As a business owner you know the struggles. You understand the hard parts of running a business, and you understand the joys of running a business. If you find that you are struggling more often than not, you might need to take a step back and look at your leadership, managerial, and entrepreneur skills. There is a good chance that you are tackling your business from the wrong angle, and you have forgotten to apply these three essential skills as a business owner. Keep reading as your accountant in Billings, MT explains those skills.

 

 

Essential Business Skill: Sales

Mark Cuban once said, “In business you’re always selling – to your prospects, investors, and employees.” But what do those sales skills look like? They’re dramatically different from being a salesman.

Sales skills could be reworded as people skills. As a business owner, you constantly have to know how to interact with people. But at the same time, you constantly need to be sharing your vision and your passion with those people. That is where your interactions become sales interactions.

When you are first starting out on your business venture, you have to have the skills needed to sell your idea to your investors. Whether you are getting money from individuals, venture capitalists, or the bank, you have to sell your idea.

When you are running your business you have to sell to your prospects. They need to know why your product or service will make their life better. At the same time, you have to keep your employees passionate about your business. You must sell them on the dream.

Even when things are looking great, you have to keep selling. Employees will turnover; you have to sell the new ones. Prospects come and go; you have to sell to stay alive. A new opportunity may pop up; you have to sell to see the dream become reality.

Selling is instilling your passion into others.

Essential Business Skill: Planning

If you want to run a successful business, you have to start with a business plan. No matter what people say, a business without a plan will not know how to overcome obstacles when they come up. It all starts with setting goals.

Before you launch your business, before you register your business name, before you even think about opening a store, you have to have goals. As humans we are fickle. When we don’t have goals to meet, we don’t do anything. Without a goal for your business, personal, and financial life, you will just keep floundering along.

After defining your goals, you need to get an idea together that will help you meet those goals. This business plan should include everything you can possibly think of. You need to make a plan to meet those goals, but you also need a plan of what you will do if you don’t meet those goals. You need a plan of what to do if you exceed your goals. You need a plan of how to overcome the hard obstacles, and a plan of what to do when obstacles present themselves that you couldn’t even imagine.

By making a plan, you will make your business life so much easier.

Essential Business Skill: Focus

There is not a successful business owner out there that isn’t laser focused on their business. We have all met the two types of business owners: the one that is keenly aware of his business and knows exactly what needs done to make it succeed, and the one that is trying to run a hundred directions at once and is always frazzled.

Your focus on your business is what sets you apart from the wannabes. You know your business and what needs done. What that means is that you don’t worry about aspects of your business that someone else can handle. Payroll services? Let your accountant in Billings, Montana do that. IT work? Hire a specialist to be on-call for your computer needs. Website development? There are a lot of website builders out there and others who can optimize your website. The list could continue, but the bottom line is that you focus on your business, let others focus on their business, and work together to benefit everyone.

By being laser focused on your business, and letting others take care of items outside your area of expertise, you can grow substantially.

Practical Taxes is a full service accounting firm in Billings, MT. We can help you with many of those items that fall outside of your area of expertise, like payroll services, bookkeeping, and more. By letting us handle the things you are not familiar with, you will have more time to grow your business.