Business Growth Questions That Must Be Answered – The Top 10

Top 10 Business Growth Questions That Must Be Answered
Only a small fraction of companies achieves consistently high levels of profitable growth.  For any organization to grow sustainably, sales leaders must continuously ask critical questions unique to their circumstances, ensuring they navigate both growth opportunities and risks. The business growth questions that need to be addressed can vary based on industry, company size, and market conditions, but some are universal.

10 Business Growth Questions
Finding a solution and business model that appeal enough target customers to drive high levels of profitable growth is not easy.  Here are the top business growth questions every executive should answer to drive successful and sustainable expansion.

1. How (and How Fast) Will We Grow?
   From pursuing mergers, acquisitions, and strategic alliances, to increasing prices, to improving cross-selling, to expanding deal size, to investing in brand awareness, to improving the customer experience, there are a handful of business growth strategies that companies can pursue. Each growth strategy has pros and cons that must be considered based upon your overall strategic vision and the assumptions you are making regarding your financial strength, current market dynamics, and competitive drivers.

   We know from our organizational alignment research that, while all growth plans require access to financial and people resources, there are various ways and different paces to invest in growth. Three classic choices involve organic growth, strategic alliances, and mergers and acquisitions.

   Organic Growth
   For businesses to grow organically, leaders must emphasize maintaining a loyal customer base, improving products and services through innovation, and executing the current product and service strategies.  This often involves scaling an internal solution selling sales force and customer experience team to reach, grow, and serve more ideal target clients with more offerings faster.  This requires enough addressable market in your current client base to meet growth targets.

   While organic growth typically takes more time, internal resources are typically highly aligned and integrated with a company’s growth strategy and culture.  Will organic growth get you where you want to go fast enough?

   Strategic Alliances
   Business growth through strategic alliances requires the aligning of business strategies, structures, and cultures, investing in relationship building, sharing information, and having clear collaboration and decision-making frameworks.  It often involves access to different distribution channels, products, offerings, brands, capabilities, technologies, and intellectual property.  This approach requires enough synergy and opportunity to mutually benefit both parties.

   While strategic alliances are often faster ways to drive revenue growth, control over the brand, value proposition, and customer can become diluted.  Are strategic alliances part of your growth plan?

   Mergers and Acquisitions
   The goal of most mergers and acquisitions is to expand market leadership, leverage competencies, or gain specific capabilities to drive growth.  To succeed leaders must be able to engage and retain top talent from both companies, bridge differences in styles, values, processes, or cultures, and demonstrate ROI quickly.

   While mergers and acquisitions are a tempting path to drive revenue growth, according to Harvard Business Review, 70-90 % fail to meet expectations due to integration, cultural, or strategic issues.  Do you have what it takes to beat the odds?

2. What Is Our Unique Value Proposition?
   Without a clear and compelling unique value proposition (UVP), any sales strategy will lack focus. Companies that are successful in scaling have a deep understanding of what specifically differentiates them from competitors in the eyes of their target clients. This question forces leaders to identify what they do best, why customers should choose them over others, and how to communicate that distinct value to the market.

   A strong UVP should be clear, customer-centric, and aligned with the needs of the target audience. The advantage must also be enough to drive profitable growth.

   Is your UVP clear and compelling enough to your ideal buyer to create a competitive advantage that drives premium pricing, client referrals, and repeat business?

3. Who Is Our Target Market and Is It Evolving?
   Understanding your target market is key to driving growth and having a compelling value proposition. As markets evolve, businesses must reassess their target audience regularly. Are your current and target customers still aligned with your product and service offerings? Have new or adjacent market segments emerged into which you have not tapped? Is the Total Addressable Market that appreciates our UVP big enough to meet our growth targets?

   These questions encourage sales, marketing, service, and product development to stay agile, allowing them to adjust their strategies to meet the shifting needs of customers while identifying new growth opportunities in underserved markets.

   Do you have your finger on the pulse of your target market?

