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by Rajen Kumar

No Escaping Social Media

Running a magazine concentrating on issues of small and medium enterprises and managing with limited resources is a like living life on the edge. In this rush of meeting deadlines,...

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Apr 2012

EMRC, Brussels Associates with SME WORLD as its New Media Partner

EMRC has promoted business partnerships with the developing world and has organised dozens of business forums in key decision-making cities, such as Amsterdam, Rome,...

Focus

Take Your Business to the Next Level

Prabbal Frank
Jul 2009

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Passion a burning desire is the key to success, they say. But is passion all that takes to develop a small business into a successful one. Unfortunately, the answer is no. More than 50% of the small businesses die an untimely death because the man behind the show, the entrepreneur lacks business skills. Successful businesses need more than passion and hard work. They need expertise. They need skills. They need people who are proficient at these skills.

The 9 vital business skills you will ever need to develop a small enterprise into a successful one are:

1. Team Building Skills: Business is about teams. There is a basic difference between a self-employed professional and a small business owner. The self-employed professional works for his business almost independently while the small business owner engages a team to work for his business. But just having a group of people to work for you does not constitute a team. When there is synergy in the efforts of the group they are said to be in a team. Then the group becomes cohesive. Building teams that generate productivity to their potential is an essential art to master.

2. Delegation Skills: Although you may be good at doing many tasks, but business demands you to focus on crucial aspects and tasks. In order for you to remain focused on important tasks you need to delegate the other tasks to people around you. When you delegate you assign the responsibility for successful completion of the task to a competent person. Although, the person may not be as proficient as you are as happens with most of the businesses still you need to effectively delegate the routine tasks to make the business work for you.

3. Communication Skills: Business is all about communication. You need to communicate to the outside world what your business stands for, what solution it offers and what are its unique selling points. Not only you need to inform the outside world, but you need to inform your team members too. You need to make them aware of the values the business stands for and the culture the organization imbibes. While commu-nicating you need to take into consideration the current perceptions of the people around you. Use words and tone which fits not hinders the current perceptions. Having a non-vegetarian fast food chain with a cow in the logo in India would prove to be a communic-ational suicide for the business.

4. Financial Management Skills: Finance is the key element in any business. It is the lifeline for a business. As a business head one should know how to procure money from various sources and how to evaluate the risks and rewards associated with each of them. One should know how to manage the working capital and to make budgets for various functions of the business. Further, one should document the financial performance of the business and analyze the performance to identify and rectify items which have affected the performance adversely.

5. Sales & Marketing Skills: To take you business to the next level you need to formulate sales and marketing strategies. You need to analyze the current market trends, existing competition, government policies etc. and come out with policies which translate into long term profits.

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