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The Nine Keys Diagnostic

Score each question 0 to 4, where 0 is no or never and 4 is fully and current. Each Key is out of 24. Your wheel draws itself as you go, and once all 54 are answered it names your two weakest Keys. This is the same engine behind the self scores in the book. About ten minutes.

Fill it on screen, or print it and score by hand.

Key 1. Loading Growth

The shareholder value dial. The hub the other eight Keys turn.

1. Do you know, within a defensible range, what your firm is worth today?
2. If you stepped away for 90 days, would revenue, delivery, and client relationships continue without you?
3. Could your leadership team credibly present the business to a buyer without you in the room?
4. Are your key senior people locked in through equity, phantom equity, or a structured incentive scheme?
5. Is your EBITDA over the last three years a steady, explainable growth line?
6. Do you review shareholder value, not just the P and L, at least quarterly?
Key total 0 / 24

Key 2. Loading Sales

The EBIT dial. Utilisation, margin, and a predictable pipeline.

1. Do you know last month's firm wide utilisation, and is it within five points of 75 percent?
2. Is your gross margin at or above 50 percent, and do you know it per consultant?
3. Is your EBIT above 15 percent, or on a planned, measured staircase toward it?
4. Does your bench's skills mix match the work in your last ten proposals?
5. Can you produce a one page summary of target, progress, backlog, pipeline, and forecast in under a minute?
6. Does your pipeline hold two to three times your remaining target, honestly graded?
Key total 0 / 24

Key 3. Loading Clients

The leaky bucket. Retention, account depth, and the referral map.

1. Do you know what percentage of the clients you billed two years ago are still billing today?
2. Can you rate every key client relationship out of ten and defend the number with data?
3. Is at least 60 percent of your sales effort going to current services for current clients?
4. Does a weekly client health report exist, with a named senior owner acting on every amber?
5. Is there a relationship layer, client partners or equivalent, above your delivery teams?
6. For your largest account, could you produce a referral map of ten or more named relationships?
Key total 0 / 24

Key 4. Loading Rates

The fastest money in the book. Rate discipline and revenue mix.

1. Have you raised your standard rates in the last eighteen months?
2. Do you have a published rate card by grade with a written rationale, rather than quoting every engagement from scratch?
3. Do you know your discount frequency, average discount, and its total annual cost?
4. Does a discount authorisation policy exist, with a named signatory and a hard ceiling?
5. Is a meaningful and growing share of your revenue recurring or committed rather than re earned daily?
6. Are all contractor day costs below half of the client charge out rate?
Key total 0 / 24

Key 5. Loading Services

The machine that feeds you. Concentration, resilience, and demand.

1. Is every client below 30 percent of your revenue, with the ratio tracked monthly?
2. Do you hold at least three months of total expenses in reserve?
3. If your top business developer left tomorrow, would the pipeline keep filling?
4. Does the firm put out marketing to attract prospects AND directly reach out to prospects, both, every single week?
5. Have you run a structured reactivation campaign to lapsed clients in the last twelve months?
6. Could you produce a network map of your twenty warmest, most trusting contacts today?
Key total 0 / 24

Key 6. Growing IP

Stop selling time. Productised, repeatable, owned IP.

1. Have you categorised your last four to five years of engagements to identify your repeated work?
2. Do you have at least one named, fixed scope, fixed price productised offering?
3. Could a competent new senior deliver your flagship offering from the playbook without the founder involved?
4. Does your diligence trust pack, QA, security, architecture, references, exist before clients ask for it?
5. Is your IP stored in one owned, versioned library rather than in heads and project folders?
6. Has any IP been deliberately retired or refreshed in the last twelve months?
Key total 0 / 24

Key 7. Growing A Team

The product is people. Hiring, reskilling, and real teams.

1. Would your best consultant be excited to sit next to your last three hires?
2. Is hiring driven by a forward skills matrix rather than by replacing whoever just left?
3. Does a career framework exist with transparent levels and expectations at each one?
4. Are reviews, salaries, and the rate card all decided in one company set window?
5. Do your people hear the firm's real numbers and direction on a regular rhythm?
6. If you run offshore staff, do they work inside a genuine team environment rather than alone? Score 4 if no offshore staff yet and a team based plan exists, 0 for lone offshore hires.
Key total 0 / 24

Key 8. Growing Leaders

Out of the sandpit. A leadership layer that decides without you.

1. Have you audited six months of your calendar and priced what the firm could do without you?
2. Does a leadership layer exist with written roles, rather than every material decision ending at your desk?
3. Are there defined guardrails inside which your leaders can decide and fail without asking?
4. Has anyone made a significant call against your instinct in the last quarter, and kept your trust afterwards?
5. Does leadership compensation ride increasingly on the firm's result as seniority rises?
6. Do you and your leaders spend more time on the business than in it?
Key total 0 / 24

Key 9. Growing Market

Why should I buy from you? Positioning and market visibility.

1. Could a stranger read your website's first screen and know what you do, for whom, and what changes for them?
2. Does your value proposition contain a quantified benefit drawn from real delivery history?
3. Can you explain what your firm does in three jargon free sentences, benefit first?
4. Do you produce genuinely useful thinking for your niche on a consistent weekly rhythm?
5. Do you own a tentpole moment in your market's calendar?
6. Would your market position survive the founder stepping back for a year?
Key total 0 / 24

Your Nine Keys wheel

0 / 216

Answer the questions above and your wheel fills in as you go.

Your scores across the Nine Keys

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Now build your game plan

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The Leveraged Consultancy · The Nine Keys Self Score · by Ian Markram · Loading Growth · theleveragedconsultancy.com · © 2026