The 5 Critical Revenue-Related Questions You Must Be Able To Answer

First, if you’re reading this, you might be wondering why you got it and who is Circle 34 Advisors? But if you’re reading this, you liked the title enough to click through, so hang in there for 20 seconds.

You got the blog article email because you subscribed to Agencies 2 Inbound in the past. If you subscribed to that blog, you probably know me, Mike Lieberman.

Welcome to Circle 34 Advisors, my new company. This is the first of many blog articles that will hopefully continue my thought leadership in the areas of marketing, sales, revenue generation, and business growth.

Of course, you can opt out or unsubscribe at any time. If you want to learn more about what I’m up to, just click here.

Now back to the main reason you’re reading this.

If you’re a CEO, you probably asked this question before, and these answers might sound familiar. After 30 years of working with CEOs and business owners, I’ve heard this hundreds of times.

CEO: Are we going to hit our revenue/sales goals this month?

Sales Leader: I hope so! We have to close that big deal. OR I think so, but I can’t be sure, you know, sales. OR I don’t know, we have three proposals still out with prospects.

Unfortunately, hope is NOT a strategy. To stop this cycle of insanity. There are 5 questions that you can ask that will answer the question you need to know, without any doubt.

Question 1 – Do you know how many leads you need every month to ENSURE you hit your sales goals?

Question 2 – Do you know how many highly qualified sales opportunities you need each month to ENSURE you hit your sales goals?

Question 3 – Do you know your conversion rates for each stage of the marketing and sales funnel?

Question 4 – Do you know how much new revenue (cross-sell and upsell) you can expect from existing clients?

Question 5 – Do you know your attrition/retention rate for existing clients?

Since I’m feeling generous, here’s a very important bonus question.

BONUS Question – Do you know exactly WHY your prospects choose you over your competitors?

Let’s dig into each of these one at a time so you understand why these are so important and also how you can get answers to these in real time, so you always know whether you’re going to hit your sales goals or not.

Question 1 – Do you know how many leads you need every month to ENSURE you hit your sales goals?

It’s rare that I meet a CEO, sales leader, or even a marketing leader who knows the answer to this question. I ask it at every first meeting, so yes, I’m sure this is an issue. What people know is what their sales goals are, but they’re unable to relate that back to the exact number of leads.

Let’s go through the math.

You want to do $200,000 in new annual revenue this month. Your average revenue per new client is $20,000 annually. So, you need 10 new clients. You have a 40% close rate on the proposals you submit, so you need to submit 25 proposals every single month. That number alone surprises many of my clients.

But let’s keep going because the actual numbers get even more challenging. Not every single qualified sales opportunity is going to be ready for a proposal each month (depending on your sales cycle), but let’s say 80% of really good sales opportunities get proposals. Now you need 31 qualified sales opportunities each month.

Your sales team is going to have to talk to even more people who are interested in talking to you, but maybe they’re not going to be considered opportunities for a number of reasons.  They might not be ready to buy, or they might not have the budget. I call those Sales Qualified Leads; these people want to talk to you but may or may not be qualified opportunities. Typically, 50% of the people who talk to you are NOT qualified opportunities. Now you need 62 of these SQLs to get you to your goals.

Finally, if your marketing is working, you’re getting leads. These are just people who want to get to know you better. They’re downloading content, subscribing to emails, visiting your website, and filling out forms. Usually, 40% to 50% of these people aren’t anywhere near ready to talk to your sales team.

ANSWER Question 1 - In this scenario, you’ll need exactly 124 leads each month to get the 10 new clients you need to hit your sales goals.

Your TO-DO: Run these numbers for your company and get an exact answer to question 1.

Question 2 – Do you know how many highly qualified sales opportunities you need each month to ENSURE you hit your sales goals?

Great news! We answered this question as part of our exercise in the Question 1 section. If we stick with this scenario, you need 31 highly qualified sales opportunities each month to get to the 10 new clients you need.

Let’s keep going.

Question 3 – Do you know your conversion rates for each stage of the marketing and sales funnel?

More good news. You did this math too in the exercise from Question 1. Here are the conversion rates we used to do the math above. Fifty percent of the leads are going to be sales-qualified leads (meaning they want to talk to your sales team). Fifty percent of those SQLs are going to be highly qualified sales opportunities. Eighty percent of these opportunities get proposals, and you have a 40% close rate on proposals submitted.

Question 4 – Do you know how much new revenue (cross-sell and upsell) you can expect from existing clients?

