Practice Growth Through Self-Awareness

1. What is your main bottleneck to more growth?
Examples:
- Not enough good leads (where do the best ones come from?)
- Converstion rates of leads to customers is low (why do they disappear or go another route?)
- Lack of talented salespeople (is it actually about the people or is it the situation they're in?)
- Attrition of current customers is too high (why?)
- Sales cycle is too long (why?)

Once you identify your main bottleneck and can address it, then move on to your next one.

2. What is your 'ideal customer'? (And which ones should you avoid?)
How large or small? Does geography, industry, business model matter? What customers are the easiest to close and the most profitable?

Flip this question around too: which customers should you avoid in the future?

3. How did your ideal customers find you?
Word of mouth, press, referral partners, etc. How can you apply more energy to the best sources to get more?

4. Why do you get referrals?
Why did customers refer others to you? Why do your customers love you? And if they don't, how can you get them to love and recommend you?

5. What is your unique, differentiated solution?
Customers, just like everyone, are bombarded by information and options. The clarity and simplicity of your solution, including how it solves their problems differently than any other option (including 'doing nothing'), is a critical factor in everything related to customer acquisition. It improves word-of-mouth referrals, speeds sales cycles and increases pricing power.

Your differentiator is something that is positioned to matter to customers and should come from their feedback - not investors' or analyst armchair feedback.

6. How much business at your current customers are we not getting today?
What is the customer spending money on that's relevant to your business...but is going to other companies? Is it simply going after more of the same kinds of teams in other divisions of current customers? Or would you need to expand the product line? Or combine current services and products in new ways to solve more of their problems?

7. Why would they continue to use your company in the future?
Your competitors aren't sitting still - when they become viable alternatives and call on your customers with a cheaper price, why will your customers stay?