Business health checks and benchmarks
Where do you honestly stand?
In about ten minutes, see where your practices fall short, and get suggested improvements for your largest gaps. Or ask your leadership team, and find where you see the business differently.
- Start the strategy checkYour business: ten minutes, and the report says which check to take next
- Set up a team pollYour leadership team: one link; each leader takes about ten minutes, and you see where they agree and where they split
- Check a dealA deal: buying, selling, raising capital or after the deal; about ten minutes
Planning a price increase? Make a price increase decision sheet.
See all checksShort of time? Two-minute checks
What businesses sell for
- ✓ Free
- ✓ No email before your result
- ✓ No unsolicited call
For owners and leadership teams of established businesses, and the advisers who work with them. The health check questions are written for businesses of about A$50 million (US$35 million, £25 million) in revenue and up. The sale tools and the industry figures suit businesses of any size.
Other currencies and smaller firms
In other currencies, about US$35 million or £25 million.
A smaller firm can still take a check. Some rows will describe practices it does not need yet.
Built by two former partners of strategy consulting firms. Who we are →
Sample report · Strategy Health Check
What you get
An illustrative example, answered through the real Strategy Health Check.
Your profile
Mostly Basic, with one bright spot
Your largest practice gaps
These are your lowest-placed practices, lowest first.
Where two sit at the same stage, the more basic one comes first.
- Write down the two or three issues that will decide the business's future, on half a page, in words a sceptic would accept. It is working when every major choice in the plan answers one of them.Whether it faces the real challenge
- Work out the profit of each product, customer group and region once, each carrying its own share of costs rather than an average. Put the result on one page, from most to least profitable. It has done its job when it changes a price, a product or a customer decision.Whether the business knows its own numbers
- Turn each goal into a choice: what you will do, where, and what you will stop or not start. Keep it to one page. It is working when a team can use it to turn down a proposal.Whether real choices have been made
One practice up close
Whether the organisation actually knows and owns the strategy
- Picked · Basic
- The top team knows the strategy; two levels down it is rumour.
- One step right · Competent
- The strategy has been communicated in person, in plain language, and people can connect their work to it.
A team poll · illustrative
Where your leaders agree and where they split
Where the team agrees
Where it splits
The one issue to discuss
Whether plans are checked against what happened. Half the room sees one business and half sees another. That gap is the meeting.
About ten minutes · free
Your business
Direction
Winning customers
Running the business
Show what’s coming
- Growth
- Negotiation
- Customers
- Marketing
- Operations
- Cost and efficiency
- Digital and data
- Finance
A deal
Show what’s coming
Sample report · deal checks
What a deal check gives back
Illustrative businesses, answered through the real checks.
The PE fund check · illustrative
A fund weighing a buyout of a regional distributor of industrial spare parts.
Slow down: finish the homework
A to-do list, not a warning.
What this means
Two of the nine warning questions sit at Doubtful or below: “Does the plan follow from the record?” and “Has the downside been run on the debt and fixed charges the target will carry after the deal?”. None of them is about whether the business can be taken away from you. They are your own homework: the record, the plan, the people and the structure. A list like this is normal at this stage. Close each item before the price is set. What would move each one is below.
The workplan: your three weakest answers
- Does the plan follow from the record?
What would move it
You placed it at Doubtful: the plan outruns the run-rate, and the only explanation offered is the levers. The next stage, Unproven, is the plan is bridged to history at the top line only; the drivers underneath have not been reconciled.Bridge the plan to the last three years driver by driver, volume, price, mix, openings, share, test the base year for one-offs, name what changed for every step above the run-rate, and re-base the case to the drivers you believe before pricing. - Has the downside been run on the debt and fixed charges the target will carry after the deal?
What would move it
You placed it at Doubtful: earnings have fallen or swung in the last ten years, and the debt and rent are sized to the plan with no bad year run against them. The next stage, Unproven, is earnings have been steady, the fixed charges are totalled against the base case, and no bad year has been run.List every fixed claim the target will carry after the deal, interest and repayments, rent including rent after a sale and leaseback, take-or-pay and any dividend the structure must fund, and run the total against the worst year in the record. If the target could not have paid it then, resize the structure or reprice. - Can we double EBITDA in five years?
What would move it
You placed it at Doubtful: the doubling relies on the market doing all the work, or on revenue growth that never reaches EBITDA. The next stage, Unproven, is a path to double EBITDA exists on paper; the levers are unsized.Build the path from today's EBITDA to double in five years, bar by bar, from market, share and margin evidence, and mark which bars the base case already needs.
This check reads your case, not the deal. It does not tell you whether to buy or what to pay.
The seller check · illustrative
The owner of a family-run specialist food manufacturer, two years from a sale.
Slow down
What this means
One of the six questions this check weighs most sits at Doubtful or below. Each is listed with what would move it.
The workplan: your three weakest answers
- Could we open a data room next month?
What would move it
You placed it at Red flag: a data request would take a month and a prayer, and we couldn't name a large customer we'd let a buyer call. The next stage, Doubtful, is the documents exist somewhere and assembly is unstarted; a list of friendly customers for buyer calls hasn't been thought about.Run vendor due diligence, close the gaps it finds, assemble a data room that could open next month, and brief a list of large, friendly customers to take a buyer's call. - Does the business run without the owner?
What would move it
You placed it at Doubtful: a second layer exists on the chart; in practice decisions wait, and the largest customers deal only with the owner. The next stage, Unproven, is some decision rights are delegated and some customers are handled by others, but nobody has tested a month without the owner.Delegate decision rights and the top customer relationships to named people, run a full quarter with the owner out of day-to-day decisions, and put the numbers from that quarter in the story. A buyer pays for a business, not a person. - Do we hit our forecasts, and can we produce the numbers a buyer asks for?
What would move it
You placed it at Doubtful: nobody compares the forecast with what happened; annual statements are all there is. The next stage, Unproven, is we roughly land the numbers; monthly reporting is consistent, but for under two years.Keep a documented budget-versus-actual record, explain every miss, and build the segment and customer cuts a buyer will ask for so they come on request.
This is a reading of how much of the case is evidence. It is not a verdict on the deal.
How the health checks work
Step 1
Answer for today
Pick the sentence that is true today, five per question.
Step 2
See your profile
Five stages across five areas, and where you sit.
Step 3
Take the next step
Two or three moves, in a one-page report to forward.
About ten minutes · free
How this is different
The check is the product
The check is free. Help is there if you ask.
How we compareWritten from real work, tested on real cases
Written from real engagements, tested on real businesses.
How we compareSentences you can check, not scores you can inflate
Every answer is a sentence you can check.
How we compareWhy price and strategy first
1% ≈ 7%
A one per cent improvement in realised price is worth about seven per cent of operating profit for a typical business. Source
One stage left
Most firms sit one stage left of where they think they are. Source
Choose your pricing checkStart the strategy check
About ten minutes each · free
Tools
Calculators and two-minute checks. Nothing you enter leaves the page.