If you are leading a business, the problem is rarely a lack of opportunity.
There is always another customer to pursue, product to launch, market to enter, capability to build or partnership to explore. The harder question is which opportunities are actually worth pursuing. Because every opportunity has a cost beyond the investment you can see. It consumes attention, uses organisational capacity, introduces complexity, and competes with everything else you could be doing. Sometimes an opportunity that looks attractive on paper takes you further from the business you are trying to build.
Most strategic decisions have an inner negotiation underneath them that no one has named yet. This tool helps you name it. It assesses an opportunity from four perspectives so you can see what you may not be considering before you say yes.
Your opportunity score
Do not just look at the total
The total is useful. The shape of the score is more useful. And the direction it points you is most useful of all.
They want it, it solves a real problem and they will pay. But it demands heavy engineering and unique components, and almost nothing transfers to the next customer. The question is not whether this is a good customer opportunity. It is whether it takes you toward the business you are trying to build.
Not perfect. But the business can execute it, customers have a real reason to buy, there is evidence they will pay, and much of the investment carries across products and customers. That deserves a different level of attention.
A lower total can be the better opportunity. Below is what the shape of your score is telling you.
A low score is not a no. It tells you where to look.
When all four converge, the question changes
The opportunities worth closest attention are those where you can increasingly say: we have the energy and capability to pursue it. It creates meaningful value. The market will pay for that value. And success creates leverage for what comes next. That is convergence.
When you find it repeatedly, the question is no longer whether to pursue the opportunity. It becomes: what are you willing to stop doing so you can give it the focus it deserves?
Not every opportunity has to score 40
An opportunity can have strategic value beyond its immediate economics. A lower-margin product might hold access to a strategically important customer. A new line might consume Energy now to create Leverage later. Entering a market might return little at first while building distribution the whole portfolio can use. If the score is uneven, ask what strategic job this is doing. Then ask the harder question: is this the best way to perform that job?
Before you decide
Five questions to close the loop. The last one matters most: the real cost of an opportunity is not only what you invest in it. It is what you can no longer invest in because you said yes.
Every external negotiation is won or lost internally first.
Compare your opportunities
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