Preparing For Your Business Assessment

Table of Contents

Overview

What if a doctor prescribed a solution without first diagnosing the problem? We would hope you get up and leave.

The purpose of the Business Assessment is to take an honest and hard look at where your business currently stands. All our clients begin their engagement with McWilliam & Powell with a Business Assessment.

The Business Assessment will evaluate the following 6 business components. 

  • Leadership, Vision, and budget.
  • Market, target and positioning.
  • The sales process.
  • Website audit.
  • Advertising campaign(s).
  • Social platforms.

To ensure the proper allocation of resources, the Assessment consists of 3 simple stages:

1. The Intake

2. Off-site

3. On-site

4. The follow-up

You have already completed the intake stage! Woohoo! Now it’s time for the Off-site.

Off-site

What to expect?

The off-site is an in-person structured and agenda-driven day. Every minute is precious and valuable.

The in-person day will be located in a nearby location.

During breakfast, we will discuss and assess leadership, and the vision for your company.

After breakfast, we will review the prepared Market Snapshot for the purpose of identifying opportunities within the market.

We will get out the whiteboard around lunchtime and discuss your sales process. 

From there we will diagnose your website from the backend and front end-user experience.

Next, we will evaluate current advertising campaigns. At this point, we all might have a better idea of budgets, goals and resources to leverage. 

Lastly, we will assess the social channels you are using and not using. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, blog, community groups etc.

You should expect lots of questions about all business components.

How Should You Prepare?

We encourage you to do 3 things:

1) Be in an optimal state of mind.

Sleep, water, and eat. Part of the day is contingent on you being in your optimal state. You will be asked a lot of questions that require focus and thinking.

2) Communicate with your team

We recommend communicating to your team you will not be available for most of the day. To get the most out of the conversation, we need your full attention. 

3) Review questions

We have a list of questions that we ask all clients. Sometimes we require important information and a question framed in a different way or at a different time can reveal hidden gems.

Types of Questions

Please review some of the questions we will be asking to get your thoughts going:

  • What do people typically look at when choosing your brand?
  • Out of your competitors, who do you think advertises the best? Why?
  • What wonderful story is yours that hasn’t been told?
  • What are the things that you can say about your company that none of your competitors can say about their businesses?
  • When you deal with your customers, what are the things that you say you “always” do? Why?
  • When you deal with your customers, what are the things that you say you “never” do? Why? Why not?
  • What are the most significant challenges you are facing right now? What do you think needs to happen in order to solve it? What is holding you back from solving it?

On-site

What to expect?

The on-site evaluates your business in-person at your office or place of business. Typically we involved your team members that would add relevant information to the assessment and research. Often the team members we would like to converse with are those that are client focused.

The on-site is usually scheduled just after the Off-site day.  

The Follow Up

What to expect?

The follow-up is designed to ensure all the relevant information has been mined and McWilliam & Powell can indeed put together an action plan that will be right for your business.

After the Assessment, you will receive an action plan to reach your objective(s) for your business.

Within the action plan, there will be corresponding next steps within each business component. 

The action plan is designed so you could go to your team, or another consultant/agency and hand them exactly what you want to be done. 

After the action plan has been carefully reviewed collectively, McWilliam & Powell will offer a 1-page contract with 3 options for you to choose from.  

Timelines

You should expect to see a request for follow up meeting 4 days after the Business Assessment day.

How Should You Prepare?

Please set aside 2 hours for the following up meeting. There will be lots of discussions but also some time to process. We will also conduct a follow up remote call to answer any questions you may have.