Whether it’s an SME (Small & Medium-sized Enterprise) or an LE (Large Enterprise), every entrepreneur desires to excel at business. Passion alone isn’t enough anymore to guarantee success in your business.
The business world is fast advancing, day by day, and it will require some skill set to guarantee success in any kind of business you may decide to venture in.
In today’s business world, for example, all major businesses are—in addition to their physical presence—taking their businesses online. Just to help them reach out to more clients.
This is just one of the major shifts we have in business today.
In this article, I’ll like to show you the 10 most basic skills that will help you excel in your business.
i. Public speaking
ii. Business plan
iii. Networking
iv. Microsoft excel
v. Facebook marketing
vi. Online presence
vii. Negotiation skill
viii. Project management
ix. Delegation skill
x. Time management skill
I’ll briefly discuss these 10 skills as listed above.
Public Speaking
You may have conceived a great idea, but you need to share it. Your ability to share and inspire your prospective clients or anyone about your business is very important.
Good public speaking helps you translate your ideas into 3D pictures in the minds of your customers, friends, or investors.
It is important for your sales and marketing skill. I’ll call it your convincing power. Anyone can up their public speaking skills. If you talk less, now you have to talk more.
The bottom line is, is your product solving a problem? Then if it is, how important is fixing this problem? These will form the basis of your confidence. You need to be bold about it. Your clients or customers need what you have.
Business Plan
Like it is often said, planning begins with putting your ideas on paper. No business will succeed without a business plan.
A business plan helps you identify the length, breadth, depth, and height of your business. It is in your plan you’ll determine your now and your future.
Many business ideas don’t make it off the plan on paper. This is where every likely consideration is made. From logistics to finances, to marketing or distribution, to market control, and more.
True as plans go into actions, little things about your business may change. But a good business plan sets the pace. It will reveal the pros & the cons, and help you prevent the cons.
You can get ideas about writing a good business plan yourself online. Today there are cheap courses you can enroll for, to up your skills in Udemy, LinkedIn Learning, Teachable, etc. Or you can pay a professional to do the job.
Whichever you choose, you can be sure you are off to a great start having a good business plan.
Networking Skills
Networking is all about building relationships and sustaining them. You can do better with good relationships.
A mentor in your line of business can help you with valuable information and resources. You don’t get to make all the mistakes they made. They act as tour guides. Especially when you value them.
Your business may be surrounded by other businesses that you either depend on or are dependent on your product. Good relationship skills will help your interaction with them, and in turn, facilitate your smooth business run.
You may not need a course on this, but if you think you do please take one. The point is, you must value your relationships and use them effectively for your business. Don’t try to make an island of yourself.
Microsoft Excel
No matter what business it is, you need to store data, process data, and analyze data. Today various software programs can aid you in the above processes.
However, Microsoft Excel is one easy way to accomplish these. At least for starters. Microsoft Excel is a computer software program. It is easy to use with a little practice.
So much you can do with it. You can handle your finances, bookkeeping needs, track inventory, cash flow, and more.
You can get videos online from YouTube on this one. Or you can have a friend or an expert put you through, and taking a paid course online is also a good idea.
Facebook marketing
To start up with free marketing, you need some Facebook marketing skills. Apart from running marketing campaigns on Google, Facebook marketing is the second-largest advertising platform.
With time you can advance your marketing into the paid version. But there’s room to startup for free.
Don’t mistake chatting on Facebook for marketing. There’s a little twist to marketing on the same platform that you must learn. But learning this way is easy, it’ll be another easy way to have fun marketing your business.
Online presence
If you must be relevant in this age, then you should be online. If you don’t have the resources to build a website for starters. Get your business registered on Google business.
Also, there are other business directories online you can register your business on. They are categorized under different business niches. While some are general.
Registering your business does not cost you any fee. So you can get right on it right away.
Negotiation skill
The longer your experience, the better you are at negotiating business sales or deals. This skill is important. It is about using a win-win approach to negotiate business with your customers.
There is no single process to it. Customers are different, and so it is about knowing where to draw the line in your sales. So as not to miss sales opportunities and also not sell your business short of its worth or value.
Project Management
Every successful business has great management. Project management is about deploying and directing resources: human, financial, and technological, efficiently.
It is finding the most effective and economic ways of doing business or expending resources, to both deliver optimal services and increase revenue.
You can take an online course to help you manage your business efficiently. It will determine how long your business stays relevant.
Delegation skill
To delegate means to assign a task or responsibility to another. Who is capable of delivering the same result—or better—if you undertook the task.
As your business grows, you’ll require more hands-on-deck to help you get better results, improve & increase your services rate.
You need to know who can do what, and assign responsibilities to people. You can’t do it all by yourself.
Delegating efficiently will help you spend your time in more valuable ventures and task to expand your business.
The main question about delegating is, can this task be done by someone else. If yes, then encouraging such team members and appreciating their efforts will help you succeed in delegating different task.
Time Management Skill
Time is everything about life. And placing the highest value on your time is what time management is all about.
Your time must be spent on the highest value assignments. I learned this beautiful illustration from Brian Tracy. If you were paid per hour, how much would you like to earn?
Now, that sets a value on every hour of your day. If what you do or give yourself to can’t pay you the value of an hour of your time. Then you shouldn’t spend your time doing it.
Time management is about setting goals and maximizing time to engage in them based on their value to your business needs.
Finally, other skills are great to learn as well. Such as Search engine optimization, Data science, Copywriting, Video production, and Leadership.
All of which can help your business. However, I have treated in this post the most important and basic skills needed to strive in this age in business.