4 Business Skills to Improve in 2019

Most entrepreneurs and business professionals understand that to truly thrive within business, they must have valuable business skills. It’s important to know the importance of investing in yourself when it comes to growing your business. When it’s your own business, you’re the only one who can fully get behind it, bringing in new skills and strengths over time.

Each year, new innovations and trends in business arise. This means that you must be constantly on the ball, sharpening your skills to keep ahead.

Whether it’s learning how to improve your conversion rate on a certain social media platform, or improving your public speaking skills, everyone has their own areas they wish to improve.

Here are 4 key business skills worth mastering in 2019, which will confidently take you and your business into 2020.

1. Technology

It seems that there is no faster moving industry than that of technology. One minute we think we have the most up-to-date smartphone, only to find it quickly replaced by the next big thing.

The same applies for the technology required for businesses. Retail businesses must understand that their point-of-sale (POS) systems will constantly need to be compatible with mobile payment systems, like Apple Pay and Google Pay.

As the world goes mobile heavy, it’s beneficial to have your business accessed via apps. Perhaps to reach wider audiences, you could benefit from understanding how to make short video clips or even podcasts for your business.

All these require a thorough understanding of new and existing technology you may not be familiar with. Assess which aspects of technology could benefit your business and learn how to use them.

2. Social Media

Understanding the evolving social media platforms and how to use them is vital to any business. Whether you run a product-led retail business or service, social media can be used to reach new audiences and potentially increase sake.

Social media evolves rapidly, therefore, any entrepreneur needs to stay on top of the most popular platforms, without falling behind. In 2019, Instagram is constantly updating itself and has become the most widely used social media platform, so sharpening your skills across this platform is vital.

It’s worth studying the effect on social media platforms for both marketing and sales, sharpening your knowledge on how to effectively use them. It may be that only certain platforms would work with your business, but either way, it’s worth finding out.

3. Relationship Building

Communication is the key skill when it comes to relationship building. Without being able to communicate and build mutually beneficial relationships within business, you could be preventing new opportunities arising.

Some of the relationships you build will be more client or supplier based, in which you’ll not only need strong communication skills but that or negotiating and persuasion. These are key for working to anything numbers and financial based, so it could be worth improving your skills within negotiation and sales. You can look at seminars by companies such as Karrass, which teach you tactics and strategies.

4. Failure Management

With all new businesses, you’ll be expected to have highs and lows. No matter how hard you have worked on a plan, an unexpected outcome can happen. Everyone deals with failure differently, but it tends to be those who don’t deal well with mishaps and approach business failure negatively that fail to grow their business.

When you fully understand how failure can come and go, and how to handle it, you can budget for unexpected expenses and mentally prepare. It all comes down with understanding how to respond to a crisis. There are many courses and classes that focus on failure management to help to train you with this.

The above are a hand-picked selection of many business trends which will help you thrive as an entrepreneur in 2019. It’s worth assessing a combination of soft skills and hard skills spreading across technology, processes and personality skills. Both are equally as important, so do analyze your current strengths and weaknesses, and take action accordingly.