I am sure you remember the proverb you learned in junior classes - “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” You use this proverb to say that it is much easier to do something to prevent a problem than to deal with it after it has happened. There is similar proverb - “A stitch in time saves nine.” This proverb is used to say that it is better to spend a little time to deal with problems or act right now than wait. If you wait until late, things will get worse, and it will take much longer to deal with them. These proverbs applies to all businesses - startups to well established corporates.
I would like to discuss come of the issues startup entrepreneurs should keep in mind.

Most of the business people overlook the small and internal problems when they are dealing with large and complex problems. Most of the problems in deals with other parties start from inside the company, from different internal sources.
When you can not close the deal with your customer, look back and try to find out what’s wrong in your firm. There may be dissatisfied employees, your employee may be having bad relationship with the unit managers, you may have tagged price high, or unbelievably low. Similarly watch out the outside view of your firm. May be you are presented in a wrong way to your market, may be your prospects don’t know much about you. If your employees are not trained well, and if they are not happy selling your product or services, they will cause unrecoverable problems in long run. If it’s external problem, try to spot as soon as possible and find the solution for that.

Most of the emotional problems like employee relationship, buy-in firm’s goals by employees, customer loyalty, branding are very difficult to notice easily. You must lookout such emotional problems at first, so that you will not face surprises at your bad times. But most of other problems are easier to locate and resolve. You should try to resolve such problems before you start stumbling over those problems and those problems start their impact on firm’s operations and financial results. For this entrepreneurs must keep due care on such problems, both internal and external before that result in a big problem. Investigate and prepare a list of specific possible problems, internal and external and conduct a regular study on that.
Start studying the anatomy of your firm when your business is running well. You can stitch or prevent the problems in a smart way, when you are in good mood - emotionally and financially that might need such stitching or prevention.

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