Over 100 entrepreneurs have been announced as the finalists in the Great British Entrepreneur Awards 2016.

This morning’s headlines are full of Trade Minister Dr Liam Fox, and his comments to the Conservative Way Forward meeting, where he described British businesses as fat and lazy and suggested that British businesses are choosing not to export because it is too difficult or time-consuming.

Many business leaders have reacted angrily; Richard Reed of Innocent Drinks asked “how dare he?” on Radio Four’s Today programme this morning.

We’ve worked with more than 700 senior managers in Small to Medium Sized businesses (SMEs) in the last few years, and found a number of issues common to all.  We would like to share our Top 10 with you.

The single, most important difference between successful businesses and also-rans is the quality of the senior team.  The skills shelf-life of new and experienced managers is becoming shorter and shorter.  If we don’t widen and deepen our management skills base our competitors will take our...

In elite sport, a carefully managed goals strategy is very effective in enhancing performance – far superior to vague aspirations or no goals at all.

By paying attention to what works, we can translate much of what we understand from sport into a business context. Psychological research demonstrates that difficult, high-level goals prompt superior performance much more successfully than vague ‘do-your-best’ or no goals.

In the UK, two-thirds of all private sector firms are family businesses, contributing over half of GDP and around 40% of private sector employment.

Most family businesses will want to pass the business on to the next generation but relatively few actually do so – fewer than half of family businesses pass to the second generation, and only a fraction to the third.

Without formal succession planning, family-owned businesses run the risk of not being sustainable. Some owners regard succession...

Two companies founded by BGP alumni were winners at the 2015 National Business Awards.

GoApe, the outdoor adventure company set up by Tristram and Rebecca Mayhew, took home ‘The Customer Focus Award’, while youth marketing agency Livity and co-founders Sam Conniff and Michelle Morgan collected ‘The Social Enterprise of the Year Award’.

There’s no doubt that one of the main objectives of any entrepreneur is to have their enterprise grow profitably. To achieve this, it is very important to understand the factors that contribute to growth.

People may observe high-performing ventures that don’t have business plans and conclude, why bother to plan?

Business planning is a time-consuming exercise and any business has to weigh up the value that is generated from spending time writing a business plan versus simply going out there and trying to sell. This can be particularly beneficial when a venture is launching a product or service in a very uncertain market, where even after carrying out plenty of analysis, uncertainty still remains.

How do high achievers manage to create a great business out of merely a good business?

Cranfield studied the accounts of 15,000 independent UK businesses with turnovers between £1m and £50m over a four-year period.

The results? Many aspire, few achieve. Fewer than 2% of these businesses consistently grew sales and profits by 25% and provided a decent return on capital employed.