By Bizna Brand Analyst

Let’s face it. Not every business endeavor is going to morph into a success story. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out.  Instability in business is a facet of life. But business deaths are rarely sudden. Small businesses especially rarely die overnight. They are typically drawn out affairs with lots of warning signs on the decline.

Almost every business will experience financial distress or pressure at some stage and the key to survival lies in the owner’s ability to diagnose problem areas and take corrective action quickly.

So what are the symptoms which, left untreated, will prove detrimental?

You no longer have the same kind of passion you started with

You started with gusto, networking like crazy and marketing at every turn but now you are thinking of giving up. Sadly, one of the largest ways that your business is going to fall around you is if you just lose the will to continue running it to the best of your ability. You need a reason to get up in the morning, looking forward to running operations, same as anyone else, and if you can’t get that from your business then it might be time to do something about it.

Money isn’t flowing

A biashara that has very little in the way of liquid assets is not a healthy business. There’s no room for error, or for sudden expenditure. If you’re using all your money as you earn it, you need more liquidity. Remember that just because profit is increasing, doesn’t mean that you’re fine spending it all straight away (especially if your product is one that takes a while to bear fruit). Which brings me to the next point….

You are depending on debts to finance operations…and you are unable to pay back.

This is the first and most obvious sign that something’s amiss. Due to some factor, your business is relying on debts to finance operations and it isn’t always able to commit to repaying debts as soon as they’re up.

If you’re hurting for funds in general, consider scaling back on whatever it is that’s putting you into debt. If you’re suffering from poor forecasting, then the answer is simple- plan ahead! Set out the exact progression of money that you’ll need every month, including collecting any outstanding debts you might have (one of the largest reasons that businesses go into debt is when they find it hard to collect their own debts, creating a chain ripple effect).

The good employees or partners are saying goodbye.

Top performers are very perceptive, and most will not rearrange furniture on the company’s sinking ship. The good people will either be transferred to better stores in step-down positions or they will go with competitors.

Great employees can smell something in a business that’s souring, and catching it before it becomes a full-blown turf war resulting in employee walk-offs and internal strife will put a business straight on the path back to success.

Failure to recognize problems

One of the largest ways to blunder in business is to ignore tell-tale warning signs and blast ahead regardless. On top of this, and relevant even to somebody reading this now, is having enough humility to consider themselves, or ‘core’ parts of the business, as an issue. It takes a tremendous level of acumen to acknowledge an issue when it revolves around a loved one, and even more to formulate a plan to change things for the better.

Inability to deliver promises

Lesson number one in how to alienate all of your business partners: make promises that you can’t keep. A business that continuously over-promises or under-delivers will incur not only the ire of those people they work with, but a professional reputation akin to lava- don’t touch with a ten foot pole.

If you’re finding yourself unable to reach promised heights, running on steam alone won’t save you. It’s time to face facts and downscale your expectations to something that you know you can actually achieve.

You might lose some face, but at least you’ll have face left to lose.

You are unable to keep customers

Unless you’re the sort of business that relies on one-off sales-for-life, not having repeat customers is a stranglehold on profits that you can’t afford to maintain.

Consider looking into precisely what attracts customers to you in the first place, and why they’re running away in droves. Do whatever it takes to find information-as much information as you can possibly find- because it’s the only thing that’ll save your business from this.

Terrible accounting

Do you know how much money is in the bank, moving in and out of the bank and what you do that actually makes you money?

If you don’t have your back office paperwork in order, your biz is on a slippery slope. Sadly too many business owners have a head-in-the-sand approach to their business numbers. You don’t need to be a math whiz, you just need to know which numbers are important and what they mean.

You are not evolving

Something new, something different, something creative — these are what customers are always looking for. Variety adds spice to life but here it adds stars to the life of a business. Now, here’s the big question: When was the last time your business offered a new product/service to customers? If you are still in the recalling process, then it’s high time to reinvent yourself through innovation. If the business has nothing new to offer, it will eventually lose the interest of the existing customers and discourage potential new ones.

You’re considering perk cuts

This is on the list for a reason, in that it’s a very early indicator that things might be looking a little slim for the months to come.

It’s not always the case that cutting perks is a warning sign, but anyone cutting perks does so for a reason. It’s one thing to not offer a service, but scaling back something that employees have come to expect, and a thing that keeps them in your company, is never going to go over well.

If a business starts thinking of cutting perks, they’re possibly doing so to mask the very startings of a cash flow problem. It starts with no biscuits in the breakroom, and ends up in insolvency. Nip your issues in the bud now rather than later.