feels slower than expected. And despite the time, effort and energy you’re putting in, the results just aren’t stacking up.

This is where many business owners find themselves: frustrated, tired, and quietly wondering what they’re missing. Often, it’s not just one thing. It’s a series of small gaps that build up over time. A lack of clear direction. Vague numbers. Inconsistent leads. Sales that never quite convert. Or a mindset that’s slipped into maintenance mode.

If you’re asking yourself how to improve business performance, the answer rarely lies in starting from scratch. More often, it’s about being honest with yourself. What’s working that you should keep doing? What needs adjusting or rebuilding? And what have you outgrown or should stop entirely?

In this blog, we’ll walk through five core areas that directly affect performance and explore what to focus on next. You don’t need to change everything. You need to make the right changes, at the right time.

Business Planning

Without a clear plan, it’s easy to lose direction. You end up reacting to the week ahead rather than leading the business forward with intention. You may have ideas about where the business is going, but if they live only in your head, they’re difficult to act on and even harder to measure. That lack of clarity seeps into everything. Daily decisions become reactive. Long-term goals get lost in the noise of day-to-day delivery.

And while most owners think of a business plan as something you write once and file away, a truly useful plan should live and breathe with the business. If you have a business plan or what I call a Business Growth Plan and you haven’t looked at it in months, or if it’s never really existed in any usable form, this is where you start. Revisit your vision. Reconnect with what success actually looks like, not just in vague terms, but in specific outcomes you want to achieve over the next twelve months. Look at whether your goals are guiding your actions or just sitting in the background collecting dust.

Planning isn’t just about defining goals for the year or the bigger vision. It’s about looking at your offers and pricing structure and asking whether they still reflect the problems you solve and the value you deliver. And crucially, it’s about tracking performance regularly. If you're only reviewing KPIs once a year or even once every six months, you’re too far behind. Monthly performance reviews are essential.

Where planning is strong, it brings clarity. It helps you prioritise, delegate and stay focused. Where it’s weak or missing, it creates confusion, misalignment and wasted effort. Keep the goals and ideas that still feel relevant. Fix the plan by bringing it into the present with structure and visibility. Let go of any old targets, values or timelines that no longer fit the direction you want to take.

Financials

You don’t need to be a finance expert to run a successful business, but you do need to understand your numbers. This is the area many business owners avoid until it becomes urgent. But when the numbers aren’t clear, the business will always feel unstable. Too many business owners rely on instinct, a gut feeling about the bank balance, or a quick glance at turnover. That’s not enough. Not when you want to grow with confidence.

If your numbers are unclear, inconsistent or feel overwhelming to look at, performance will inevitably suffer. The issue might be not enough sales, costs that have crept up unnoticed, or a lack of clarity around your most profitable work. Without clear financial insight, you can’t make informed decisions, and that’s where risks build up.

Improving business performance financially starts with visibility. What does it actually cost to run the business month to month? Where does your profit really come from? Do you have the systems in place to monitor, review and adjust regularly?

Visibility is only one part of the equation. Financial control also means having systems in place that you actually use. That includes monthly forecasting, regular reviews, and a credit control process that is followed consistently.

Keep the routines that help you stay in control. Fix the systems that don’t serve you or are being skipped when things get busy. Fix the gaps in knowledge or confidence by getting support where needed. And stop hoping the numbers will take care of themselves. Stop avoiding the data. It’s there to serve you, not shame you.

Marketing

When leads slow down or dry up altogether, the first instinct is often to do more. More posts. More platforms. More offers. But more isn’t always better. The key to better marketing isn’t shouting louder. It’s saying the right thing to the right people, in the right places, consistently.

If your marketing isn’t generating regular enquiries from the clients you want to work with, it’s time to review. You may be focusing on the wrong audience, using vague messaging, or missing opportunities to show the value of what you do.

Effective marketing starts with clarity. Do you know who your ideal client is? Do you understand the language they use and the problems they’re actively trying to solve? If your content doesn’t speak directly to those problems, you’ll struggle to cut through the noise, no matter how much you post or promote. Content should offer value, not just updates. Your marketing should position you as someone who understands their challenges and has a clear solution. It should also be consistent. Spikes of visibility followed by silence don’t build trust.

