Guidance for Completing the Business Growth Assessment™
You do not need specialized business knowledge. Answer from what routinely happens in the business today—not what you intend to implement later.
- Answer for the business as a whole and consider the previous 6–12 months.
- Choose what routinely happens today—not what you intend to implement later.
- When two answers seem possible, choose the one describing what happens most consistently.
- Use records where available; reasonable estimates are acceptable.
- Documented means written and accessible; consistent means it normally happens regardless of who performs it.
- Measured means results are recorded and reviewed; automated means technology completes the action with little or no manual effort.
Visibility & Market Presence™
This area looks at how customers discover the business, understand its services, and decide whether to make contact.
Which sources currently generate new customers for your business?
What this means: Identify how new customers actually hear about or find the business.
How to answer: Select every source that produced a real inquiry or customer during the last 6–12 months. Do not select a source only because the business has an account there.
What is the current status of your Google Business Profile?
What this means: Consider whether the public Google Search and Maps listing exists, is verified, accurate, current, and actively maintained.
How to answer: Check the public listing directly. Base the answer on current hours, services, contact details, photographs, reviews, updates, and measurable customer activity—not memory.
How would you describe your online review activity?
What this means: Consider how regularly customers leave reviews and whether the business monitors, responds to, and learns from them.
How to answer: Review the normal pattern across Google, Facebook, Yelp, and relevant industry sites. Consider review frequency, recency, response consistency, ratings, and use of customer feedback.
How clearly does your website explain your services and next steps?
What this means: A new visitor should quickly understand what the business provides, whom it serves, and what action to take next.
How to answer: Review the website as a first-time visitor. Base the answer on whether services, service areas, contact details, and actions such as Call, Request a Quote, or Book Now are easy to find.
How confidently can you identify where customer inquiries originate?
What this means: This asks whether the business can identify what prompted a customer to call, email, submit a form, or book.
How to answer: Base the answer on how consistently the source is captured, recorded, reported, and used in marketing decisions—not whether staff occasionally ask.
Operations & Service Delivery™
This area looks at how reliably the business turns an inquiry into completed work and a satisfactory customer experience.
How organized and repeatable is your scheduling process?
What this means: Consider how appointments, jobs, employee assignments, changes, and cancellations are managed.
How to answer: Judge the standard process, clarity of responsibility, accuracy, capacity visibility, and what happens when the usual scheduler is unavailable.
How consistently does your business follow up with prospective and existing customers?
What this means: Follow-up includes inquiries, estimates, appointment confirmations, post-service communication, review requests, and reconnecting with past customers.
How to answer: Judge the normal customer experience. Consider whether timing and ownership are defined, completion is tracked, and appropriate reminders are automated.
How consistent is customer communication across your team?
What this means: Customers should receive accurate and reasonably consistent information regardless of which employee responds.
How to answer: Consider calls, email, text messages, estimates, delays, complaints, and job completion. Base the answer on standards, templates, response times, review, and customer feedback.
How standardized is your job-completion and close-out process?
What this means: Close-out may include quality checks, customer approval, records, invoicing, payment, warranty information, follow-up, and review requests.
How to answer: Base the answer on whether a documented checklist or workflow is consistently used and whether quality, payment, callbacks, or satisfaction are measured.
What is your biggest current operational constraint?
What this means: Choose the issue that most limits reliable, efficient, or profitable completion of work.
How to answer: Select the primary bottleneck, not every inconvenience. Ask which single operational improvement would create the greatest business benefit.
Technology & Business Systems™
This area looks at whether technology makes work easier, keeps information organized, and supports reliable decisions.
Which business software systems do you currently use?
What this means: Identify systems actively used in normal operations, including accounting, CRM, scheduling, estimating, payments, payroll, projects, files, communication, and reporting.
How to answer: Select systems the business actually uses—not software it owns but has abandoned. A deliberately maintained spreadsheet may count as a system.
How well does your current software support the business?
What this means: Evaluate whether software helps employees perform work accurately and efficiently.
How to answer: Consider reliability, ease of use, manual workarounds, duplicate entry, consistent adoption, integration, maintenance, and measurable improvements. More applications do not automatically mean greater maturity.
