The Most Dangerous Business Decisions Are Made With Almost Enough Information

Corey Flores here checking in from Monaco.

You don't have to spend much time here before you notice how much money moves through a very small place.

Finance, real estate, hospitality, luxury brands, yachts, tourism, investments.

It got me thinking about something that has become increasingly important to me as Flores Marketing Firm grows.

The bigger the decision, the more expensive bad information becomes.

I don't mean having no information.

That's usually obvious.

I'm talking about something more dangerous.

Having enough information to feel confident, but not enough to actually understand what's happening.

A report says sales are up.

Great.

But margins are down.

Marketing generated twice as many leads.

Great.

But the leads aren't buying.

Revenue hit a record.

Great.

But accounts receivable is exploding.

Your team says a project is "almost finished."

Great.

But nobody can tell you what still needs to happen.

This is how intelligent people make terrible decisions.

The numbers weren't necessarily wrong.

They just weren't telling the entire story.

A Dashboard Can Still Leave You Blind

Business owners love dashboards.

I do too.

I want to know what's happening without digging through fifty spreadsheets.

But a dashboard is only useful if you're looking at the right things.

Imagine your marketing dashboard says:

Leads increased 70%.

That sounds fantastic.

Now let's keep going.

How many were qualified?

How many answered the phone?

How many scheduled?

How many showed up?

How many received proposals?

How many closed?

How much did it cost to acquire them?

How much revenue did they generate?

How profitable were they?

How many stayed?

Suddenly "leads increased 70%" means a lot less by itself.

This happens throughout business.

One number tells you what happened.

The next number tells you whether you should care.

Revenue Can Hide Problems

Let's say your company goes from $5 million to $7 million in revenue.

Everybody celebrates.

I would too.

But I also want to know what it took to get there.

Did profit increase?

Did headcount double?

Did debt increase?

Did customer concentration increase?

Did accounts receivable increase?

Did returns increase?

Did customer complaints increase?

Did the owner have to work twice as much?

Growth should improve the company.

If revenue increases by $2 million but the business becomes less profitable, more fragile and more dependent on the owner, I want to understand why.

Maybe it's intentional.

Maybe you're investing ahead of future growth.

That's completely different from not realizing it's happening.

Ask for the Number Behind the Number

I've learned to keep asking questions.

Someone says:

"We had a great month."

Why?

"Sales were up."

Why?

"We closed more customers."

Why?

"We had more appointments."

Why?

"One campaign performed incredibly well."

Now we're getting somewhere.

The same works in reverse.

"Sales are down."

Why?

"We aren't closing enough."

Why?

"Fewer qualified customers are showing up."

Why?

"Lead quality changed."

Why?

Now we might actually have something we can fix.

Owners sometimes try to solve problems too early.

We hear the first explanation and start making changes.

Slow down.

Find the number behind the number.

Averages Can Lie to You

This is one of my favorite examples.

Suppose your average customer is worth $10,000.

Useful information.

But what if one group of customers averages $2,000 and another averages $40,000?

Now the $10,000 average may actually be hiding the most important thing you need to know.

Which customers are worth $40,000?

Where do they come from?

What do they buy?

How long do they stay?

What do they have in common?

Can you acquire more of them?

The same thing happens with marketing.

Your average acquisition cost might be $1,000.

But maybe referrals cost $200, search costs $700 and one advertising channel costs $4,000.

The average doesn't tell you where to put the next dollar.

This is why I like breaking numbers apart.

By customer.

By salesperson.

By location.

By campaign.

By product.

By month.

By acquisition source.

By cohort.

Sometimes the answer you've been looking for is hiding inside the average.

Don't Let Good News Travel Faster Than Bad News

There's another information problem inside growing companies.

Information gets filtered as it travels upward.

The employee tells the manager.

The manager cleans it up for the director.

The director cleans it up for the executive.

Eventually the owner hears:

"We've had a few challenges, but we're working through them."

Meanwhile the building is on fire.

I don't want people around me telling me what they think I want to hear.

I want to know what's happening.

If something is going badly, tell me.

If the customer is furious, tell me.

If the campaign isn't working, tell me.

If we're going to miss the deadline, tell me before the deadline.

If you think I'm making a bad decision, tell me why.

I might still disagree.

That's okay.

But leadership becomes dangerous when everybody around the leader becomes afraid to deliver uncomfortable information.

The Owner Can Cause This Problem

This is worth admitting.

Sometimes employees hide bad news because leadership taught them to.

If every piece of bad news results in yelling, blaming or embarrassing someone, eventually people stop volunteering bad news.

That's human nature.

Then the owner complains:

"Why didn't anybody tell me?"

Maybe because the last person who told you regretted it.

I think leaders have to create an environment where problems can surface early.

That doesn't mean nobody is accountable.

Accountability matters.

But I would rather solve an honest mistake today than discover a hidden mistake six months from now.

Bad information becomes more expensive with age.

Ask "Compared to What?"

This might be one of the most useful questions in business.

Someone tells you:

"Our conversion rate is 18%."

Compared to what?

Last month?

Last year?

Industry expectations?

Another location?

Another salesperson?

Another offer?

Another traffic source?

Without context, a number can sound impressive or terrible depending on how it's presented.

