Ali Hasan
Master this Skill, Master your Life
If you go and ask the world’s most successful entrepreneurs about what is the most important skill set that is needed for starting a startup, the answers will differ from person to person. To be honest, there is no one skill that will make you the next Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos but there might be a couple skills that have the maximum amount of impact when you’re starting up as an entrepreneur.
Some of the most important skills for managing a startup could be as follows:-
- Marketing and Sales
- Independent Thinking
- Managing People
- Managing Operations
- Consistency and Discipline
- Work Ethic
- Continuous Learning
But after being into entrepreneurship for more than 3 years, I now have a different opinion. Although I still consider that an entrepreneur has to learn many skills and hone them to a certain level in order to run a startup effectively and efficiently, I now think that the skill of marketing and sales are the most important skill for an entrepreneur. These are 2 separate skills but they have the same function, to generate more sales for your startup.
In simple words, if you master sales and marketing, then you have the ability to sell and generate revenue for yourself. But if you don’t master sales and marketing, then you lack the ability to sell and this may kick your startup out from the market. But why the hell am I convincing you that the ability to sell is the most important skill?
It’s because I am into entrepreneurship for more than 3 years and during these 3 years I failed in 3 different startups. We were 4-5 partners and when 1 startup failed, we started another after another and thus our 3 startups failed consecutively.
So I began questioning myself about why did we fail as aspiring entrepreneurs? After a little bit of thinking and introspection, the reason was simple. We lacked the ability to sell and persuade people that our products and services were better than our competitors.
As an entrepreneur you might focus on learning and honing many abilities but there’s a high chance that you won’t focus on the ability to sell and this could be the reason why you will fail. It doesn’t matter what you have made. My question to you is simple, how the hell are you going to sell it?
- Do you know who your target audience is?
- Will your campaign be on social media or on traditional media?
- What is your marketing and sales budget?
- How much will you be paying your sales people?
- How will you retarget your customers?
- What is a customer’s Life Time Value?
- How much are you willing to spend on a single customer?
If you have the answers to these questions, then you might be able to sell your products and services to your desired audience. If you don’t have all the answers then it’s time to think and introspect a little bit before starting your trillion dollar company.
When my 3rd startup failed, the biggest reason for its failure was a lack of effective marketing and sales. We were inexperienced and we started a startup without even considering the cost that we had to incur for marketing and sales. By the time we realized our mistake, it was a huge blunder and we were doomed to fail sooner or later.
It doesn’t matter how revolutionary your product is, if you don’t have the ability to sell then please don’t expect to have a very strong word of mouth until and unless you’re in the exception. Hoping that you’ll be in the exception without having a strong marketing and sales strategy is simply suicidal. There are many cases where the product or service was so good that a positive word of mouth created a strong customer base.
But to have such a positive word of mouth, you need the initial customers to consume your products and services and as you might have heard, the initial customers are the hardest to get. It’s because you’re new and not many people know you or trust you. Hence, you have to work extra hard just to put your foot through the door and gain some traction.
If you think that the art of selling will only help you in your professional life, then you’re highly wrong. If you can master the ability to sell, persuade and influence people, then you’re bound to succeed not only in your business venture but also in your personal life. Selling has a bad reputation but humans are always selling one thing or another.
- When you were a kid, you sold the idea of buying a video game, toys or a bicycle to your parents because you wanted it.
- When you marry someone, you sell the idea of being a prospective life partner.
- When you’re in an interview, you sell the idea of being a prospective employee for the company.
- When you debate, you sell the idea that your opinion is better.
- When you vote, you’re convinced that your politician will do better than others because he/she just sold you his/her idea.
It’s the same with marketing and sales. You might hate selling but you can’t ignore the fact that you’re selling since the moment you’re born and you keep on selling until you die. Don’t get me wrong, other skills are also important but it’s far easier to sell an inferior product with great marketing than to sell a superior product with average marketing.
Although keep this in mind that your products and services have to be top notch otherwise your customers will buy from you only once and then they will feel cheated later on, hence creating a negative word of mouth.
If you remember Steve Jobs, then you might remember him as a visionary but he wasn’t just a visionary. He was also a great marketer and he knew how to sell the idea of iTunes, iPod, iPad, iOS and iPhone. He was simply amazing whenever he stepped on stage to launch a new offering for Apple. He was a genius with a great personality who was gone to soon.
If you can master the ability to sell, persuade and influence, then your chances of succeeding as an entrepreneur are quite high. Earlier marketing and sales were done by mostly Cold Calling, Distributing Fliers and by placing ads on Radio or TV but things have changed now and you should embrace the change.
It will be a lot better if you work digitally to sell your offerings. You can use SEO, PPC and Social Media Marketing where you have an online presence by having a well optimized website as well as social presence by being active on social media platforms to promote your startup.
Digital Marketing is way more effective and quite affordable for you. Since you also have the statistics about the ads you just ran, you can retarget some of your customers to improve the effectiveness of your ads.
If you don’t know anything about Sales, Marketing or Digital Marketing, then please don’t worry as you can learn a lot about them for free from Google and YouTube. There are a lot of courses (both free and paid) that can teach you how to effectively sell and market your products. Don’t worry if they aren’t worth their price as we will soon be launching our courses as well which will teach you everything about these skills.
I hope that I sold you the idea of selling and that you’re convinced by me. Wish you all the very best and I hope that you’re the next big thing in Entrepreneurship.
