Adopting Core Principles to Move a Business Forward

I did some consultancy work not long ago with a company that sells photocopiers. It was a small business, with the owner (who was also a salesman) two administrators and three other sales guys. The most successful one was an interesting guy called Dave. Old for a salesman (close to 50) he loves his job, and has resisted promotion for years. He's good at what he does, and he earns a serious amount of money, so his attitude has been "Why change?" Why, indeed?

I learnt a powerful lesson from him. He's totally single minded about what he does, and studiously avoids anything that distracts him from what he calls "The core principles" of his job.

He boils them down to:

• Prospecting
• Doing initial appointments (to establish client's needs)
• Demonstrating copiers (and then closing the sale)
• Customer follow up (for future business)

Pretty much every time I looked at Dave, he was doing one of the above. He never worked late or at weekends, he was a total 9 to 5 guy, but during those hours he just seemed to be talking to clients or potential clients on the telephone, via email, or face to face all of the time.

But with the others, it was different - I'd often see them in the coffee shop across the road, or re organising the showroom. Sometimes, they would be reading industry magazines, catching up with the boss on what they were doing or just practicing their demonstration technique on a new machine. All were busy, all of the time, and all were "working." But only Dave was sticking with the core principles. I'm sure he must have been doing some of the other tasks - he'd have to to stay on top - but I just never saw him doing them.

And remember, he was the top salesman. By a long way.

As I thought through this, it dawned on me that I could and should apply this to my business. If I can just do a solid eight or ten hours work each day on my core principles, then I should be able to emulate some of Dave's success.

If your blog is the basis of a business, how much of your time is spent interacting with your potential customers (note: CUSTOMERS, not readers)?

The question I have for you is this: What are the core activities of someone using a blog as a business platform? Or is it easier to tell me the things we all do every day that aren't core?

I warn you, this is hard. I have some ideas, but I've been arguing with myself for an hour already, so I thought I'd get some help from you. Let me know what you think in comments please.