I was speaking to my teenager over the summer about college.  He was saying how he was excited and ready to for school to start.  I said great and began to ask him questions about his ID, payment of classes, books, length of commute, traffic, parking availability, parking passes, etc.  Basic questions.  He became uncomfortable and we sat down and began to find the answers.

Recently I have been speaking to executives about what they feel about the state of their business.  Most are excited and ready for success as the economy recovers.  I usually say great and then begin to ask:

• Does 80% of your revenue come from 20% of your customers?
• How would you describe your best customer?
• Are you making a profit on the bottom 20% of your customers?
• What is your conversion rate of prospects to customers?
• What does it cost your company to find a new customer?
• What is your customer satisfaction level?
• What is your customer retention?
• What percent of your customers have left in the past five years?
• Why have these customers left?

Ok, these are basic sales and marketing questions.  But, how many executives have you met over the years would be able to give even reasonable answers to these questions? 

Now the real question is: Are they actually going to find the answers and then do something with that information?