4. Do We Have the Right Talent and Leadership in Place to Execute Our Growth Strategy?
   Regardless of your chosen growth strategy, for it to be effective, you must consider how it impacts your people, your culture, and your organizational structure. Growth does not happen without the right people in the right roles with the right resources and mindset to innovate, act, and scale at hyper speed. Leadership must be capable of guiding the organization through the complexities of rapid growth by ensuring alignment between strategy, culture, and talent to overcome growth challenges and maximize growth opportunities in terms of collaboration, information sharing, decision making, resource allocation, and the ability to change.

   Does the quality of your talent management strategy and the alignment of your organizational culture and resources match the growth challenges that you face?

5. How Scalable Are Our Current Processes?
   When businesses grow, inefficiencies in processes and business practices can quickly become bottlenecks. Leaders must evaluate whether their current operational ways of working are designed to scale. That means doing a current state analysis to understand where you stand today and having a clear, compelling, and agreed upon picture of the desired state required to enable growth.

   This involves asking questions like: Are our systems and infrastructure capable of handling increased demand? Do we have efficient workflows in place to ensure operational excellence on a larger scale?

   Are you addressing the ability to scale early enough to prevent costly breakdowns that could derail growth efforts?

6. What Are the Financial Implications of Growth?
   Because growth typically requires significant capital investment, leaders must carefully analyze the financial aspects of growth before moving forward. We know from leadership simulation assessment data that this includes evaluating how much growth will cost, the anticipated return on investment, and the risks associated with scaling too quickly and not fast enough. That requires thoughtful and realistic financial forecasts to ensure the necessary funding to support expansion.

   Are you taking a hard look at your financial health and realistically aligning growth ambitions with financial sustainability?

7. How Are We Measuring Success?
   Defining and measuring strategic success is essential for tracking progress, creating accountability, and adjusting growth strategies. It is not enough to focus on revenue growth alone. Leaders must define the key leading and lagging performance indicators to assess the success of all growth initiatives. Without clear growth metrics in place, leaders risk losing sight of what’s working and what needs improvement.

   Are we actively monitoring and acting upon leading and lagging growth indicators that everyone understands and has bought into?

8. What Are the Growth Risks, And How Are We Mitigating Them?
   We know from project postmortem data that business growth, especially high growth, is inherently risky. Whether it is entering new markets, launching new products, or scaling operations, every investment involves uncertainty. Businesses must identify potential risks (e.g., competitive pressures, regulatory challenges, or internal capacity constraints) and devise strategies to mitigate them.

   Are you and your team proactively identifying and addressing risks to help avoid costly missteps that could derail steady growth?

9. Are We Innovating to Stay Ahead?
   When it comes to business growth, inaction is not an option. Companies must continuously evolve to remain attractive to buyers and employees. This requires leaders to commit to action and innovation without getting bogged down in bureaucracy and analysis paralysis.

   We know from strategy retreat facilitation that businesses who prioritize innovation and build it into their strategic aspirations and ways of working are better positioned to adapt to market shifts and seize new growth opportunities. According to McKinsey, companies who adopt a growth mindset are 2.4 times more likely to profitably outgrow their peers.

   Are you fostering a strategy and culture of sales growth, creativity, and experimentation that pursues long-term growth?

10. How Are We Ensuring Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty?
    Growth is not sustainable with unhappy customers. Customer satisfaction and loyalty are the bedrock of sustainable growth. A company-wide focus on delivering exceptional customer experiences is necessary to deliver long-term success.

    High growth companies do what it takes to maintain strong customer relationships that drive of repeat business and client referrals.

    Are you creating satisfied and loyal customers who are eager to recommend you to a peer?

The Bottom Line
Answering these top business growth questions is critical for leaders seeking to build sustainable, scalable, and successful organizations. By encouraging growth, ensuring competitive differentiation, proactively adjusting to market dynamics, establishing the right enablers, and ensuring that you are prepared to scale, leaders can create the conditions for high growth.

To learn more about business growth questions, download 3 Sales Trends Impacting Your Sales Strategy