Success and Freedom

5 Must-Have Skills for Every Successful Small Business Owner

By Tayyab Babar

If you look for successful small business owners on the internet, you’re likely to find a hundred different names and their stories of becoming successful. You’ll find these people and their stories as different as night and day. Running a small business is associated with huge responsibility–one that is linked with taking care of your investors and employees, serving your clients or customers, and most importantly living up to your own goals and standards. Starting and operating a new business can be hard as roadblocks you never thought to imagine might crop up, including limited time, manpower, and budgets.

With a solid team and the right tools, however, soon you will be on your way to reaching your business potential. To help find success as a small business owner, I’ve compiled this list of five essential skills that you must keep in mind.

1. Get organized

There is no question that the work you perform in your business are different than other business owners, but there is a strong connection in how you execute them. Think about it like making a grocery list; you get everything you need in one trip. You won’t drive back and forth for each item. Similarly, you should aim to consolidate your errands and the tasks of your business. Group similar tasks and aim to accomplish them on a specific day or at a certain time. For example, instead of checking your emails constantly throughout the day, answer your emails in the morning, and once again in the afternoon. By consolidating your tasks and getting work organized, you will eliminate multi-tasking and can focus on essential tasks to finish a project.

2. Enable your team with ready information

To make the right business decision your team must have all of the information about your market, your customers, your competitors and your business processes. Putting your team in a situation where they have to hunt for the required information is not productive for any kind of a business. It encourages frustration, and lack of accuracy for your team. In return, they will make a guess rather than hunting down the right information. Effectively using and managing information is critical to driving business and streamlining operations in the Big Data era. Think about the kind of information and the system to provide it to your team on a daily basis for their routine work. Do they have all the required information at their fingertips, or do they need to ask the manager and work up the chain to access it? You might need an online database management system to provide teams with all kinds of information in real time, ensuring instant data management.

3. Get in the cloud

According to a recent story on Forbes, 78% of U.S. small businesses will have fully adopted cloud computing by 2020, more than doubling the 37% in 2015, resulting in more databases taking up residence on the Web. The use of cloud-based applications and software can significantly improve business efficiency. Give your team members the possibility to work from anywhere, whether they are at home or are out of the station on a business tour. When you and your team members can work from any location, your productivity will increase. Look for ways to shift your business to a cloud to tap into this always-available work approach. Engage a professional to make cloud-based software for your business databases. Manage your sales and inventory in the cloud or web databases. Make it effortless for your sales team to work on the road, adding live sales figures and updates into your system.

4. Motivate your team

Being a business owner and an employer, leadership is a crucial key skill for success. In order to get the best from your team members, you must motivate and invigorate them. The success of your business will depend, to a great extent, on the spirit and productivity of your employees, and it is your responsibility to ensure that they are getting what they need (morally or monetarily) to perform exceptionally. You must be prepared and available to know the concerns from your staff.

5. Track performance

It’s essential to set business goals and objectives for your company, and to be able to measure progress. As a business owner, you need to establish specific measurements that show your business performance against the set goal. Measuring and tracking business performance will identify issues and success factors that will advance the overall organizational performance. Consider looking at your weekly sales or database software. Check your performance. Are you retaining customers? Track how your team performs. Are they hitting deadlines? Find tools that can help you to track performance within your day-to-day business.