In order to be growing your business aggressively, you need to use a premeditated system, take specific action steps to maximize corporate goals, exploit market opportunities, and understand the drivers needed to maintain sustainable growth.

At Business Growth U.S., we audit 100+ business growth drivers to determine company strengths and weaknesses in their operating models. Here are 25 of the 100+ drivers we use to audit a company's potential for success and measure the areas that are weak and need to be adjusted.Take the test and measure your revenue growth success potential for 2012.  

2012 CEO Business Growth Audit          

1. Are your services, engineering or operation departments set up as individual profit centers?
2. Is your service department, engineering or operations department revenue capture process only the sales team's responsibility?
3. Does your development, engineering or operations department create new offerings without market gap research or detailed written project plans?
4. Does your development, engineering or operations department create new business offerings without getting written input from your sales and marketing department?
5. Have your operations or development department wrapped your services into a packaged offering with specific pricing options targeting specific buyers to help your prospects buy easier?
6. Is the average success of your entire sales team's assigned sales quota or target greater than 85% annually?
7. Do you have a written, documented systematic sales process detailing your firm's entire sales cycle from pre-sale to post-sale that you require your sales team to follow?
8. Do you know your sales capture cost per sale?
9. Do you use a metric-driven method to mathematically calculate sales quotas or sales targets for your sales team?
10. Do you pay your sales team the same commissions for business from existing customers as you do for business from new prospects?
11. Do you know the lifetime dollar value of each of your top ten customers during the last five years?
12. Do you and your management team get a line item detailed profit and loss statement (P&L) showing profits and losses before corporate general and administrative costs (G & A) every month for each of your departments?
13. Do you know specifically (based on research) why your prospects buy from you?
14. Do you know specifically why you lose business (again, based on research)?
15. Does your vice president of sales have total control over who they hire and fire?
16. Do you raise your product or service pricing every year?
17. Do you calculate marketing Return on Investment (R.O.I.) for each your marketing investments?
18. Is your senior marketing manager paid financial incentives based on revenue growth?
19. Does your marketing department have a written month-by-month marketing action plan listing each activity, its costs and its expected inbound lead generation goals?
20. Has your firm calculated business demand for your products or services through market gap analysis?
21. Are you growing your firm's top line revenue organically through outbound new market revenue capture?
22. Is at least 50% of your current fiscal year revenue coming from new customers?
23. Do you have any customer responsible for more than 15% of your total revenue?
24. Do you believe that all of your customers primarily buy from you based on your price?
25. Do prospects call you and ask to buy your product or service without you contacting them first?       
       

1. Yes          6. Yes       11. Yes        16. Yes       21. Yes
2. No           7. Yes        12. Yes        17. Yes       22. Yes
3. No           8. Yes        13. Yes        18. Yes       23. No
4. No           9. Yes        14. Yes        19. Yes       24. No
5. Yes        10. No         15. Yes        20. Yes       25. Yes

Scoring Assessment: Give Yourself 5% for each right answer.
The following audit is hardly a complete assessment of your revenue growth potential but a snapshot of where you may be versus where you need to be.  

How did you score?

60% and Below
Your business model struggles to maintain year-over-year sustainable growth. If your revenues are increasing, it is an anomaly, or a planned methodology? Do you recognize specific financial and operational leakage issues and your corporate instability exposure? To fix this position, you need a redesign of your business and the integration of your operations, sales, marketing and strategy processes into one revenue capture approach.

61% to 80%
Your current business growth model has some of the best practice attributes needed to grow revenue year-over-year using a planned process. Some of your business structure may need to be adjusted to maximize long-term corporate growth goals.

80% and Above
Your business structure maximizes corporate growth capabilities and uses an inter-department alignment that focuses on strategy linked to action steps. You have built a sustainable pattern which should foster continued success.  

Let's make no mistake, it takes work and commitment by you and your management team.

"There are a lot of things that go into creating success. I don't like to do just the things I like to do. I like to do things that cause the company to succeed. I don't spend a lot of time doing my favorite activities."
- Michael Dell

To your success,

Top-performing organizations are increasing their companies' revenue, within a constricted economy by investing in business growth acceleration strategies. For more on increasing your revenue capture effectiveness, subscribe to my Email Newsletter, follow me on Twitter, connect to me on LinkedIn, or friend me on Facebook. If I can help you or your firms revenue growth acceleration strategies, check out my coaching and consulting firm, Business Growth U.S., email me, or call me at (972) 727-6880.