About 2 months ago, I was invited to speak on the subject; “Project Management in Small Business”. I was immediately excited about the topic and started meditating on how to connect these two topics together. With the rising failure of small business operation in Nigeria, I discovered with shame, how easy it is to adopt Project Management (PM) practices to solve small business challenge. Every business operation falls under the SIPOC model i.e. Supplier, Input, Process, Output and Customer model. The average Nigerian small business falters under the Process operation, which can easily be rectified by good PM practice.
However, days after getting applauded for my presentation, I discovered that when starting up a business, its success depend more on the entrepreneur than the enterprise. Ever since I wrote the article; “Leaving a high paying job for business”; the one major question that seems to crop up amongst my readers has been; “who is a called entrepreneur?” I may not be able to give you a definite answer but I believe the story of Ruth in the bible may make it explicit enough.
For those who are not familiar with the story; it’s about a Hebrew man with his wife and two sons, left their native country to Moab due to famine. The man died and his two sons each married Moabite women named Orpah and Ruth. 10yrs later, the two sons died leaving both Moabite women with their mother Naomi. Naomi decided to leave Moab to her native country and the two daughters-in-law wanted to follow her. She dissuaded them from following her giving them logical reason why they should not follow her. The daughters-in-law persisted until she touched on a sensitive subject that made Orpah to turn back.
To the daughters-in-law, the sensitive subject was “husband” but to a modern day entrepreneur, the sensitive subject is “money”. Naomi painted the picture of a hopeless outcome if they follow her – this same hopeless picture flashes through the minds of every entrepreneur that decides to follow the calling. If you can explain what made Ruth to follow Naomi despite the hopeless situation, you can define what a called entrepreneur is. Let me make it very simple; Ruth was called, Orpah was not. A called entrepreneur drives joy in being an entrepreneur and solving problem without being clouded by compensation but when the problem is solved, the compensation always comes.
This is exactly how it goes for those who are called – love what you are called to do and what you are called to do will compensate you. However, success may not be as black and white as I have placed it. There is one particular ingredient that the entrepreneurial success cannot do without – it is the skill of a salesman. I am yet to see a successful entrepreneur that does not know how to sell. Selling is the fundamental skill that an entrepreneur must adopt in order to succeed in his calling. No matter how noble your calling is, you must be able to influence people to believe in your vision by partnering with you, working with you or buying your product or service. If you are a good doctor, you must know how to sell to start your own hospital.
However, you cannot learn how to be a salesman right from the books, you have to get your hands dirty by going through rejections, unbelief and fear. With, constant practice and hard work, you will however make an effective salesman cultivating essential skills like likeability, self-confidence, courage and gumption. Before leaving that high paying job, you can easily join the sales department (not marketing) or proactively put yourself in a position where you need to influence people to procure a product/service. Although, sales in not the only ingredient that makes you an effective entrepreneur; its proportion in the mix outweighs the other individual ingredient and you have a better chance of transiting the wilderness days. Have a lovely day!
