Four questions a board should ask about commercial health

Four questions a board should ask about commercial health. Most boards ask about the number. These four tell you whether the number is built on anything.

What's your forecast accuracy over the last four quarters? Not the forecast, the accuracy. A team that lands within 10% of plan four quarters running has a real system underneath. A team that's wildly off, in either direction, is guessing, and the next number is a guess too.

What percentage of revenue comes from your top three reps or top three accounts? Concentration is fragility. If a handful of people or customers carry the number, one resignation or one churn rewrites the year. The board should know how exposed the business is to a single departure.

What's your net revenue retention? New logos are expensive and volatile. Retention and expansion of existing customers is the quiet engine of a durable business. A company growing on net retention alone is far healthier than one running hard just to replace what's leaking out the back.

How long does a new rep take to reach full productivity? This is the scalability test. If ramp takes a year, growth is capped by how fast you can hire and wait. If it takes a quarter, you have a system a new person can plug into. The answer tells you whether the business can actually scale or just work harder.

The number tells you what happened. These four tell you whether it'll happen again.