This question is interesting because hardly anyone thinks about revenue from current clients or customers when it comes to hitting monthly revenue goals, yet this is the easiest place to get new revenue. These people already know, like, and trust you. They’re already happy (at least they should be), and any active marketing and sales to this group should be easier, cheaper, and much more effective. However, hardly anyone does this proactively.

First, someone needs to be focused on this. That could be your CRO (Chief Revenue Officer), this could be your sales leader, but in most cases, it’s the person responsible for client/customer service. They need to be reporting on, tracking, and actively managing new revenue opportunities just like the sales team is managing new client/customer opportunities.

The same numbers you’re running for new revenue, you should be running for revenue from current clients/customers. These numbers should be extremely high. For example, your close rate on proposals to current clients/customers should be north of 80%.

Run these numbers weekly so you can project new revenue from current clients/customers reliably and add that into your numbers, so you hit or exceed your goals. This is easy revenue, and it should be a priority.

Your TO-DO: Who is ultimately responsible for talking to clients/customers and driving cross-sell and up-sell opportunities? Is it the account managers? Is it the sales team? Is it a call center? This team has to be incentivized, they have to be directed, they have to be measured, and this has to be a priority for the right people.

Question 5 – Do you know your attrition/retention rate for existing clients?

Questions one through four are related to filling up the bucket. This question is making sure there’s no leak at the bottom of the bucket. If you close $210,000 in new revenue but lose $40,000 in revenue each month because clients/customers are leaving or downgrading,  you’re going to miss your goals.

Knowing this number will help you rework the calculations above.

If your goal remains $200,000 a month, but you lose 10% a month or $20,000 in attrition or clients cutting back, then you actually need $220,000 in new revenue each month.

Here’s what those numbers look like.

Instead of 10 new clients, you actually need 11

Instead of 25 proposals submitted, you actually need 28

Instead of 31 qualified opportunities, you actually need 34

Instead of 62 sales-qualified leads, you actually need 68

Instead of 124 marketing leads, you actually need 136

Now, you have the answers to all five of the critical questions related to revenue generation and business growth. Your next step is to make sure you have enough marketing tactics and the right set of marketing tactics to get you the 136 leads you need each month to get you to your goals.

I did include a bonus question, too.

BONUS Question – Do you know exactly WHY your prospects choose you over your competitors?

If you don’t know the real reason buyers pick you, your messaging is built on internal assumptions, with generic marketing that will produce inconsistent results. This is also why most companies sound the same. The real buying triggers are usually not what you think.

Price is rarely the reason people choose you. But how you made them feel, your sales process, specific risk reductions, or the best answer – a product or company feature that no one else can claim is usually why you win. Knowing this lets you claim a position competitors can’t copy.

When your message reflects real buyer motivation, you repel bad-fit prospects and pull in the ones who close faster and complain less. That improves close rates, margins, and retention,  which impacts the answers to questions and the math above.

Seth Godin has a wonderful and aspirational perspective on this. To answer this question in a different way, what makes your business remarkable?

It’s critical that your business is remarkable. This is one of the missing ingredients in every scenario I’m called into review where marketing isn’t working, the company’s not growing, and sales are slow. The company has nothing interesting to say.

Just so we’re clear. Remarkable means NO OTHER COMPANY can say anything close to what you’re saying. You can’t be kind of remarkable. You are either remarkable or you’re not.

This is something you MUST have to be successful in 2026.

You can see from this example that revenue generation and business growth are not a marketing or sales challenge like most people think. It’s actually a business strategy AND marketing AND sales AND customer service challenge. Each of these teams has to be working together to get you to your goals.

This isn’t always easy. One way to help is to use a framework, process, and system to organize all these resources. To make sure work is prioritized inside these teams and you’re operationalizing all aspects of marketing, sales, and customer service.

The Growth Builder System provides you with tools, a clear framework, process, and a system to do exactly what we’re talking about. It helps businesses, agencies, and fractional CMOs with a roadmap or GPS to reliably drive scalable growth at all types of businesses. It’s like EOS but for revenue growth.

What You Can Do Today – If you want to hit or exceed your revenue goals in 2026, get the answers to these questions. Understand the math behind your marketing and sales execution. Lean into your customer base and turn your advocates into revenue. Finally, get your leadership team together and make sure you have a remarkable story to tell. Make sure you’re dramatically differentiated from any and all your competitors.

Let’s make 2026 the best year ever.