Success could be described as understanding your desired goal or outcome was achieved to your satisfaction.
That’s why business success can be a great feeling, especially when you know you have worked hard and sacrificed many things for the pursuit and the achievement of your goal.
What are the key skills for business success?
Sales
Confidence and Self-belief
Positive mental attitude
Critical thinking
Adaptability
Communication
Empathy
Delegation
1. Sales
Sales is often described as a key business requirement. Everyone needs sales and your business (even if you're only at the idea stage) is no different. If someone will buy something or change their behaviour, you (or someone you employ) will have to sell something. Without sales you won’t have a business.
Why is sales important in business and life?
Sales drives life and business. You learn to sell as a child when convincing an adult to play a game, pick you up, buy a new toy or read a story before your bedtime.
You’re constantly selling one thing or another to your family, friends, colleagues and acquaintances and they’re doing the same to you.
Good things tend to happen if you’re able to sell (i.e. collaborate, negotiate, empathise, explain and incentivise) customers towards a common goal. Understanding the nature of sales will put you in a great position to secure yourself an income for life and an even greater number of contacts.
Simply put, it’s highly likely you will need to sell before you become a business success.
2. Confidence and Self-belief
Sales is born from confidence and self-belief.
Why do entrepreneurs need self-belief?
How can you provide a product or service when you do not believe in yourself or the product/service that you’re selling? It’s almost impossible to convince someone to do something if you do not believe you (or your business) have the ability or credibility to succeed.
A lack of self-belief can extend the sales process, which provides a poor and uncomfortable experience for everyone involved!
How to improve confidence and self-belief when starting or running your business?
Your confidence may improve with practise and this may help you gain more confidence which in turn will assist your business activities as you offer customers value.
Here are some approaches to help your entrepreneurial and business confidence:
Believe in what you can do and how you do it
Completing your actions and meeting your commitments
Presentation, presentation, presentation
Other people should not determine what you think of yourself
Healthy mind, body and soul
Believe in what you can do and how you do it
You need to fully understand your capabilities and more importantly believe in your ability to complete your goals.
If you’ve created your product or service and you want to be a success, you must be certain about your skills,your experience, your weaknesses and your strengths.
Remember you have done something which is out of the ordinary. You have created (or you plan to create) something that did not exist before, which suggests you have the skills to reach the next level.
Most people will never graduate from thinking up an idea, so you’re already doing better than most people
Completing your actions and meeting your commitments
A person of their word is often described as reliable and often trustworthy. It’s the same as keeping promises to everyone and yourself, which helps build your reputation as a trusted and a reliable person.
Something as simple as arriving to video/conference calls or face-to-face meetings on time is desired by everyone. This is an easy way to put you on a good footing with your potential customer, client or partner.
Presentation, presentation, presentation
If you look good, you feel good and if you feel good, you look good.
Your outward appearance can affect people around you. Looking your best does not necessarily mean wearing a designer outfit, but presenting your business in the most appropriate way for your audience.
For example, if you’re meeting executives from an investment bank in a financial district. It would be sensible to dress for the occasion, as it's likely you will see tailored skirts, tailored suits, clean shoes and ties.
The same goes for your business audience. Your outward appearance, clothing and presentation may say more about how you feel about them, rather than how you feel about yourself.
Other people should not determine what you think of yourself
This almost contradicts the previous point, but there’s a subtle difference.
It’s only natural for you to look to others for approval.
As a baby you were happy when smiling earned a smile in return.We often have the same desire as we grow up for approval from our peer group, family and friends.. Ths something we often carry through life.
This constant need for for external validation may undermine your business creation goals. It’s unrealistic to want everyone to approve of your life choices. Don’t wait for approval to pursue your dreams. Start today.
Healthy mind, body and soul
Entrepreneurship is hard. It’s likely you will encounter stressful situations, late nights and disappointments. This may be more difficult if you’re not feeling good or not looking after yourself
It’s easy for you to overlook your mental health, but having a solid perspective and healthy mind, body and soul may put you back on the right success track.
3. Positive mental attitude
It’s thought that positive mental attitude can lead you to business success. Your state of mind can seriously impact your decision making. If confidence and self-belief can get you started. A positive mental attitude will keep you going when you encounter obstacles along the way.
