“Entrepreneurship is about turning what excites you in life into capital, so that you can do more of it and move forward with it.” – Richard Branson
Every entrepreneur starts with a dream and works hard towards making the dream into an actionable plan, and then a reality. Small business owners need to work extremely hard in order to create a name for themselves in their niche. Besides having the technical knowledge in their field, small business owners also need to have a strong set of skills to help them set themselves apart from the rest.
Entrepreneurial skills involve a lot of people and talent management. They need to be disciplined in their own right in order to imbibe the same culture into their team. These soft skills will only help them hone their talent and knowledge into creating an active workforce and building their company into a full-fledged and successful venture.
So, what are the most important skills that all small business owners need to possess in order to reach their goals and succeed?
Delegation
The entrepreneurial mindset often turns small business owners into raging workaholics who cannot take a break. They overwork themselves and then feel like they are not meeting their own expectations. When someone has a hundred things on their plate, some things are just bound to slip.
Learning how to delegate is a very important skill to have for all budding entrepreneurs and small business owners. It will save them a lot of time and energy, which they can use to focus on the main objectives to grow their business. Entrepreneurs need to learn how to let go from micromanaging every aspect of their business and focus on the bigger picture.
Marketing and Sales
Being a good salesman and a marketer for your small business is a key skill to possess. There are many ways in which you can learn this skill. There are various workshops, courses and tools to help you manage your marketing and sales efforts. Your business will not succeed unless you know the best ways to sell to your audience. Marketing tools, both online and offline, need to be used effectively.
Building a solid sales and marketing plan may seem like it’s a tough task, but if you understand your user or your audience and you know what they want, it becomes a lot easier. Get feedback from your customers, generate insights, and use the data you have collected to improve. Follow the upcoming consumer and market trends in your field and focus on creating the best possible strategy to deliver value to your consumer.
Financial Management
Financial management is another important skill to have as an entrepreneur. Money management, making the right investments at the right time, accuracy in bookkeeping and creating short-term and long-term strategies for growth can help you boost your company, raise more capital and generate more revenue.
There are many aspects to financial management that you may not be fully aware of, especially if you aren’t specialising in that field, so you should never hesitate to ask for professional advice and help. This way you will get expert advice and assistance to create a sound financial plan for your small-scale business.
Leadership and Team Building
A good leader is a good team member too. As an entrepreneur, no matter how small your team, you need to be able to lead them effectively to drive positive results. Your employees will look up to you, and if you cannot be a good leader to guide them, your business will suffer. You also need to focus on building positive relationships between your team members to improve the work environment.
A good leader is a good team member too. As an entrepreneur, no matter how small your team, you need to be able to lead them effectively to drive positive results. Your employees will look up to you, and if you cannot be a good leader to guide them, your business will suffer. You also need to focus on building positive relationships between your team members to improve the work environment.
Communication Skills
Nearly all of the skills involved in becoming a successful entrepreneur require you to be good at communication. Small business owners need to interact regularly with their customers, stakeholders, vendors, team members, and know how to build and maintain relationships with all of them. Miscommunication can lead to something as small as a missed deadline to something as big as revenue loss, so you need to be able to communicate your requirements as a business owner to everyone you are involved with.
Effective communication does not end with just speaking skills. A good communicator also has effective listening skills. As a small business owner, you need to be able to listen to what your audience tells you, what your team tells you, and what all the other stakeholders involved in your business tell you. Once you listen and comprehend what they are trying to say, your job will become a whole lot easier.
Customer-Centric Approach
All entrepreneurs need to make their consumers and users their primary center of focus. A lot of the time what happens is that new business owners get so caught up in their own vision of what they want their company to be that they forget who it is they are doing this for. Sure, success is an important goal, but taking a consumer-centric approach to planning and executing business plans will be an important stepping stone in getting you there. Your customers are what will keep your business afloat and take you to the heights you want to reach.
Taking a customer-centric approach means always providing great customer service, implementing all relevant and necessary feedback, and focusing on what problems they have that you can solve for them. If you take the, “How may I help you?” approach over the “I am here to help you” one, you will see a noticeable difference in the way you create future plans and strategies, and how you understand consumer feedback.
Proactiveness and Adaptiveness
Being proactive and adaptive are two sides of the same coin. The coin in this case being any situation. A proactive business leader will have planned for the scenario and kept strategies for management or mitigation ready. But one cannot always foresee every single situation that may arise, and some can be quite disastrous. Even if you have prepared for a natural disaster, or an epidemic, no one really knows what scale to be prepared for because no one really knows what scale they will be affected at.
Take the COVID-19 pandemic for example. There must have been a big number of enterprises that had a disaster management, recovery and business continuity plan in place, but it still had a major impact on businesses. This is where adaptiveness comes into play. If entrepreneurs are adaptive in nature, they will be able to avoid panicking, think logically, and come up with the best possible solution for any unforeseen circumstances.
These skills are related to each other and can really make the difference between a successful venture and a failed one.
Time Management
Time management is a required skill for all leadership roles. If entrepreneurs understand how to manage their time effectively, they will be able to create a work culture around them that is more disciplined and punctual. This will help build better, longer relationships with their clients or customers, and make sure everyone who works with the organisation has an enjoyable experience. Time management is more than just a skill. It is one of the most important values that all business leaders need to possess.
Negotiation Skills
All new businesses need to negotiate in the beginning. A good negotiator will be able to build long-term contracts with their vendors in order to get the best deal possible. This will help entrepreneurs get a strong start right from the beginning. It may sound harsh, but money is always tight in the beginning so you will have to make every penny count.
Expert negotiation skills will prove to be useful dealing with clients as well. You do not want to argue to get the desired outcome and you want to maintain a healthy relationship with the client. This is where good negotiation skills come in handy. A good negotiator always leaves both sides satisfied with the final decision.
Awareness of Own Shortcomings
Nobody is perfect. Even if you feel like you have a solid business plan, there might be some things you may have missed out on. Entrepreneurs need to be open to listening to suggestions, and need to be self-aware in terms of their own shortcomings. If they are not financial or accounting experts, they need to understand that this is an important role that they cannot slack off on, and then work towards solving this problem.
Being aware of one’s own limitations will help new business owners expand their horizons and come up with creative solutions. They can work with finance or accounting agencies, hire a full-time accountant, or work with someone on a project basis if that is the area they are less skilled at. If online marketing and advertising is something they do not know much about, there are agencies and experts who can assist with the same.
The point is, just because you are not an expert at something, does not mean you cannot rely on others to help you along your way! Sabisuu is a platform that will help all businesses fill out the gaps in terms of skills and services and help you reach your goals. So head on over to www.sabisuu.com to explore the platform now.
