What are The Top 10 Business Skills for An Entrepreneur?

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The 10 most important business skills an entrepreneur can have

An entrepreneur must have these 10 essential business skills

Top 10 crucial business skills for an entrepreneur to have

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Want to know what it takes to be an entrepreneur? Get started by reading the top 10 business skills for an entrepreneur to have!

In 2020, the pandemic set off a wave of entrepreneurship. Many people laid off from their jobs decided they would rather pursue their business idea than depend any longer on a risky job market. Here’s the good news: you never needed to go to school to become an entrepreneur. Everything you need to learn can be learned in the field.

Sales

Billionaire Sara Blakely once confirmed it was her experience as a salesperson that enabled her to lift her brand, Spanx, off the ground. Most people think about car salesmen and cringe when they think of sales. That’s a hard sell. A soft sell looks more like giving away a free skin tone guide along with a lip kit. In 2021, everyone will be fighting online for the attention of consumers. And, of course, what works well for one industry won’t necessarily generate the same success when used by another industry. Therefore, it’s important to make use of resources like sites online, such as this one for insurance sales, to learn how best to communicate with potential customers so that businesses are able to convert as many leads as possible. An entrepreneur needs to know the difference and cannot shy away from developing the skill of selling for their business to thrive.

Creativity

Creativity is a function of your exposure to different ideas and your ability to connect the ideas in new and interesting ways. It’s a misconception that you need to have the most creative product. You can be creative in your target audience, your business model, your geography, or your choice of technology. Creativity is intrinsic to being an entrepreneur because being an entrepreneur is about doing things differently. And creativity is not only inborn; it can be acquired through hard work. For example, if you want to start a software company, you can do so more efficiently when you are familiar with the field. If you’re a coder, you’d probably be aware of the various operating systems, such as Linux, that can be installed on your employees’ laptops or computers to prevent viruses from infiltrating them. You’d probably know how long it might take to build and test software. You might be able to assist your employees with their coding issues to some extent. You’d be familiar with mail transfer agents such as postfix and might even be able to configure them on your employees’ laptops (see this weblink) without the help of a technical team. As a result, you may not require any technical team assistance with the configuration at the initial stage of your company and save a few bucks. You might become more creative when developing any type of software while sitting with your team when you know the programming language. However, you might need help when it comes to things like how to market your product, and you may even work with someone like Victorious to devise and get going with a digital marketing strategy to, hopefully, improve your reach online and get your potential customers to come to you when they are in need of your product.

Strategic thinking

To be strategic, an entrepreneur needs to develop their perception of seeing trends and patterns. By seeing trends, they begin to see opportunities to broaden what they’re seeing. This creates opportunities for new revenue streams, products, and services. Strategic thinking will help you identify creative projects, the minimum viable product, and achieving proof of concept quickly and cheaply.

Networking

Likability is more important to human development than you would think. Just think of how charismatic politicians are and how far likability gets them, even in the presence of glaring data about their incompetence. That’s not to say you should not know what you’re doing. It’s just to highlight that contracts and business opportunities are disproportionately sourced through referrals and relationships as against faceless approaches. Networking and learning to talk about your business will give you the opportunities you need to jumpstart your business.

Decision-making

If you’re the kind of person that obsesses over a decision, overthinking it to the last detail, this is your biggest potential for growth. Assimilating the information available and making a decision quickly is one of the most valuable skills an entrepreneur can have. Time is money for an entrepreneur. It’s all about making decisions about the high-level problems your business is facing and trusting yourself to handle it later if it goes awry.

Finance

Businesses exist to make money. An entrepreneur needs to develop an understanding of how money behaves, which often comes down to a science. It’s not enough to just know how to make money. It’s also important to know how to save costs and put funds back into your business to grow it. Entrepreneurs can take financial literacy courses to teach them the basics of making smart money decisions.

Resilience

If an entrepreneur wants to build a business that lasts, resilience is what will separate them from the rest. Resilience is the skill of taking things in your stride. When something threatening happens, entrepreneurs need to be able to weather the storm and learn from it to make their future better. For entrepreneurs, resilience is about perceiving threats as opportunities and catalysts for change, rather than as mere setbacks.

Problem-solving

Entrepreneurs are adept at solving problems. They define the problem, move from the general to the specific, staying calm all the while. Entrepreneurs are also unique in their ability to detach from their original idea and stay open to unconventional solutions. They delegate effectively because they believe that the more heads involved, the more perspectives possible to solve the problem the best way possible.

Coordinating

A business is made up of hundreds of moving parts, each adding its own layer of complexity. Machines, people, intellectual property, finance, and legal issues are just some of these moving parts. An entrepreneur is always coordinating hundreds of different parts of their business. Handling all those parts at once without losing your head is a distinguishing feature of an entrepreneur.

Where do you begin?

So, where do you start to learn these skills? Begin by picking the technical skills you can research and do a few online courses on, such as financial literacy. Evaluate yourself on the others and see where you presently are. See which skills you currently are strong in and make a plan to see opportunities for development for the others. As you do more in your business, you’ll see opportunities to develop these other skills.

As you grow your business, you might need to consider getting different business insurance to help protect your business against different risks. Click here to find out more about different insurance options for your business.

*As with any insurance, cover will be subject to the terms, conditions and exclusions contained in the policy wording. The information contained on this web page is general only and should not be relied upon as advice.

References

Hackernoon (2018). The 10 Skills Every Entrepreneur Needs to Develop.

Blog by IDS Agency (unknown). 10 Great Books that Improve the Skills of an Entrepreneur.