There will be an infinite number of choices and decisions on your entrepreneurial business journey. Having a clear mind and a positive mental attitude will help you make the right decisions.
4. Critical thinking
Taking the time to think about things in a structured and an objective manner may help you review and eventually overcome your day-to-day business challenges.
Are you sometimes overwhelmed by the seemingly huge mountain of work and opportunity in front of you? This is only natural. Business owners of all sizes experience similar feelings, you are not alone. Often, taking a step back and detaching your emotion from the situation may help.
5. Adaptability
Nothing is ever static. Just think about how many things have changed in the last few years. Business adaptability is vital!
The internet has expanded across the world and you can be more connected than ever before. Things will keep changing from now until the end of time. There is almost nothing you can do to stop this.
Having an open mind and knowing your business will need to be adaptable will help you remain relevant to your customers and thrive within an evolving marketplace.
An adaptable business owner can supercharge your entrepreneurial activities and overtime may greatly improve your chances of owning a successful business.
6. Communication
We’re forever needing to communicate to our customers, partners and employees. Even if you’re a soloprenuer, you will still need to communicate to your customers and suppliers.
Marketing and advertising are both forms of communication and both allow you to present your offer to your target customers. It doesn’t matter if we’re looking at organic or paid methods to present your product or service, the basic concept is the same.
Business is all about providing a service or a solution to meet a specific need or want. You will need to communicate, so you can deliver problem solving benefits to your customers.
7. Empathy
Understanding others by ‘walking a mile in their shoes’ is a great and an underrated business success habit.
Business empathy is often overlooked.. The idea behind any business is to provide someone with something of value and it would be easier to understand how your customer feels, thinks and behaves rather than trying to guess.
The more you understand your customer, the more you can provide a compelling product, service or offer.
Being empathetic towards your co-founders or team members can go a long way. Arguments and unnecessary disagreements can be reduced or even avoided when everyone is concerned about everyone’s welfare.
Using empathy to succeed within a business environment can only be appreciated by everyone connected with your business.
8. Delegation
You. Cannot. Do. Everything.
It’s impossible for you to handle every single aspect of your business alone forever. Initially you may need to be a ‘one stop shop’, but it’s quickly something that you will need to change.
If you have employees or co-founders there will be a way to split the tasks between the team. If you’re running your business solo, using partners and freelancers will lighten the load.
Internal resources (co-founders, employees) or external resources (partners, suppliers or freelancers) are a great way to collaborate on projects or delegate activities to run your business.
Successful business skills and processes
Provide people with a service they need or want
Focus on the things that make a difference
Study successful people, entrepreneurs and business owners
Provide people with a service they need or want
It’s the fundamental part of business that every new and early stage entrepreneur should consider before going head first into their new venture.
Are you creating a product or a service that someone wants, needs or desires? You could improve your success metrics by focussing on a business or service desired within the marketplace.
Entrepreneurship is already difficult, don’t make things more difficult by focusing on a product or a service that is not wanted by your target customers.
Focus on the things that make a difference
The Pareto principle or the 80-20 rule has existed for a long time, but it seems the principle continues to hold true today.
80% of your business outcome is driven by only 20% of your activities.
If Pareto is to be believed, only a limited number of activities will affect your sales performance and revenue.
The difficulty is figuring out which of your activities help you the most. That’s where a dedication to learning and understanding your business and market will be the defining factor between long-term success or short-term failure.
Study successful people, entrepreneurs and business owners
Become a student of success and research people that have been there and done it before you. This will help you to learn from the best, understand their mistakes and avoid their missteps, so you don’t have to suffer the same issues.
Read through or download an audiobook of Napoleon Hill’s Law of Success, it may give you a few interesting insights into how success. The fundamental logic is as important today as when the book was first published.
Some final thoughts on business success
Unfortunately, there is not a foolproof method to become successful or a shortcut to reach your goals. The pursuit and challenge of improving and reaching your goals is all part of your success journey.
The information within this post has only scratched the surface, it will require you to spend some time researching and understanding how you can use this information and additional sources to improve your business success odds.
Success to one person is not always success to another. Spend time on what you want to achieve, decide how to measure success and come up with a plan to achieve it.
Good luck!
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