Growth Assessor™
Understand what is limiting growth
A structured, evidence-based assessment of the commercial system — leadership interviews, a workshop across five functions, and analysis benchmarked against world-class standards. Recommendations are modelled against your own sales velocity.
How the engagement runs
Sales Velocity Analysis
Leadership interviews
The Growth Assessor™ Workshop
Analysis
Recommendations
Why the order matters
We model the upside before you commit to the programme
Sales Velocity Analysis establishes your baseline: opportunity volume, average deal value, win rate, cycle length. The Growth Assessor™ then models its recommendations against those same four drivers — including where actions are interdependent and only create value together — so you understand what the plan is worth before you agree to it.
Most diagnostics end with a list of recommendations. This one models the commercial impact of acting on them.
The Merlin5 Vital 5™
Every growth constraint has a source
Commercial performance is rarely shaped by a single factor. It is the result of multiple systems working together — when one weakens, the impact is usually felt elsewhere. The Growth Assessor™ evaluates the whole system rather than functions in isolation.
Guiding principle
Strategy & Alignment
Strategic clarity, leadership alignment, growth priorities and organisational focus. It touches all five areas below — where strategy is unclear, every capability beneath it is optimising toward a target the organisation has not agreed.
The Growth Assessor™ workshop
Two hours in a workshop. Three weeks end to end.
Leadership teams often see one reality. Frontline teams experience another. The gap between them is usually where the constraint is hiding — which is why the workshop puts every function that shapes revenue in the same session, answering around 80 questions across the Vital 5™.
questions, qualitative and quantitative, covering the Vital 5™ and the strategy above it
~80
Total time from your team
2 hrs
Maximum, start to recommendations
3 wks
Sales
Where the process is followed, where it is worked around, and why
Marketing
What is generated, what converts, and where alignment breaks
Operations
What the data says, and what it cannot see
Finance
What the forecast is worth, and how it is built
Leadership
What is believed, and whether the organisation below agrees
Why leadership teams trust the findings
Any diagnostic is worth what its evidence is worth
Evidence from across the organisation
Structured insight from leadership, sales, marketing, revenue operations, enablement, customer success and frontline teams — not from one perspective.
Benchmarked against world-class practice
Performance measured against recognised commercial standards across every area of the Vital 5™, so strengths and gaps are relative rather than asserted.
What it answers
The questions leadership teams cannot answer from inside
Sales
Velocity
What is influencing
performance?
Growth
Assessor
Where are we
losing value?
Growth
Assessor
Can we trust
our forecast?
Growth
Assessor
Are we investing
right?
Growth
Assessor
Where should we
focus first?
Growth
Assessor
What should
happen next?
What leadership teams gain
Four things you cannot buy separately
A clear view of what is influencing performance
Where performance is being affected, where capability gaps are emerging, where execution is breaking down, and where the greatest opportunities sit.
Confidence in forecasting, planning and investment
An evidence-based view of commercial performance, and how it compares against world-class organisations.
A shared view of what matters most
Alignment across a leadership team that arrived with different views of the same business — and the evidence to settle it.
A quantified path to execution
A prioritised roadmap with the commercial impact modelled against your own sales velocity, ready for the Accelerate Framework to deliver.
Trusted by
Organisations where performance matters
The Growth Assessor™ has been refined through work with global enterprises, technology leaders, private equity-backed businesses and complex transformation programmes — organisations where the cost of misdiagnosing a growth constraint is measured in quarters.
PRIVATE EQUITY & VALUE CREATION
ENTERPRISE & GROWTH ORGANISATIONS
PROFESSIONAL SERVICES & EDUCATION
Who it is designed for
Different organisations, remarkably similar questions
Private equity firms and portfolio companies
Growth targets are ambitious and value creation timelines are compressed. Visibility is what makes the plan credible.
Fast-growth businesses
Growth creates complexity. What worked at one stage often struggles at the next.
Chief revenue officers and sales leaders
Most CROs do not lack information. They lack clarity about which of it matters.
CEOs and managing directors
Many know something is limiting performance. Few have an objective view of where it sits.
Consulting firms and transformation programmes
Many programmes identify what needs to change. Fewer identify why performance is not improving.
Leadership teams entering a new phase
A new operating model, a new market, a new owner — and a need to know what the commercial engine can actually carry.
FAQ
Everything leadership teams need to know
How is this different from a traditional sales assessment?
A sales assessment evaluates the sales function. The Growth Assessor™ evaluates the commercial system — customer, go-to-market, sales, data and people — because a sales problem frequently originates outside sales. It also starts from a quantified baseline rather than an opinion, and it models the commercial impact of acting rather than simply listing what to change.
Why does Sales Velocity Analysis come first?
Who needs to take part?
What happens after the diagnostic?
Can Merlin5 support implementation?
How long does it take, and what does it cost my team?
Know what to change, and what changing it is worth
The Growth Assessor™ establishes why performance is constrained, benchmarks it against world-class practice, and models the commercial impact of acting against your own sales velocity.