Marketing should never feel like a random collection of tasks. It should feel deliberate, aligned and clearly connected to your goals.

The aim isn’t to be everywhere. It’s to be effective where it counts. Keep the channels and content that bring in the right kind of leads. Fix your messaging so it speaks clearly to your ideal client and solves the problems they care about. Let go of anything that’s costing you time and energy without clear return.

Sales

It’s easy to underestimate how much the sales process affects performance. You might be getting leads through the door, but if they’re not converting, or if you’re constantly lowering your price or chasing decisions, something isn’t aligned. That disconnect can cost you more than lost income. It can drain your energy, knock your confidence and leave you questioning your value.

A strong sales process isn’t about hard closing. It’s about creating clarity. That means qualifying leads properly, having a clear path for how people move from interest to decision, and understanding where things drop off. If you find yourself relying on hope or waiting for people to come back to you, it’s time to take control of the process.

It’s also about data. You need to understand your conversion rates. How many leads does it take to get a sale? Are you following up regularly, or only once before leaving it to chance? Do you know the most common objections you hear and how to handle them without losing authority?

Sales should feel structured and purposeful. Keep the steps that help people feel confident about working with you. Fix the areas where you feel uncomfortable or unsure, whether that’s your pricing, your offer or your follow-up. Stop trying to sell to everyone. The right people will say yes more easily when your process reflects the value you bring.

Leadership and Mindset

This is the piece that ties everything together. Even with a great plan, strong finances, solid marketing and a consistent sales process, your mindset will dictate how you lead through all of it. If you’re stuck in the weeds, constantly second-guessing yourself, or trying to do it all alone, performance will suffer no matter how strong your systems are.

Strong leadership starts with you. If you’re trapped in day-to-day delivery, reluctant to delegate, or questioning whether you’re the right person to lead the business to the next level, the problem isn’t just operational. It’s personal. Shifting from operator to leader means stepping back from daily firefighting and trusting your team. It means creating space to think and having the courage to make decisions based on strategy rather than urgency. It means letting go of control in the right places, setting clear expectations, and allowing others to take ownership. It also means recognising where your own habits or beliefs are getting in the way. If you’re telling yourself the same old stories I have to do everything because I am the only one who can do it properly, or slowing down to work on the business and plan is a luxury you can’t afford or I can’t say no, this is just how it is. Those stories will become reality and remain your reality.

Challenge those patterns. Keep the routines and support systems that help you lead from a place of clarity. Fix the mindset blocks that are keeping you stuck, especially the ones you’ve been living with for years. Stop carrying the whole business on your shoulders. Performance starts with perspective, and sometimes you need to step back before you can move forward.

Time to Take a Step Back?

Improving business performance isn’t about fixing everything at once. It’s about taking a step back, identifying where the gaps are, and deciding what needs to change. That process takes honesty, commitment, and clarity but it’s also the most direct route to creating a business that actually works.

If you’re serious about improving business performance, this is where you begin. Not with another tactic or tool, but with a clear-eyed look at what’s really going on and a willingness to act. You don’t need to fix everything at once. You just need to start.

If you haven’t yet completed the Business Performance Health Check, now is the time. It gives you a clear snapshot of how your business is really performing and what to prioritise next.

The gaps in your business aren’t just costing you money. They’re costing you time, energy and the freedom you set out to create. You know things can work better than this.

The answers are there. So is the next step. Let’s fix what’s holding you back and build the business you set out to create.




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Hi, I Am Sarah Jones

AKA The Business Fixer

Sarah is our Founder. Sarah has personally experienced the rollercoaster of business whilst running her law firm. From core marketing techniques for creating leads, converting leads into sales, to changes in technology to improve efficiency, adjustments to credit control processes, staffing restructures to name just a few. She will no doubt share with you the challenges she faced and the mistakes she made, so that you can avoid them!

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