An entrepreneur is a person who initiates a business idea for economic and exchange value. An entrepreneur is the brain behind any business idea. He can create and motivate business ideas. He drives the idea and oversees its full implementation.
Every entrepreneur should have some skills and characteristics to propel the business into a long-lasting and profitable venture. To survive the competition in the market, if you do not have these particular skills, you must develop them.
Essential Skills and Characteristics
The following are some entrepreneurial skills for business persons.
Self Motivation
Self-motivation is a characteristic that any business person should have. You need to push your business idea and overcome obstacles that may come your way in the course of your business operations. You must motivate yourself for the growth, survival and overcome challenges in business.
Risk Taker
To survive as an entrepreneur, you have to be bold and daring. Business is all about taking risks and investing money in areas you are not sure if they will give you returns. Taking risks helps one decide whether to stop a business idea or to promote it. There are very few entrepreneurs who made it without taking risks.
Networking
For any business to grow, you need to network with other businesses, entrepreneurs, and investors. Networking helps your business to grow. Through interacting with other companies, you get to learn new investment opportunities your business can venture into.
Communication
No businesses can operate without proper communication. There are many channels communication can take in business. You need to communicate appropriately with your customers and convince them why they need to buy your products and services. You will also require communication to relate to your employees.
Branding
Branding is a way of letting the masses know that your business exists and the products and services you are offering. Branding helps your business to compete with other companies. Branding helps potential customers to see differences between two competing companies.
Resilience
Resilience is the ability to push a business forward regardless of the obstacles that may occur. It is an important characteristic, especially when starting a new business. You are likely to make losses and stiff competition sometimes.
Innovator
Invention is the epitome of any successful business. Creativity helps firms to produce new products and services. When a company is doing business differently from other competing companies, it is easy to win the competition. It is also important when finding solutions in the market and coming up with new ideas.
Be a Disruptor
Disruption describes a process whereby a smaller company with fewer resources is able to successfully challenge established incumbent businesses. Specifically, as incumbents focus on improving their products and services for their most demanding (and usually most profitable) customers, they exceed the needs of some segments and ignore the needs of others. Entrants that prove disruptive begin by successfully targeting those overlooked segments, gaining a foothold by delivering more-suitable functionality—frequently at a lower price. Incumbents, chasing higher profitability in more-demanding segments, tend not to respond vigorously. Entrants then move upmarket, delivering the performance that incumbents’ mainstream customers require, while preserving the advantages that drove their early success. When mainstream customers start adopting the entrants’ offerings in volume, disruption has occurred.
Research
A successful business must be good at reaching the market scope, products and potential customers. Research is useful in business growth and product development. Through research, you will find a market get where your business can venture into. Through research, your business will lead to desirable results.
Passion and Interest
There is an old saying that says interest almost always beats talent. Being passionate about a business idea creates a positive internal drive and motivation. Also, with interest, it becomes easy to solve a problem and overcome business challenges.
Strategic Thinking
Strategic thinking is a core business skill. Successful businesses have SWOT analysis that requires the ability to assess your business weaknesses and strengths. With that, you will set up the necessary strategies and compromises to ensure that your business is profitable.
Time Management
Time management involves planning and having priorities. Every business needs to achieve some milestones before others and as such, you need to plan what to come first. Time allocation is another aspect of business planning. Profitable and essential projects need to be allocated more time and priority.
Finance Management
Finance management is critical for business growth or fall. When allocating resources, careful assessment needs to be compared to the return on investment (ROI). More finances should be directed to business projects with higher ROI. Any business needs to maintain proper financial management and accounting.
Sales
The epitome of any business is in the number of sales it makes. Without sales, then there is no business. Developing a new sales channel helps a company to leverage its revenues. As such, a business will create new avenues and generate more profits.
Negotiation
Negotiation is an essential skill in business that is critical in finding new deals. An entrepreneur needs to negotiate with investors and financiers to get funding. Negotiations foster a business relationship with parties involved in a business.
Open to Learn
Business is a continuous learning process. Openness to learn is important to adopt new trends, skills and opportunities. Through learning, you get to know what is critical to your business. Knowledge helps companies to compete with their competitors favorably.