"Our advertising generated $1 million."

Compared to what we spent?

"Our website traffic increased."

Did revenue increase?

"Our sales team made 10,000 calls."

How many conversations happened?

"We gained 50,000 followers."

Did any of them become customers?

Activity isn't automatically progress.

Always ask what the number means in relation to something else.

Build a Weekly Truth Report

Here's something I think owners could implement immediately.

Every week, I want a simple report that answers a few questions.

What got better?

What got worse?

What surprised us?

What are we worried about?

Where are we behind?

What changed in the numbers?

What needs a decision?

What are customers telling us?

What opportunity are we seeing?

What does leadership need to know right now?

Not fifty pages.

Not a beautiful presentation.

The truth.

I would rather have one page that helps me make three good decisions than a forty-page report designed to make everybody look busy.

Track Exceptions, Not Just Averages

Here's another idea.

Look for things that don't make sense.

Why did this salesperson close 40% when everybody else closed 18%?

Why does this location retain customers twice as long?

Why did this advertisement outperform everything else?

Why does one employee finish the same work in half the time?

Why does this customer buy three times more than the average customer?

Why did cancellations suddenly increase on Tuesdays?

Those are clues.

Sometimes the most valuable information isn't the overall trend.

It's the exception.

When something is unusually good, study it.

When something is unusually bad, study that too.

Outliers can teach you where the business is trying to tell you something.

Your Customers Know Things Your Reports Don't

Data matters.

So does conversation.

Some things don't show up immediately on a dashboard.

Customers becoming confused.

Customers feeling ignored.

People thinking your pricing is difficult to understand.

A competitor suddenly becoming more aggressive.

A new objection appearing in sales calls.

Customers repeatedly asking for something you don't offer.

Your frontline employees hear these things before leadership does.

Sales knows.

Customer service knows.

Account managers know.

Receptionists sometimes know.

Your customers definitely know.

Make sure there is a way for that information to reach the people making decisions.

Some of the best business intelligence in your company may never appear in a spreadsheet.

AI Is Going to Change This

This is one of the areas where I think AI gets really interesting.

Most companies have more information than they can realistically process.

Thousands of emails.

Phone calls.

Customer conversations.

CRM notes.

Reviews.

Support tickets.

Campaign reports.

Contracts.

Invoices.

Meeting notes.

Website activity.

Years ago, most of that information simply sat there.

Now businesses are increasingly going to be able to analyze it.

What objections keep appearing?

Why are customers canceling?

Which questions predict a sale?

Which customers are becoming unhappy?

Which marketing messages produce better customers?

What problems keep happening?

What are customers asking for that we don't currently offer?

That's where I think AI becomes much more valuable than simply producing content faster.

It can help companies see patterns humans don't have enough time to find manually.

The companies that learn how to use their own information intelligently are going to have an advantage.

Don't Collect Data You Never Use

There is another side to this.

Businesses love collecting information.

Then nobody looks at it.

If you're spending hours every week producing a report that nobody uses to make a decision, why are you producing it?

Every metric should eventually answer a question.

What should we do more of?

What should we do less of?

Where is the problem?

Where is the opportunity?

What changed?

What needs our attention?

If the information doesn't help anyone decide anything, it might just be decoration.

Better Information Creates Better Questions

This is probably the biggest thing I've learned.

The value of information isn't simply having more of it.

It's being able to ask better questions because of it.

Why are our best customers coming from this channel?

Why are customers staying longer after this change?

Why does this employee consistently outperform?

Why is our most popular service not our most profitable?

Why are customers buying one product but not the other?

Why are leads increasing while revenue stays flat?

Why is revenue increasing while cash stays tight?

Those questions lead somewhere.

And that is what good information should do.

It should make the next decision clearer.

The CEO Doesn't Need Every Number

As a company grows, the owner can't know everything.

Nor should they.

The challenge is knowing which things deserve your attention.

I don't need every number.

I need the numbers that tell me whether the business is healthy, where something is changing and where my involvement can actually improve the outcome.

That takes time to figure out.

The numbers that mattered when Flores Marketing Firm was smaller aren't necessarily the same numbers that will matter as we continue growing, establishing partnerships and expanding internationally.

The dashboard has to grow up with the company.

So does the owner.

Information Is an Asset

That's what being here in Monaco has me thinking about.

There is an enormous amount of money here.

But money moves based on information.

People invest because of what they know, what they believe and what they think will happen next.

Business isn't much different.

Every major decision you make is based on some version of reality.

Hiring.

Firing.

Advertising.

Pricing.

Expansion.

Investment.

Partnerships.

Acquisitions.

Budgets.

If the picture you're looking at is incomplete, your decision may be too.

So don't just ask your team for more reports.

Build a company that gets better at finding the truth.

Make bad news safe to deliver.

Break averages apart.

Study outliers.

Listen to customers.

Connect your systems.

Use AI intelligently.

Ask better questions.

And when someone hands you a number that looks incredible, don't immediately celebrate.

Ask:

What am I not seeing?

Because in business, having no information is obviously dangerous.

Having almost enough information is much easier to mistake for knowing what you're doing.

Corey Flores
Founder, Flores Marketing Firm