The litany of major brands which have disappeared from out high street is shocking: Woolies, Habitat, Thorntons, Jane Norman - and that's just for starters. One recent report said that, on average, Britain's multiple retailers closed 14 outlets per day last year, with charity shops, pound shops, credit unions and convenience stores taking up the slack and massaging the otherwise awful statistics.

One can only say that the ONS has approached the new stats from a constructive perspective. One of their spokespeople said: "All sectors are experiencing some growth when you look year-on-year. In particular the household goods sector has risen from where it was previously, it's ended a long run of contraction." Hmmm...

The comments from Capital Economics (run by Roger Bootle, one of the few economic soothsayers who regularly gets it right) may be more pertinent. They say "January's strong growth goes against the much more pessimistic picture painted by anecdotal evidence and all of the retail surveys".

By the way, these figures don't take account for the difference between online sales and bricks-and-mortar shop sales. Any increase in overall retail performance hides a dramatic and continuing shift year-on-year from offline to online. The convenience of online sales (from easy comparison of prices to not having to park in a high streets riddled with yellow lines) means more of us than ever are taking our business to virtual stores.

So, are there any solutions to help address the retailers' pains? Here are some thoughts and recommendations:

• Recognise that the world has changed. Be realistic and don't operate in a mirage of optimism. All businesses are different, so evolve your model to balance bricks and clicks in the most efficient way for yours.
•  
• Don't give up on marketing, ever. Stop marketing and you'll cut off your lifeblood of customers. But recognise that marketing is now a professional game, so get the best advice and take time to discover what works. Remember Lord Leverhulme, the founder of Unilever, who famously said "Half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted and the problem is, I don't know which half".
•  
• Train your staff and expect them to go the extra mile with customer service. There are enough people who are hungry for work that you can expect the best from your staff on the front line. Just make sure you spend time at the coal face, too.
•  
• Exploit technology to maximise online, shop, mail order, phone sales etc. Take every opportunity to reach people in the way they want to be reached, with offers that meet their needs, and remove every possible barrier to sales.
•  
• Use social media and look out for new and emerging platforms like shopa.com to proliferate awareness and generate sales through friend recommendations and the emergence of 'social commerce'.
•  
• Last but not least, adopt hawk-like financial management. Set and monitor your KPIs and exploit every possible economy. Look at your supply chain from top to bottom and don't forget the overheads too. You'll need to conserve your cash.
•  

For more information on business best practice, get a copy of my book, From Vision to Exit, The Entrepreneur's Guide to Building and Selling a Business available on Amazon and in all good bookshops now.

But how much detail you should have in your in-tray obviously depends on where your business is in its lifecycle. A CEO of an early stage business has a very different job to one running a mature business.

Your role changes year by year and to understand your priorities at any one point it's vital to know where you are and what's coming next.

All businesses have a natural lifecycle and go through clearly identifiable growth stages. These stages are not based on set periods of time, but rather on "energy" within the business. It is this energy, or "feelings", of the key players in an organisation that will dictate at which stage a company is and when it moves from one stage to another.

At Shirlaws we have worked closely with hundreds of businesses all over the world and using this experience have created a model of this progression we call the "Stages model". This model applies to every company, regardless of size or sector.

This diagram is an overview of our Stages model. It shows each stage or phase of the business' development and the feelings at each phase shown in red below the timeline.

These feelings are a remarkably accurate indicator for precisely where the business lies on this timeline. All businesses begin on the left side at 'Day 1', filled with excitement, nervousness, and lots of activity. Only the most successful make it through the main hurdles (the two 'brick walls') and into a Stage of Advanced Growth.

Your current Stage will be impacting every aspect of your operations - for better or for worse. Internally, communication may be relaxed or may be stressed (or both, in different staff members). Externally, trying to sell a 'Good Times' product to a Frustrated client will only lead to disappointing conversion rates.

And of course knowing where you are - and what you will experience next - is key to developing easy, profitable strategy.

Your Stages Action Plan

So, how does your business feel today?

Is it an exciting and frantically busy place? Calm and relaxed?

Or stressful and increasingly frustrated?

Understanding that will tell you what you should do now and what is coming up in the future. Importantly, the current recession has driven many businesses into the Second Brick Wall - and they need to make different investments to ensure they move through in a way that continues their growth.

Shirlaws coaches are all trained in the nuances of applying Stages to businesses of every size. And this key growth diagnostic is now even more accessible -you can complete the Stages test right here on MikeSouthon.com by clicking the big "Business Growth Test" button at the top of this page.

What to do now

Complete the Shirlaws Stages test here. If you are in a partnership or have a leadership team, ensure all of your colleagues complete the test this week as well.

Read the report at the end of the Stages test - this is an action plan designed to support you with your strategy, communication, and sales.

Create a list of your ten most important colleagues and clients - share this article and/or the Stages test with these ten people and organise a meeting to discuss your similarities and differences.