Before we touch anyone's marketing, we run the same five-question diagnostic. It's uncomfortable, because most businesses can't answer half of it clearly. That's the point — the questions you can't answer are exactly where your sales are leaking. Here it is. Use it on your own business today.
1. What are you selling — precisely?
Not your product list — the outcome a customer actually buys. A gym doesn't sell equipment access; it sells the feeling of being fit by Diwali. A coaching institute doesn't sell classes; it sells a rank. If your answer takes a paragraph, your customer has to work too hard to understand you — and working customers walk away.
2. Who should buy it?
"Everyone" is the most expensive answer in marketing. A business that serves everyone has a message for no one. Name your best customer: their locality, their budget, the moment they need you. If you can describe Tuesday-afternoon-them, your marketing can find a thousand more like them. If you can't, no ad budget will save you.
3. Why should they choose you?
Say your answer out loud. Now remove your name and put your competitor's. Still true? Then it's not a reason — it's wallpaper. "Good quality" and "best service" are wallpaper. A reason to choose is specific, provable, and ideally something competitors can't copy by Friday. Most businesses have one; almost none communicate it.
Three questions in — and most owners have already found one leak. A Growth Audit does this properly, on your business, with your numbers. Thirty minutes. Free.
Get a Growth Audit4. Where are you losing customers today?
Every business leaks somewhere specific: the Google search you don't appear in, the call nobody answered, the quote that was never followed up, the shop front that doesn't say what you sell. The leak is rarely mysterious — it's just unmeasured. This week, write down every enquiry you get and what happened to it. By Friday you'll see it.
5. What is actually stopping growth?
It's almost never "the market". It's one of four things: not enough of the right people know you exist, the ones who know don't understand why you're the choice, the ones who enquire don't get converted, or the ones who buy never come back. Each has a different fix — and spending on the wrong one is why most marketing budgets evaporate.
The sixth question
There's one more question — the one that turns these five from an interesting exercise into a growth plan with numbers, priorities and a 90-day sequence. It's different for every business, which is exactly why it can't be an article. That one, we do together.