CMC’s Top 10 Key Characteristics of a successful Entrepreneur
CMC Partners have a wealth of experience between them and for over 20 years have identified common characteristics of business owners who have increased their revenue and grown their companies even in hard economic times.
You could mentally tick off the list beside each characteristic you feel you possess. Don’t worry if you don’t have all these characteristics as most can be learned with help and practiced.
Successful entrepreneurs …
1. Dreams that are realistic
Why start a business? Some believe it would be satisfying to be ‘the boss’ and to have the freedom of decision making, to take extended holidays, benefit from greater income and not having to work so hard.
Dreams rarely come true or are realistic without a considerable amount of hard work and the ability to learn and adapt quickly.
Running a small business is for many their first experience of balancing cash flow needs, worrying about economic trends, dealing with customers and suppliers, employing people, selling and marketing, managing people and leading them while providing security for their family from their own efforts.
It is worth remembering - nothing worthwhile is that easy, otherwise everyone will be doing it!
Tony Maynard & Derek Allen, CMC Partners
2. Do what they do best
Entrepreneurs who stick to their strengths and do what they enjoy will be the most successful. You cannot be everything to everybody. To be effective you need to identify your strengths and concentrate on them . For any weaknesses you can always seek professional advice to help you give the whole package.
You are also more likely to enjoy and be passionate if you are focussing on your strengths. Entrepreneurs’ who succeed do not mind the fact that they are putting in long hours a day to their businesses because they absolutely love what they do.
Graeme Thom, CMC Partners
3. Plan everything
So many excellent ideas and good intentions fail because of lack of sound basic planning, with little or no idea of business process. The sad thing is that people generally do not plan to fail they just fail to plan in enough detail.
Business planning is essential for survival and growth so it’s a good habit to develop, implement and maintain. A business plan may be formal or informal, but it must analyse the facts to give clear goals for what is deliverable. You can then use the plan to measure and monitor success.
Planning an effective business strategy needs a good ‘rear view mirror’ but it needs some ‘vision’ of the future.
Derek Allen, CMC Partner
4. Have the vision
The vision for long-term success and a clear sense of how to scale the business up A are key qualities.
Often that vision needs discussion and debate, refinement and fine tuning and agreement and communication.
It is also very important to understand what it is you want from your business? Just remember “if your business depends on you being there all the time, you don’t have a business – you have a job” (Michael Gerber).
Tony Maynard & Derek Allen CMC Partners
5. Manage money wisely
An entrepreneur understands and has control of their finances. Managing the day to day cash flow of a business is vital for survival! Profits are great, but of no use if you don’t have the cash to support the business. You need to ensure the cash keeps flowing and the bills get paid in order to pay for services, promote and market your business, repair and replace tools and equipment, pay for you and your staff.
Produce monthly accounts but keep the process simple. You don’t need a multi company accounting software package in the start up and early development phases. Consider an outsourced service, it instills discipline and offers expertise in something the entrepreneur might not be confident.
‘Look after the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves’
Martin Rowe and Phil Donoghue, CMC Partners
6. Understand their customers
One of the key things that sets the successful entrepreneur apart from the herd is their ability to understand their customer on all levels – the various factors that drive customer buying behaviour.
This embraces the rational agenda like price or value for money but it also includes the emotional issues – the customer’s hopes, fears and aspirations. The emotional element is very important – having some empathy with your customer’s situation enables you to put together a solution that will appeal and enable you to communicate its value. When markets change, as they have over the last three years, it is more important than ever to spend time talking to your customers. Entrepreneurs do this without having to think about it – everyone else can do it as well - but they have to make the effort.
Bob Brown, CMC Partner
7. Delegation
All entrepreneurs understand that they need “to do what they do best” and a should ensure they drive their business forward on this basis.
But…. what about the areas of the business that they don’t enjoy or understand or have any affinity with? Often these areas get neglected, but a really skilled entrepreneur will be aware of these blind spots and ensure that someone is his team takes responsibility for them. Alternatively a very common mistake is for the owner manager to try and do everything themselves. This works up to a point but often becomes a limiting factor on the business as the effect of trying to do it all, actually inhibits the growth of the business.
The solution is to properly think through delegating areas of business and ensuring that there are processes in place to ensure that the wider team are properly managed and motivated. We see too many companies that get “stuck” at a certain size. This is often because the owner struggles to introduce additional managers to help move the business forward. Business owners that find themselves in this situation should seek help in order to develop an additional tier of management.
Simon Scott, CMC Partner
8. Invest in people
A successful entrepreneur will recognize that they cannot build a business alone. It's a task that requires good people and a good team that is as committed as you to the business and its success. An entrepreneur will be able to recruit and retain good people – or delegate to someone who can. They will have the ability to inspirationally build and motivate a strong management team and staff, thus successfully growing their business.
An entrepreneur will not be frightened to employ people that are better than them as they will recognize their abilities can help drive the business forward.
9. Know how to sell
Business is all about selling. An entrepreneur will need to sell their idea to investors or bank for finance, sell directly to customers, sell their ideas to their teams. The business is bound to fail if the entrepreneur does not know how to sell. If they do not have the sales skills, they are smart enough to seek help with a partner with the skills or gain training.
10. Alert to opportunities and have an appetite for risk – calculated risk!
Finding opportunities is an important characteristic of every successful entrepreneur. Often opportunities are gained through networking. It’s important to form alliances with people who can help you and whom you can help in return. To succeed, you need to possess good networking skills and always be alert to opportunities to expand your contacts.
Entrepreneurs are inherently risk takers but the ones that are successful take calculated risks and have the above characteristics. They take a ‘leap of faith’ after weighing up all the possibilities, planning, calculating the financials, start carefully and take the plunge when they know they have the chance to succeed.
How did you do? If you are missing some of the above then get in contact with CMC to help you be a successful entrepreneur. Contact us on 01491 829181 or derek.allen@cmc-partners.co.uk