Stock up on skills to succeed

Avinash Bharwani 

Entrepreneurs are self-motivated professionals who know the importance of building their strengths and improvise on other skills. However, there’s a question that concerns every entrepreneur and a person who wishes to become one. What do I need to have in me to become a successful businessman or an entrepreneur? There’s ample information available on various sources like tips, ideas, quotes and smart management tricks. But does a person actually have the required skill-set to become a businessmen? Here are a few skills that every entrepreneur should imbibe:

1. Resilience: This is the ability to handle the ups and downs of any field. It helps the entrepreneur to keep moving ahead even when the outcome is gloomy. Every entrepreneur should know how to deal with ups and downs. Every successful person in the world has failed dozens of times before reaching the mark. 
2. Focus: Focus on all of your products, pitches and services so that they provide what the customer really needs. Know how to “laser focus” on every step to reach the ultimate goal. After setting a long-term vision
3. Investment for the long-term: Start-ups take a long time to reach a particular goal. Success does not happen overnight. Entrepreneurs need to stop for a moment, think and plan step by step. Most entrepreneurs are impatient and focus only on the immediate outcome.
4. Art of managing people: Entrepreneurs should learn to leverage employees to build a successful company. They need to learn to meet the right people. It is important to hire the right people and manage them well. An entrepreneur should be quite effective with human resource management.
5. Selling skills: Every entrepreneur should know how to sell their ideas, products or services to customers, investors or employees whether they like it or not. Whether you are searching for a job, selling your products or work, you simply need to have good selling skills.
6. Spirit to learn: Entrepreneurs should realise that they don’t know everything since the market is changing very fast. They should stay updated with new technology, systems and industry trends.You don’t need to be perfect at everything and need to understand strengths and improvise on weaknesses.
7. The ability to connect via social networking: Social networking is a part of any business’s strategy for marketing. An entrepreneur needs to understand each platform and arm himself with the best strategies to ensure success.
8. Communication and empathy: Effective communication can improve an idea and breathe new life into a product or brand. Any business can go down when communication lacks purpose, clarity and impact. Empathy is the ability to understand a person and share the same feelings. It is the ability to understand the needs of the customer which helps to establish and grow the number of customers. Empathy assesses the audience’s problems, identifies their pain and realise whether or not they will willingly pay for your solutions. According to research, the lack of market empathy is the key factor in the failure of start-ups. Customers know whether or not they are truly understood or cared about. When an entrepreneur chooses to show empathy with the customer’s difficulties, problems, and unique situations, he can reveal a completely different context within their relationship — one that’s based around helping them solve their problems rather than making sure you get paid.
9. Strategy formulation: Gone are the days where one could ride on without a business plan. With endless commitments and diversions wishing to monopolise one’s short attention durations, the need for strategising – from basic daily checklists to long-term plans and decision making has become inseparable for business survival.  
10. Stress management: Everything worth pursuing in life cannot be achieved easily. A person goes through a series of disappointment, struggles and stress in his respective life. The key to keep going in the game and winning it is by managing stress levels and re channelling these towards things that need better focus. Stress management keeps a person’s business and health in amazing condition. It varies from person to person whether he does it through meditation and religious rituals, being more planned or keeping a positive mid set.

Failure management 

Work can be stressful at times, but failure can be destructive. Failures can shatter motivation and affect confidence. Just like relations, films, business also faces a high chance of failure. The mantra for success is to bounce back, gather the broken pieces, have courage and apply what one has learnt the hard way to get better results.

— The writer is Vice President-New Business, Jetking