Business profitability requires six major skill sets. The first part of this two-part series on business profitability covered the first of these three skills: financial, idea generation, and planning skills.
This part 2 covers the remaining three skills: management, marketing and customer relations skills to help small business owners to attain business profitability.
Management Skills Required To Reach Business Profitability
Whether or not you can achieve business profitability will depend partially on how well you manage your business on a daily basis.
You are the one that will create and oversee each business process, determine how business information is distributed, and provide leadership and team building for your employees.
You are responsible for building business skills that insure smooth business operations, and will ultimately lead to business profitability. If you don’t do it, you may be hanging a “business for sale” sign sooner rather than later.
How you manage your business will determine your ability to achieve business profitability. But marketing is equally important.
Marketing Skills Required To Reach Business Profitability
Small business marketing is often the responsibility of the business owner. If that’s true in your business, then marketing is one of your most important skills.
Marketing is so important because it ultimately determines sales. It generates business leads and produces income.
You have to have customers and the income that they provide through sales, or your business can’t survive, much less build business profitability.
You need marketing skills from advertising to public relations. Only with marketing can you get the attention of your potential customers. But it’s building positive customer relationships that get your customers back “in the door” to purchase again.
Customer Relations Skills Required To Reach Business Profitability
To develop positive customer relations, you need to monitor and record all feedback that your customers provide. You even need to solicit their opinions through surveys and other feedback systems. And don’t forget that customer complaints provide great feedback that, if you listen, can improve your business profitability.
If you listen, your customers will tell you how to improve your business, customer satisfaction and customer retention. If you provide excellent customer service and build good customer relationships, your chances of business growth and business profitability grow exponentially.
Synthesis
The six skills covered in parts 1 and 2 of this article are vital. You need to groom financial, planning, idea generation, marketing, management and customer skills to build business profitability.
In addition to these six skills, you need to target a specific business profitability goal and implement procedures to assure that you are always moving your business closer to that goal. A defined goal will help you build business profitability.