How organized and accessible is your business information?
What this means: Consider customer records, estimates, contracts, procedures, finances, employee records, job documents, photographs, and reports.
How to answer: Ask whether an authorized employee can quickly find the correct current information without contacting its creator. Consider agreed locations, ownership, access, backups, retention, and security.
How extensively does your business use automation?
What this means: Automation means technology completes a repeated task with little or no manual action.
How to answer: Consider confirmations, reminders, follow-up, recurring invoices, data transfer, reports, alerts, and notifications. Do not count a template alone when an employee must initiate every action.
What is your primary technology pain point?
What this means: Choose the technology issue causing the greatest loss of time, accuracy, visibility, or customer service.
How to answer: Select the issue with the greatest business effect—even if another problem is more annoying. Consider disconnected systems, duplicate work, missing functions, reporting, access, security, cost, and training.
Financial Performance & Management™
This area looks at whether leaders understand the financial condition of the business and use financial information to make decisions.
How confident are you in your understanding of business profitability?
What this means: Profitability is what remains after revenue and all costs; revenue or a positive bank balance does not necessarily mean the business is profitable.
How to answer: Base the answer on the accuracy and timeliness of profit-and-loss information, understanding of margins, and whether profitability guides forecasting, pricing, and investment decisions.
How frequently do you review pricing?
What this means: Pricing review determines whether prices still cover labor, materials, overhead, risk, taxes, and desired profit.
How to answer: Consider whether pricing is reviewed on a schedule and when costs change, using actual costs, margins, market conditions, and customer response. A single price increase is not a repeatable review process.
How consistently do you track profitability by job or project?
What this means: Job profitability compares revenue from specific work with the labor, materials, equipment, travel, rework, commissions, and overhead needed to complete it.
How to answer: Base the answer on how often actual revenue and costs are recorded and compared, whether margins and estimate-versus-actual results are reviewed, and whether findings guide decisions.
How clearly do you understand the business's available capacity?
What this means: Capacity is the additional work the business can complete with its current people, time, equipment, facilities, and suppliers.
How to answer: Consider visibility into schedules, workload, constraints, utilization, backlog, and demand, and whether capacity guides hiring, sales, scheduling, and investment.
How frequently does management review financial reporting?
What this means: Financial reporting may include profit and loss, balance sheet, cash flow, receivables, budgets, forecasts, and job profitability.
How to answer: Base the answer on how regularly leaders review accurate and timely reports, compare results with plans or prior periods, and assign actions—not merely when reports are produced.
Growth Readiness™
This area looks at whether the business has clear direction and enough leadership, structure, and discipline to grow successfully.
What is your primary current growth goal?
What this means: Choose the single result that matters most during the next 12 months, including stabilization when the foundation needs attention before expansion.
How to answer: Select the goal receiving—or needing—the greatest leadership attention and resources, rather than every desirable outcome.
How much leadership capacity is available to execute improvements?
What this means: Leadership capacity is the practical time, authority, attention, and skill available to lead change after daily work is handled.
How to answer: Answer from actual available time and responsibility—not willingness or enthusiasm. Consider whether improvement depends on one overloaded person or has assigned, sustained ownership.
How extensively are key business processes documented?
What this means: Process documentation explains how important work such as intake, pricing, scheduling, service, quality, billing, hiring, safety, and close-out should be performed.
How to answer: Consider whether current instructions are written, accessible, used, owned, reviewed, and connected with training and performance. Knowledge in an employee’s head is not documented.
How clearly are team roles, expectations, and performance measures defined?
What this means: Employees should know what they own, what good performance looks like, and how results are evaluated.
How to answer: Base the answer on documented responsibilities, decision authority, expectations, measures, regular performance discussions, and alignment with business goals—not titles alone.
How would you describe the business's readiness for the next 12 months?
What this means: Give an overall judgment about whether the business can handle expected opportunities, risks, and workload during the coming year.
How to answer: Consider demand, cash, staffing, leadership, capacity, technology, suppliers, compliance, market conditions, and priorities. Reflect the whole business—not optimism about sales alone.
Return to the assessment and choose the response that most accurately describes the business today.
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