25 Killer Questions to Ask as a Consultant
Often, our most powerful contribution to a business will not be our solutions. It won’t be our brilliant insights, or our ability to navigate “the financials.” Often, it will be our ability to ask penetrating questions.
Here is a list of brilliant questions you can ask your business clients:
1. How could you increase your business’s revenue by double this year? What about 10X? What about 100X?
2. What are the most profitable areas of your business?
3. What are the least profitable areas of your business?
4. What is the common negative feedback you get from your customers?
5. What is the common positive feedback you get from your customers?
6. What is the most important 20% of your business? Why?
7. What is the thing you know you should be doing, but aren’t doing?
8. What would be the complaints from the employees in your business?
9. What are you afraid to do in your business? How is it affecting you?
10. If you were going to mentor yourself about your business, what would you tell yourself?
11. What do you need to cut out of our business to become more streamlined?
12. What are the strengths in your company culture?
13. What are the weaknesses in your company culture?
14. What are your competitors doing really well? Are you able to compete or make your own version of their successes?
15. What are tangible benchmarks you want to meet in 1 year, 5 years, and 10 years?
16. What is the no. 1 limiting factor in your business? Can it be removed or amended?
17. What was a tenet of your business when you launched, but you have stopped adhering to?
18. Where do you see your industry going? How can you make adjustments to meet that upcoming wave?
19. What could you add to your customer’s experience so that it could be exceptional?
20. Do you have a diversity of opinions in the decision-making aspects of your business? Why or why not?
21. What about radical success scares you?
22. What question would you want someone to ask you about your business?
23. What are five adjective descriptors you want all of your products/services to carry (exciting, bold, excellent, etc.)?
24. If you take a step back and look at your business from a 30,000 foot view, what sticks out to you?
25. What do you want?
Bonus Question: What is the question you want to ask yourself?