If you want to learn the most important business skills behind some of the world's top-performing entrepreneurs and business owners, then this article will be proved very helpful for you.  We help you grow your business with proven marketing and business strategies, tools, tips, tricks, and tactics. After 17 years in the business world, and having had both corporate, and professional. Some successful and some absolute dismal failures, I can confidently say that I've noticed some trends and some essential skills that really led me to get to where I am today. These skills are also shared by some of the world's top-performing entrepreneurs and business owners.

You see, one of my favorite sayings in business and in life in general are that success leaves clues, so it simply doesn't make sense to not learn from those who’ve gone before us, trying to model, and emulate, and learn from them and what they've done along the way, both good and bad. Now, the beauty behind the skills that we will discuss about is very few of these was I born with, or were pretty much any successful entrepreneur born with. Rather, they were acquired, and learned, and developed over time, which means you can do the exact same thing in order to get very similar, or maybe even the exact same, or hopefully even better results.

And that's why, in this article , I'm going to share with you seven of the most important business skills for you to succeed in today's wild and wonderful world of business.

 1-Communication.

It's hard to succeed alone, which is why the first and maybe even the most important skill we're gonna be covering here is communication, and mastering the art of it, specifically, three key areas are at play when we're talking about business.     

  1. Copywriting
  2. Speaking
  3. Conversing

 

1-Copywriting:

Let's dive into each one now. Copywriting comes first, and it's all about your ability to clearly articulate and essentially communicate what it is that you're trying to do, and essentially, trying to sell. Now, an important differentiation here is we're talking about copywriting, essentially the marketing communication that you'd see in emails, on websites, or in direct mail pieces, and not copyrighting, or copyright, which is the legal term for protecting trademarked and intellectual property. Essentially, copywriting, this guy here, is super important, because what it allows you to do is reach a lot more people by effectively persuading them through the content that you create.

2-Speaking:

When we're talking about speaking, essentially what we're talking about is the ability to reach more people, whether we're speaking to a group, whether we're speaking on video, even giving a group presentation or in front of a live audience. Speaking is a really powerful business skill, because, again, we need to be able to clearly communicate our message and what we're trying to get across. Now, very few people are born competent and confident public speakers. This is a skill that takes a little bit of time to practice, and definitely a lot of time to master, cool, and collected, so the more that you're able to address this and essentially build up some experience, the better off you're going to be.

3-Conversing:

The last form of communication that I discuss over here is conversing, and I know conversing sounds really similar to speaking, but essentially, when we're talking about speaking, we're talking about one-to-many. In other words, you talking to a group, or a number of different people, and when we're talking about conversing, we're talking about one-to-one, or more intimate conversations. Now, these could be conversations with a friend, or a colleague, or at a networking event, or dinner party, or gala,black-tie event, you never know.

Now, you don't need to be a master of small talk, and we all know that cliche. We can avoid that if you like. Really, the key here is to appear curious in the other person, and the best way to appear curious in the other person is to be genuinely curious in the other person.  Fortunately, this isr relatively easy to do. After all, all you have to do is care, and a good way to communicate that you care is by asking a lot more questions and really trying to learn about them and what they're up to.

Now the reason mastering communication is such an integral part of business is because they really lend themselves to two of the main pillars of business, and trying to influence and persuade the other person to see your point of view, and essentially, do business with you. Now, I know, it's a lot to take in, and a lot more to master, but that's why it's number one, so it's definitely worth spending some time on really refining your communication abilities.

2-Prioritization:

Now, in order to properly prioritize, you first need to be properly organized, because a messy mind leads to messy desks, and messy work, and messy everything, and you're not be able to clearly articulate and define what's most important so you can tackle that first. This is why the very first step of prioritization is organization. Next up, you take step back and take a 30,000-foot,or high-level overview of the entire situation. Far too many businesses are doing way too many things, and many of them unprofitably, when they'd be much better off by simply doubling down on their highest margin, highest leverage activities, but we'll get to that in a minute.

3-Delegation:

As we touched on briefly in Skill #1, nobody succeeds alone, and one of the biggest mistakes I see a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs make is trying to do absolutely everything themselves. A lot of this stems from perfectionism and the inability to let go. I'm a perfectionist myself, but it wasn't until I started letting go that my business truly started to grow and reach that next level. I knew that I simply couldn't do everything alone, not with only 24 hours in a day, and seven days in a week. Now the key here, much like prioritization, is to 80/20 everything, essentially identifying the 20% of things that you're amazing at, and delegating the rest. We all have one or two areas that we're just absolutely amazing at, and then a whole slew of areas that we're not so good at.

