Entrepreneurship involves many business skills to be successful. These skills are essential to run a successful business organization; be it big or business.
One of the major reasons why businesses fail is the lack of business knowledge of the business owner. It is not easy to succeed at a business you have no idea about or have prior experience with.
The increasing rate of business failure causes concern and this is the reason why I have decided to shed light on the basic required entrepreneurship skills that will help an individual business owner to succeed.
In this article, we will be discussing important entrepreneurship skills every business owner must have to run a successful business.
Essential Entrepreneurship Skills Every Business Owner Must Have
The following are the top important entrepreneurship skills required of every business owner:
1. Idea Generation Skill
Businesses cannot stand without an idea. You need ideas to start and maintain business operations. An entrepreneur should be capable of generating a business idea that will be helpful to himself and the business. The idea may be in terms of product mix, product price, or presentation.
Business ideas can be generated in any of these ways:
• Buying a franchise: As an entrepreneur, you can contact other business owners to buy franchises and use their brand influence to sell your products.
• Imitation: You can look out to see how your competitors are getting customers and branding their products/services. Following the same step may help you grow your business too.
• Entrepreneur's Experience: Using experience on a certain product to make a new product or rebrand an existing product is another good business idea to grow a business.
2. Opportunity Identification Skill
This is another important business skill required of every Business Owner. Opportunity Identification for an entrepreneur can be in the form of gaining market share, new market development, new product development, and diversification. One of the best ways to identify business opportunities is through innovation.
3. Negotiation Skill
Negotiation is an essential practice of entrepreneurship that must be practiced in everyday business activities. Negotiation takes place between two persons and it involves the communication of ideas. It may be for settling the price of material or may be related to finalizing the specification, packaging, delivery, and or terms and conditions of product service.
4. Time Management Skill
In Business, time is a valuable asset that if well managed, could become money. Time management can either make or mar a business enterprise depending on how it is managed.
Every Entrepreneur must accept that;
• Time is a scarce commodity that must be utilized well,
• Time is money,
• Time is irreversible,
• Time cannot be increased, and
• Time cannot be bought.
Understanding how important time is will help you to manage it well especially when it comes to business. An Entrepreneur's success depends partly on his ability to manage his time effectively.
5. Risk Management Skill
In response to the various risks of loss faced by businesses, risk management is being used to minimize the financial effect of some risks. The entrepreneur must conversant with the methods for managing risks of loss. To deal with risk, an entrepreneur can either avoid risk in its entirety, transfer risk or reduce risk to be undertaken.
6. Profit Maximisation Skill
An entrepreneur should be out to maximize profit. This is a very important skill to have. He is primarily in business to succeed and success can be qualified in terms of the profit he makes in Business. It is however important that business owners be out to satisfy customers in the process of maximizing profit.
7. Market Survey and Research Skill
Here, the entrepreneur is to carry out market research on the identified venture to confirm that there is a market for it. The market does not necessarily need to be a physical location where business transactions are performed. It means the identification of consumers in need of a particular product before going into production of such a product. Market research helps products to sell fast because they are made for those who need them the most and at that particular time.
8. Enterprise Managerial Skill
Entrepreneurs should be able to know how to manage a business with the resources available to attain the set goals and objectives of such a business.
9. Resourceful Skill
As an entrepreneur, you should have the quality to identify and solve problems within a short period. This will help the business to overcome challenges that can affect growth of your business. An entrepreneur can be resourceful by using people and resources effectively and efficiently to achieve a business objective which is profit.
10. Communication Skill
Communication is very important in every aspect of life, And when it comes to business, it helps you to express yourself and get other people's opinions on what is needed to be done or corrected. An entrepreneur who has employees that work for him must adopt good communication skills because he will need to communicate and tell his employees what to do and also need feedback to take business decisions.
Conclusion;
Owning and managing a business is not a joke. It requires dedication and seriousness to become successful in business. One of the misconceptions about business is that anyone can start any kind of business. In as much as this may sound good, it is important to have entrepenship skills to have a successful business.