What are the 3 important skills of a successful entrepreneur you may ask? Skills by definition, are a person’s ability to read, write, speak, calculate, and solve problems at the skill level required in work, family, and society.
However, skills cannot be defined as the ability to read and write only. But it must also be interpreted as a person’s cognitive ability to be able to solve problems.
Referring to the definition of skills, it is appropriate if an entrepreneur has good literacy skills. Moreover, entrepreneurs who are pioneering small business, the level of literacy that you have as an entrepreneur is the key to being able to develop and “level up” business. At least, there are 3 important skills that you must master to support your skills as an entrepreneur:
1. Digital
2. Data
3. Social
Then, what do the three skills above mean? However, before it gets explain further, what makes entrepreneurs need to have these three types of skills?
Why Small Business Must Master New Skills?
Before understanding what types of skills must be mastered, you must first know the urgency of skills itself. Economy grows is evident from the emergence of various small business engaged in various industrial fields.
Of course, this is a good thing for macroeconomics. However, on the other hand, you as a business actor inevitably have to compete with many players. Thus, the only way is to make your small business unique and stand out from the competition.
How can your business stand out in the midst of tough competition? The short answer is to carefully look at the gap. Indeed, finding this loophole is not easy. However, you can start investing in yourself, by developing your skills and network.
Examples of business skills are attending seminars or joining similar business communities. That way, you can get various insights about various things. From new perspectives, preferences, to consumer spending habits.
Always adhere to this principle: each person knows one thing that the other does not. So, the wider your network, the more knowledge you can nurture. The more knowledge you develop, the easier it will be to concoct creative ideas that can make your small business stand out more.
Apart from competitors, you also have to understand that consumers today are much smarter than 5 to 10 years ago. How long your business has been running or how big your brand is, no longer a determining factor for consumers. Currently, consumers decide to buy a product based on reviews from fellow buyers.
The fact about this seen at an online store that has positive reviews, definitely has a higher number of sales. Therefore, an entrepreneur must be able to create a positive shopping experience for consumers, as well as be able to invite buyers to provide positive reviews of your services.
There are many ways to get consumers to leave positive reviews for your business. One way is to reward them for the reviews they upload online. Another example of business skills at this category, by providing vouchers with a certain value for reviews on Google.
If your small business is engaged in the culinary field, you can also give free ice cream based on reviews on Zomato. Little things like this can build a good image in the eyes of consumers. Positive reviews will also increase the visibility of the brand you are building.
The reasons above are clear enough to explain the urgency of entrepreneur skills mastery. The next question, what are the 3 important skills of a successful entrepreneur?
1. Digital Skills with Technological Advancements
The first type of skills that must be mastered today is digital literacy. In this modern and interconnected era, it is impossible to develop without relying on various digital platforms.
Paul Gilster, in his book entitled Digital Literacy, argues that digital literacy means the ability to understand and use information in various forms from a very wide variety of sources that are accessed through computer devices.
Meanwhile, Bawden, in his work entitled Information and Digital Literacies: A Review of Concepts, links digital literacy with technical skills in accessing, compiling, understanding, and disseminating information.
From these two experts, we can conclude that digital skills can be interpreted as the ability to understand, access, use, and disseminate information from and through computer devices.
Number of digital users is an opportunity that you can use, namely by using the internet to develop small business. They can no longer close their eyes and are trapped in the ancient paradigm that small businesses cannot switch to the digital world.
Just look at the variety of e-commerce that has sprung up online. They are a digital platform that you can use to market your products, even to remote corners of the archipelago.
In addition, there are also many online shops with different niches. Seeing their fairly rapid development, it should be enough to be the basis for your steps to dare to design a digital-based business model.
For those of you who still underestimate digital skills, take a look at how many food sellers whose turnover has increased many times since they joined online platform. Even though they did not change their products, did not add to the menu, nor did they create innovative menus.
All they do is place their best products on the two most used digital platforms by consumers. This is the real benefit that you can get once you have to master digital skills.
2. Recognize Data for Making More Agile Decisions
The second type of skills that must be mastered today is data literacy. Data is important in running a business because data is the basis for making decisions.
By definition, data literacy is the ability to read, analyze, and make decisions based on the data and information obtained. This information can also be collected from various sources. Both manually, such as conducting surveys, interviews, and focused group discussions, or digitally by applying artificial intelligence technology.
The ability to process data is a crucial thing that must be mastered by small business entrepreneurs. Keep in mind, the data you get in the field can be processed into information or insights that can be crucial inputs for business decision making.
Being smart in data processing will lead to increased sales performance. However, keep in mind, wrong data collection and processing can actually make it difficult for your business to grow.
Therefore, it never hurts to look for those who are experts in processing data, or rely on certain tools or technologies.
Example on this business skills are data on the number of buyers in a day, month, and year. There is also data about what items are selling best and what are not, as well as data about the stock of capital goods you have. You can access all this data easily, so that decision making can be faster.
Besides being useful for your business decision making, data can also be a reason for consumers to trust your business.
In this era of information disclosure, transparency is a business strength that cannot be underestimated. Nowadays everyone is used to looking for any kind of information on the internet, so it is very likely that they will get the wrong information. You don’t want potential customers to get misinformation about your business, do you?
If you have data that is relevant to your business, don’t hesitate to publish it. For example, such as customer satisfaction data, the total number of customers you have served, and the like.
Show data that can make consumers believe in your business. However, you should also be careful about publishing data. Because, some data will affect the credibility of your business.
3. Social Skill
The third skills that you must master is humanities literacy. In this skill, human resources are the main focus.
If previously we emphasized the importance of mastering technology, it does not mean that we underestimate the human resource aspect. It should be understood, technology is only a tool to facilitate human life.
Technology is not a certainty that must be relied on continuously. If human dependence on technology is too high, then human’s ability to develop will be exhausted.
Ideally, advanced technology should not one hundred percent replace the role of humans. There are some things that are difficult to quantify, so it takes human conscience in making decisions.
Example of this business skill is a customer service. Good human-to-human interaction is a strong foundation for building trust. If your small business wants to “level up”, then use technology to improve the quality of human relations, not the other way around.
Technology must be used to support mankind. That is, whatever technology you use, it should be able to humanize customers. Thus, the use of technology will not dwarf human abilities.
The consequence of this approach is that you must prepare yourself, along with your employees, to be able to operate and use technology properly.
You might need to train yourself and your employees to be able to use technology as well as possible to support business growth. Explore all the available features, in order to create efficiency and effectiveness in business.
The three 3 important skills of a successful entrepreneur above cannot be understood and mastered separately. All three are one thing that can have a real impact.
If you only focus on one skill and forget about the rest, then your small business is difficult to develop rapidly. Do not hesitate to learn new things, because the pace is so fast. There will always be something new that can be a golden opportunity for those who respond quickly and appropriately.
Now the question is, are you ready to be the future of economy?