You want to identify the areas that you're not good at, don't enjoy doing, and really don't progress your business, and delegate them as quickly as possible. Now, proper delegation is obviously all about building a team, but this doesn't mean going out and hiring a ton of in-house employees. It could simply mean out sourcing some simple admin tasks, or maybe hiring a contractor to take some of the work off your plate. Start small, and build from there. I think you'll find it's very addictive over time, and you're going to become infinitely more productive the more that you scale up, and the more that you outsource and delegate.

 4-Action-based identity:

Which is having an action-based identity, opposed to a results-based identity? Here's the deal, if you've been in business for any length of time, then you know that you're going to win some, and you're going to lose some. The key is to not tie your identity directly to the results that you're achieving, but rather to the process, or the actions that you take in order to get there. The entrepreneurs and business owners that get ahead in the long run are the ones that have learned not to associate failures with being a failure themselves, but they understand that they have to keep working and progressing towards their goal.

The take away point here is to base your identity on what you do on a day-to-day basis, and the actions that you take, rather than the outcome, which may contain some variables, and some elements that area bit outside your control, but the main things you do on a day-to-day basis and the actions that you take, well, most of them are directly in your control, which is why it's so important to form that action-based identity. You're successful because you act successful and do successful things that are the point.

5-Empathy and understanding:

Now, some people are naturally more inclined to be empathetic and understanding than others, but this does not mean that you can't learn and develop this incredibly valuable business skill, and as we've touched on numerous times already, no one succeeds alone, which means you're going to need other people on your journey, and on your rise to the top, so it's could  be a lot easier, and a lot more enjoyable if you learn to develop that empathy and understanding so you can really form meaningful connections with other people.

Now, if there's a word that I could suggest to you here to help you further and deepen your level of empathy and understanding, that word would be curiosity, because there's no greater way than to develop empathy and understanding, and to be genuinely curious, and interested in the other person that you're trying to talk to. As the saying goes, "Before you judge someone, walk a mile in their shoes", and that's not just so you're a mile away and you have their shoes, but rather so you can really understand where they're coming from, what they've been through, and really try to listen, and understand about them, about their pains, and problems, and frustrations, and really just lend an ear, and the better you understand them, the better off you're going to be in business.

6-Energetic conservation:

I'm not talking about turning off the lights and making sure the air-conditioning’s set on low when you leave the house. Rather, I'm talking about the ability to protect yourself in order to be able to deliver the absolute best business performance possible. You see, when you're flying on a plane, there's a reason that they tell you to put on your own oxygen mask before assisting someone else in the event of a depressurization. This is because if you pass out first, you're not really any good to anyone else. We call this protecting the mother ship, because if you're tired, sick, beat-down, or simply burned out.

The first of these is avoiding the negative. We're talking about people like time vampires.  The ones that stop by and chat endlessly, really seem to have absolutely nothing to do other than waste your time, obviously you want to avoid these. The same goes for negative people. Again, you know what I'm talk in' about, the people that gossip, and really criticize, and essentially just bring down the energy in the room. Same goes for negative situations, if there's a place or situation that makes you uneasy or uncomfortable, not in the good kind of way of uncomfortable, when you're pushing yourself and really trying to achieve more, but the bad kind of uncomfortable, where you really just feel bad, well, you want to avoid those because it's draining your energy and your ability to operate at your highest level.

7- Being responsive, not reactive:

One of the most common and damaging themes in business is seeing the entrepreneur or business owner who runs from crisis to crisis, putting out fire after fire, and really never getting any positive, solid work done. They seem to live in this constant state of chaos, constantly reacting to things, and putting out fires rather than slowing down, taking a deep breath, and responding to things in order to correct them now, and maybe even forever.  The very first thing you need to do is ensure you have systems and standard operating procedures in place. This can help to eliminate a lot of the headaches and a lot of the recurring things that kind a seem to come up again and again and again,  put a system in place, and you should never have to deal with it again.

Next, take a look at all the objections you seem to get on a regular basis, and start to come up with educational content ahead of time, and it's going to answer these objections before they even arise. An educated customer is the best customer. Just like we already covered, understand that failure isn't fatal, and success isn't permanent, so you're going to want to prepare for the bad times and the good times. Are your customers happy? Are on track for a profitable quarter? All of these questions need answers, which will allow you to operate from a position of confidence, and allow you to respond in the event of an emergency rather than react.

Time and time again, studies have shown that the ability to make decisions quickly, and then, most importantly, to actually act on them is really what differentiates successful from unsuccessful people. Don't get stuck in analysis paralysis, don't put off tomorrow what you should be doing today, and don't wait to action that next great idea, because you never know what tomorrow's going to hold, and fortune favors the bold.