How to Improve Your People Skills for Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship isn’t a career for lone wolves. To make your business successful, you need a lot of solid support from those around you. And to get that support, you must become a people person before reaching out to your community.
Being a people person means you first need to improve your people skills - this is a person’s ability to work and communicate with other individuals or groups in not just a friendly manner but also in an effective way.
In this blog post, I’m going to discuss various ways on how to do exactly that because nobody in their right mind would want to support a rude business owner and their brand.
1. Show appreciation
Be thankful for everything and show it. Even if a customer just visited your store and took too much of your time asking questions without buying anything. Another example of showing appreciation is thanking your subordinates for their hard work. Not only does this foster loyalty but it also encourages your people to keep on doing their best and work harder.
2. Wear something that stands out
Appearances make the first impression and when in a crowd, what you wear is the easiest way to capture people’s attention. You don’t have to dress in the most outlandish manner to do so. Wearing an iconic accessory or your signature color would be enough. Take Dave Kerpen as an example. He wore orange shoes in an event to attract an investor sought out by everyone.
3. Communicate articulately
Proper articulation when talking with others is the basic of all people skills. Yet it’s something that a lot of us fail to follow. To communicate articulately is to speak less, clearly, and logically. Avoid going into unnecessary details.
Most importantly, don’t assume that who you’re talking to has the same opinion and mindset as you. It’s your job as a speaker to make them understand a new concept. It’s also a huge help to study the person you’re talking to in order to come up with the right words to say.
4. Empathize with others
While getting too emotional hinders your way to communicate articulately, there are also instances when you need to empathize with your customers and employees. By having the ability to put yourself in their shoes, you can anticipate their needs and feelings. This is a formula to use if you want to build a community around your business.
5. Learn the art of persuasion
Persuasion equals marketing and marketing equals emotion. You must know how and when to persuade people by tapping into their emotions as well as allowing yourself to be persuaded. Nobody is immune to persuasion. But when used wrongly, it can annoy customers and cause you to lose them. However, if it's done right, it can also drive a lot of sales.
6. Be patient and focus on who’s talking to you
The #1 cause of the world’s major problems nowadays is that nobody listens to anyone anymore but themselves and those they agree with. Politicians don’t listen to their scientists. The media reacts first before delivering unbiased news. Everything is in chaos.
This is why when you’re talking to people, let them finish first when it’s their time to speak. Keep your focus on them and don’t let your mind drift away. When it does, bring it back. And when they’re done, take your time to make a good reply.
With this habit, you can promote healthy and happy conversations in your life whether it’s inside or outside your business. People will notice how good of a listener you are and will open up to trust you more. Unlike the resentment created if you were to interrupt by pushing your point.
Life as an entrepreneur is about balance. Be kind all the time to those around you but also set your limits. Business opportunities are born from good interpersonal relations and good interpersonal relations are born from trust and kindness.