Five Questions Every Business Should Be Able to Answer Instantly

Here’s a test. Try answering each of these right now, off the top of your head, without opening a single tool. For most business owners, two or three will be genuinely hard. For some teams, all five will require a meeting to find out.

1. What did we make last month?

Not roughly. Not “around $80k.” The actual number, net of refunds, with a comparison to the month before. This should be a thirty-second question. For most businesses it kicks off a twenty-minute process involving Stripe exports, spreadsheet formulas, and at least one Slack message.

2. Which deals are at risk right now?

Not the ones you’re already worried about — the ones you’re not. The deals where the close date slipped quietly, where there’s been no activity in three weeks, where the champion went quiet. Your CRM knows. But it won’t tell you unless you go looking.

3. Where is the money actually going?

You know your biggest line items. But do you know which costs grew the most last quarter? Which vendor relationship became twice as expensive without anyone noticing? Cost drift is invisible until it isn’t — and by then it’s already three months old.

4. Which customers have gone quiet?

Churn rarely announces itself. It usually looks like silence: fewer logins, no support tickets, a renewal date approaching with no conversation. The customers most at risk are often the ones you’re not hearing from. Finding them requires cross-referencing usage data, CRM activity, and billing records — which nobody does weekly.

5. Are we actually on track?

Not against a vague feeling. Against the number you set at the start of the quarter. Halfway through May, are you on pace? If not, where did the gap open, and when? This question sounds simple. Answering it with real data almost never is.

The goal with Eugénie is to make all five of these a thirty-second question. Your data is already there. It just needs to be asked.