A complete view of how your company grows, built from your own records.
Growth depends on six areas that work in sequence, and in most companies one of them limits all the others. This page explains what we examine, how we reach our conclusions, and what your leadership team receives at the end.
The six areas of a growth system.
Every company has all six, whether or not anyone designed them. They are usually built over years, by different people solving different problems, which is why the gaps between them are where results are lost.
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01
Attracting customers
Every channel that brings in demand, paid and unpaid: referrals, repeat buyers, search, advertising, partners, and any activity run by an outside provider.
When it limits growthSeveral channels are active, and no one can say with confidence which of them produces customers. Spend and revenue rise together, but the link between them is unclear.
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02
Converting inquiries
Everything between an inquiry arriving and a customer paying: response time, ownership of follow-up, how quotes are prepared and sent, and the handoff between marketing and sales.
When it limits growthInquiries wait days for a reply, follow-up depends on who happens to be available, and quotes go out without anyone tracking the outcome. The company pays for demand and loses part of it after it arrives.
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03
Retaining clients
Repeat business, renewals and the reasons clients leave, including accounts that never formally ended the relationship and stopped buying without notice.
When it limits growthNew clients arrive every month, yet revenue stays flat. No one can list the accounts lost last year or explain why they left.
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04
Measuring results
What is counted, who counts it, and whether each figure can be traced to an invoice, a record or a system the company controls.
When it limits growthLeadership receives regular reports full of figures, and few of them can be checked against a source. Decisions are made on them because nothing better is available.
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05
Testing and learning
What has been tried, what it showed, and whether the result was recorded and used. Most companies try a great deal and keep very little of what they learn.
When it limits growthThe same initiative is attempted twice in a few years, because no one recorded how the first attempt went or why it stopped.
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06
Investment decisions
Who decides where marketing money goes, on what evidence, and how often that decision is revisited.
When it limits growthContracts and budgets renew by default each year. Ending them feels riskier than continuing, so the decision is postponed rather than made.
One area sets the limit for all the others.
The strongest marketing in your market produces little if inquiries are not answered promptly. Faster follow-up produces little if the inquiries come from the wrong customers. And no improvement lasts if the company cannot measure whether it worked.
The six areas work in sequence, and each one sets a ceiling on the ones that follow.
- 01Attracting customers
- 02Converting inquiries
- 03Retaining clients
- 04Measuring results
- 05Testing and learning
- 06Investment decisions
In this example, converting inquiries is the constraint. Increasing spend on attracting customers would only send more demand into the part of the system that is losing it. Companies often invest in the area that is easiest to improve, or the one a provider is already working on. Identifying the area that limits the rest, with evidence, is the purpose of the assessment.
The same standard, applied to every company.
Our conclusions are built so that your team can follow the reasoning, check the evidence and challenge any part of it.
Consistent criteria
Every company is assessed against the same questions, criteria and weighting. Two companies with the same evidence receive the same assessment. The result depends on the evidence alone.
Assumptions shown beside the figures
Where a figure depends on an estimate, the estimate appears next to it. If your team sees an assumption differently, it can change it and recalculate the result.
External benchmarks with named sources
When we compare your figures with outside data, we name the source and its publisher, so every comparison can be looked up and verified.
Technology supports the work. A person signs it.
Software assists with analysis and drafting, as it does in any modern professional firm. Every finding is reviewed by hand, traced to its source, and signed by the person who presents it to you.
Built from records your team can check.
Reports and dashboards are useful context. Our conclusions rest on primary records, so that every figure can be traced back to its source.
What we work from
- Read-only access to the accounts where your marketing runs
- Your record of inquiries, with customer names and contact details removed
- Your invoices, and what your books show you received
- Short conversations with the people who run the work day to day
- Published benchmarks, cited by name
How your information is protected
- A mutual NDA is signed before any access is granted
- Access is read-only and is removed when the engagement ends
- Records are kept only for as long as the work requires
- Client names and results are never published without written permission
The report, in the order it is written.
The first page holds a figure you can verify yourself. Everything that follows is read against it.
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01
A figure you can check yourself
What you paid for each new customer over the last year, reconstructed from your own books with the calculation shown. No projection appears before this page.
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02
An assessment of each of the six areas
Where each area stands, what is working, and where results are lost, with the evidence behind each judgement and its source.
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03
The constraint, with its annual cost
The area limiting the other five, what it costs the business each year, and every assumption behind that figure, written out so your team can review it.
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04
A specification of what the system should be
What needs to exist, what it needs to do, and how you will know it is working. Written so it can be handed to the people who will carry it out.
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05
A ninety-day plan in order of priority
What to do first, second and third, sized for the team and providers you already have. Where something cannot be done in-house, we say so and explain what to look for.
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06
A working session with your leadership team
The report arrives before the session, so it can be read without interruption. We then spend sixty minutes on it together, and questions remain open by email for a week.