• What’s our purpose as a company? What’s the promise of our brand?
• What do our customers/consumers feel is the most valuable things that we can do for them? (Consider this as the basis of your brand promise.)
• What is the unique value of our organization…the competitive differentiator in our minds and in the minds of our stakeholders?
• Where is our competition coming from and what are their perceived

… [ Read more ]

Subject: Strategy Questions

Still stuck with bad processes and high-maintenance legacy systems? Here are five questions that will help you determine and sort your priorities.

• Is your company’s infrastructure helping or hindering your company’s …
  M&A options and plans?
  New-product and speed-to-market strategies?
  Efforts to implement new technologies that deliver a more unified, holistic view of your customers?
  Depending on your company’s business strategy in the coming years, a response

… [ Read more ]

Subject: IT Questions

• What do current customers say that they LOVE about you?
• What specifically do they say you should improve?
• When was the last time you disappointed them?
• What do they value the most about your company?
• Which specific customers recommend you the most?
• What do they say specifically–in their own words–when they recommend you to others?

Source: Top 6 Tips to Understanding Customer Evangelism by … [ Read more ]

Subject: Customer Questions

Ram Charan and Julie Schlosser recommend the best questions every board member and shareholder should ask to get to the heart of what they should know about a company. Ten disarmingly simple questions. “so simple in fact, that we often forget to – or are embarrassed to – ask them.”

1. How does the company make money?
2. Are our customers paying up?
3. What could really hurt

… [ Read more ]

Subject: Corporate Governance Questions

Revenues and Profitability

• I can identify the products, services, and channels driving my revenue and profit.
• I can rank customers and customer locations by profitability.
• I am automatically alerted when critical costs, such as non-billable overtime rates, fall out of control.
• I know when my sales reps/managers are on target, and I can intervene in time to make a difference.

Customer Relationship Management

• I can identify low-value customers and try to

… [ Read more ]

Subject: Miscellaneous Questions

Before getting started with a business-continuity plan, CIOs should ask some strategic questions:

Subject: Business Continuity / Crisis Questions

Gallup has been researching top-performing leaders for more than 40 years. One crucial discovery has been that top performance is strongly correlated to seven main leadership activities or “demands.” Those demands are: visioning, maximizing values, challenging experience, mentoring, building a constituency, making sense of experience, and knowing self.

Focusing each leader’s growth on the seven demands can accelerate leadership development. This artcle outlines the seven … [ Read more ]

Subject: Leadership Questions

• How do I know how much to spend on advertising?
• How do I evaluate the effectiveness of my advertising?
• How can I learn more about my target audience?
• How do I evaluate the efficiency of different media?
• How do I make certain that my ad will pull?
• What’s more important: reach or frequency?
• How do I know which medium works best?
• Should I run a big ad once or several smaller ads

… [ Read more ]

Subject: Advertising Questions