24 Jan 3 Essential Skills for Entrepreneurs to Succeed in 2017
What are some of the skills that you mastered and applied in 2016 that produced the results you’re proud of? If you can name at least one skill my advice is for you to advance that same skill and apply it in 2017 for even bigger results. Now when I say 3 Essential Skills for Entrepreneurs that includes solopreneurs and freelancers. Essentially, your professional existence is determined by your ability to generate more business, sales.
Even though various technical skills are becoming more of a demand today, skills such as coding, firewall, design, application development, etc. I want to talk about the 3 most important skills a business owner should have. All else can be outsourced or achieved by hiring the right talent.
- Digital Marketing. This covers all of your social media and content marketing. Now, you can definitely outsource this and hire a professional to do this for you but the art of self promotion is a must for anyone looking to expand their bottom line. Although my clients hire me to help them with their social media presence I still make it a point to actually teach THEM how to do it themselves. While it is smart to delegate digital marketing to someone else while you work on the big picture such as expand your brand or what have you it is just as smart to know how to do it yourself. Here is what I mean. Unless you want to be or stay as a freelancer/solopreneur you will hire someone to run your social media and content creation. It just makes sense. Let them run your daily digital marketing while you tackle on bigger projects. Here is the difference between the OWNER running their social media and hired help; things like Live streams via Instagram and Facebook should be ran from either the actual work place or documenting some sort of work process. A lot of people think that social media and content creation is coming up with some interesting content. That may hold true to some extent but the beauty is not in the creation, it’s in the documentation. Your audience, prospects, want to see the real deal. Raw material, uncut and unfiltered is the best kind. That is what attracts new audience and builds trust the fastest. When I stream Instagram stories I see the stickability factor that is insanely better than just through regular posts. Either you master digital marketing or prepare to face some real challenges. I promise you one thing, your competition is on top of it.
- Sales. I get to do what I do today because of my sales skills. People tell me all the time “but I am not the sales type” and my response to them is “that means you’re not doing what you love. Find another business.” Because to me sales is simple, when you’re passionate about something it easy to sell someone else on your idea. When you really want to see a new movie because you saw a great epic trailer on it and you talk your friend or significant other into seeing it, you sold them on it. Not because you knew the details about the movie, but because of your attitude and enthusiasm about it. Also, with all the social media, Live streams and blogging people tell me “why do I have to know how to sell when I can have my Facebook, Instagram and Youtube do all the prospecting and selling for me?” Really? Those are tools and tools are designed to make your sales process go faster and simpler. You still need to know how to either properly communicate through those videos on Youtube or write great sales content to communicate via text. That’s called copy writing. With all things digital today, you would be surprised how many transactions today still happen either in person or via phone. Your ability to sell is the defining factor of the success of your business. I’ve been selling for nearly 13 years. I spent countless amount of hours learning the art of sales, putting it into work and eventually started training on the subject. Believe it or not I’m still learning. About 2 years ago I came across Grant Cardone. His Cardone University is probably the best sales training you will ever see. It’s practical and applicable. Regardless where you perfect your sales skills, make sure it’s from someone who is actively involved in the profession not someone who made it a decade ago and now all they do is teach. Never stop sharpening your sales skills and always upgrade your game to the next level.
- Leadership. We all know it and we all heard it. Everything rises and falls on leadership. The first person you have to lead is yourself. Leadership is the ultimate sales skill. Whether you’re a startup business or a thriving establishment you must either learn how to lead or elevate your leadership skills. From raising money from investors, to hiring the right staff…it’s all leadership. The right leaders know how to cast a vision, motivate, inspire, teach and most importantly they create more leaders. Leaders are influencers. Part of my sales profession was finding the right team members. I did that by being able to influence their decision towards working with me, over 1,300 of them. A very important note to take here is this, when you lead you have to lead by transparency. Don’t be a leader that they need you to be. Become the leader that will raise more leaders not more followers.
The reality of things is this, you can build a team around you to do all this for you; sales, digital marketing and leadership. But it is crucial for you to know how to do this yourself and do it well. The last thing you want to do is rely on someone that you hired to do any of these crucially important tasks and only to see them leave you. You will be starting from scratch, again. Digital Marketing and Sales will be easier to bounce back from compared to leadership. Often times when leadership is delegated to someone else imagine what happens when that person leaves you? She may not take the people with her to the next employer but those people will start looking for another place to work at simply because they never followed you, they followed the leader. So be smart and take control of your business. Learn to earn, more.
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To your continued success,
Raphael Mavi