Operations Audit
See where your operations actually stand.
Ten questions. About ten minutes. Honest benchmarks on the habits that separate small businesses that run smoothly from ones that run on the owner. You'll get a score, a tier, and your three biggest gaps to fix first. No email required to take it.
Where does your customer information actually live?
Most small businesses keep customer information in memory, phone contacts, and old texts. That works until someone's out sick, a past customer calls back, or you want to reach the people who already know you.
When a new customer reaches out and you miss it, how fast do you get back to them?
MIT study (HBR): responding within 5 minutes makes you 21x more likely to qualify the lead than responding after 30. 74% of small businesses miss the 5-minute window entirely.
How do you ask customers for reviews after a sale or visit?
BrightLocal: 83% of customers asked to leave a review will leave one. The businesses winning local search aren't lucky. They're systematic.
When was the last time you logged into your Google Business Profile?
Whitespark 2026: GBP signals account for ~32% of local pack ranking weight. Eight of the top ten local search ranking factors come directly from GBP.
If I asked how many of this month's quotes or inquiries turned into paying customers, could you tell me?
Whether you call it a close rate or a conversion rate, it's the clearest measure of whether your sales process works. If you don't track it, you can't improve it.
How does work (orders, appointments, projects) get assigned, scheduled, and tracked to completion?
When work lives in several places, things slip: a missed appointment, an order nobody started, a customer who never heard back. One place everyone checks is the simplest fix.
If you stepped away for two weeks tomorrow, what would break?
The owner-as-system pattern: if the business can't move without you, that's a design flaw, not a virtue. Top-quartile businesses have documented workflows.
How do customers pay you?
Digital invoices and online payments get paid in days. Paper invoices and checks can take 30 to 60 days. Every day an invoice sits unpaid is cash your business can't use.
When did you last review the financial health of the business in detail?
40% of small businesses are profitable; 30% break even; 30% operate at a loss. The difference correlates with operational visibility, not market type.
When a new hire starts, how do they learn how things work?
Documented workflows are the single biggest predictor of how fast a business can scale past the owner. Every undocumented process is a tax on the owner's time.