If the first industrial revolution was steam, the second electricity, and the third silicon, the fourth is based on digital technology and how data can be interwoven into everything.

Developing a small business into a successful enterprise demands more than talking. Over 90% of new businesses fail because the entrepreneurs are unable to translate theories or beautiful words into practical skills. Success demands more than hard work, resilience and expertise in your field.

If you keep on doing what you have always done you keep on getting what you have always have. Change will not happen in your life unless you change first.

In order to succeed, you need to understand and become proficient in a set of fundamental business skills.

Since we entered the digital technology, it is becoming clear that certain skills are going to become more important for a business to flourish in this digital age than others.

These are ten important skills that you need to scale in your business:

1. Communication Skills

Communication is an important part of life and is one that is often taken for granted. When you think about it, almost everything you do requires improved communications. To be effective in business, you have to communicate well. When you hire a new employee, good communication skills help you select the right person. When you communicate with your various stakeholders, you need to be clear about your expectations and to be sensitive when dealing with problems. The key is to know how to effectively communicate your vision with passion and conviction.

2. Sales and Marketing Skills

Establishing successful sales and marketing methods and policies ? from pricing and advertising to sales techniques ? are essential in growing your business. The ability to analyze your competition, the marketplace, and industry trends are critical to the development of your marketing strategy. The key is to know how to craft and communicate a compelling message to the right target audience that generates new business, and in turn, builds profitable revenue streams.

3. General Management Skills

Being a general manager requires that you become a jack-of-all-trades. The reason is because management involves directing and controlling a group of one or more people for the purpose of coordinating activities that will accomplish a goal. Management encompasses the deployment and direction of human resources, financial resources, and technological resources. The key is to know how to develop and implement a workable management system that will manage daily operations, nurture stakeholders, and support business growth.

4. Leadership Skills

Leadership is a process of getting things done via people. Leadership, a critical management skill, is the ability to motivate a group of people toward a common goal. Leadership is also the ability to take charge, assemble, mobilize, and motivate teams. The key is to know how to forge long-term relationships with prospects, customers, suppliers, employees, and investors.

5. Financial Management Skills

The activity of finance is the application of a set of techniques that individuals and businesses use to manage their money, particularly the differences between income and expenditure and the risks of their investments. The need for timely budgeting and reporting of financial performance is of the upmost importance. The key is to know how to interpret and analyze your financial statements, in such a way, as to identify the items that are adversely affecting your profitability.

6. Time Management Skills

Time Management is a set of related common-sense skills that help you use your time in the most effective and productive way. Time Management is a very important skill to master. Learning this skill will empower you to achieve more and to use your time wisely. The key is to know how to manage your time efficiently and to focus on the activities most likely to deliver value to your business that would help you to survive in today?s business. One thing that you should know is that in business time is far more important than money.

7. Critical Thinking

An important component of any problem-solving skill is critical thinking. Critical thinking is the ability to look at a problem, assess the issues, and question the outcomes and results. It involves a willingness to put things to the test, rather than simply follow one tried-and-true method because ?it?s in the rule book.?

In other words, critical thinking is independent thinking; it?s honestly evaluating both the positives and negatives and arriving at conclusions without bias or predisposition.

If a company?s marketing is beginning to yield lower results, for example, and the marketing department insists there is no problem and refuses even to acknowledge the data coming from analytics, that is not critical thinking.

On the other hand, a marketing department that sees the dip analyzes it, looks at different factors, and eventually identifies an element that can be adjusted is using critical thinking skills.

This ability to evaluate without in-built bias or pre-conceived notions is becoming incredibly important in 21st-century business.

8. Cognitive Flexibility

People who are unwilling to learn new things will quickly become redundant, or worse yet, irrelevant, with skills and knowledge that are no longer of use in a working world. Everyone sees the danger of a company today insisting that ?computers are just a fad? and refusing to use them. No successful large enterprise in today?s business world ignores the value of the internet.

That is why 'cognitive flexibility' or the ability or willingness to learn new things is increasingly seen as a vital soft skill for business.

Without employees ? or even executives ? who are willing to look at new technologies and learn how to use them, a business will fall behind the competition that is willing to learn new things to improve their performance and, ultimately, profit.

9. Strategic Planning

Strategic planning is a very important business activity. Strategic planning is a process of defining your company's strategy or direction and making decisions on allocations of resources of capital and people. The key is to know how to project your company's future performance, within a three-to-five year framework or more, supported by your well-defined business plan.

10. Analytical Skills

Today?s workplace is becoming more technologically advanced and complex. With this rapid increase of technology, the need for analytical thinking also increases. Analytical thinking is the ability to objectively assess the present state of your business, to determine where you want to be in the future, and what to do in order to close the gap between the present and the future growth of your business. The key is to know how to gather, review, and evaluate data that is necessary to formulate and express compelling arguments.

?Peter Anosike has Ph.D in Consulting and Profit Management. He is an international bestselling author and founder, Ultimate Entrepreneurs Academy, an organisation that trains college students, under graduates and even workers on how to become successful entrepreneurs. Kindly Google Peter Anosike for the list of his books.

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