In a competitive marketplace every decision trickles down to the bottom line. Of course, no one is perfect, we've all committed ourselves to decisions we later regretted. Unfortunately, once the ball is out of the pitchers hand there is no turning back. However, bad decisions do provide us with significant learning experiences.

If sales are slow you may be tempted to take on a bad client. While the deal may look nice at the end of the day you most likely will end up getting burned. the big lesson here is simply to trust your instinct when tasking on new clients and always draft contracts with specific terms that leave nothing to interpretation.

Along similar lines: a business can lose a good deal of money as the result of a bad hire, much like trusting a bad client, a bad hire spells nothing but trouble. Be sure the people you hire understand your business. Someone with an impressive track record from another sector may not be able to apply those skills to your business. For example, a sales manager with a great deal of experience selling tangible products for a large company may falter when asked to sell a business service to smaller companies.

Another crucial mistake to avoid is in the area of product development. Is your new product ready to go? Are you sure? If you have doubts its more than worth it to re-examine your position. jumping the gun by putting your underdeveloped product into the marketplace only translates into lost customers and credibility. Once that kind of damage is done it can be difficult if not impossible to recoup those lost sales. Wait. Redesign, retool, re-engineer, whatever it takes to assure that your product is the absolute best it can be at the point of entry into the marketplace will pay off. Quite simply, customers will always notice the difference.