Whenever I sit down with a new or potential client for the first time, I typically start by asking them to “tell me about your business”. As they respond, I’ll often gently probe for more details. When I first started doing this, it was a somewhat intuitive process, but over the years I have formulated it down to six questions that I’m hoping to get answered:
- Why does the business exist?
- What principles will the leaders never compromise?
- Whom do they serve?
- Why do customers choose them?
- How do they make money?
- What do they need to do right now?
Today I want to briefly introduce these six questions and then, over the next week or so I want to dig more deeply into each of these areas.