One chief tool available to entrepreneurs to grow their businesses and upscale productivity is Training. However, this tool remains greatly under-utilized  except by Winning Entrepreneurs  and CEOs .

Every business requires a set of business skills and competencies for optimum performance. These skills need to be polished and up-scaled from time to time to avoid obsolescence. Weak and Obsolete business skills imperil performance , blunt productivity and expose the resources of your business to negative returns.

Running a business without the necessary business skills and competencies is like a knowledge rusty  general , though armed with the most sophisticated war armaments, leading his  untrained soldiers to the war front . You can guess what will happen to the general and his soldiers at the war front. Obviously, the general will not be alive to tell the story.

In spite of the foregoing, It is amazing and bewildering to see some entrepreneurs and business owners invest a lot of time and resources worth sometimes millions of dollars on their businesses but refuse to invest resources on their own and people training.  And when they do, they   penny -shop-effectively snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

What is training and how does it aid your business growth?^[update]

Training is the acquisition of knowledge, skills and competencies to effectively achieve the goals of your business. The goal of training is to improve capability, capacity and performance of your business. Deployed  effectively, training grows your business and delivers superior performance relative to your competition: Business growth and higher productivity. Training optimizes business performance. The primary purpose of running a business is to grow it-no more, no less! To grow the business on a continuing basis, you and your people need training not only today but forever. If training in your business does not achieve your business objectives, it means the tool has not been effectively utilized. Needless to say, training is not a substitute for your business systems.

There are two basic types of training: Technical and Business(Conceptual training).Whereas, lower and middle level staff need more of technical training, Business  or conceptual training addresses more of the need of the entrepreneur or business owner. It equips you with the knowledge and skills to grow your business and optimize productivity on a sustainable basis.

Unfortunately, most entrepreneurs focus on acquiring more technical training- the lawyer turned entrepreneur acquires more legal knowledge to run his law firm, the baker learns how to upscale his baking skills, the pharmacist how to compound or dispense drugs better and so on and so forth, so as to sharpen the saw(apologies to Steven Covey). However, this is a ‘wrong ‘way of sharpening your entrepreneurial saw. No one is saying that sharpening your technical skills is not necessary. Far from it! Without technical skills, the job will not get done and there will be no customer. However, entrepreneurship or running a business is not about getting the Job done. It is about creating, running, optimizing and orchestrating a system that gets the Job done.

How can you sharpen your entrepreneurial saw and which training should you focus on? By continuously acquiring and up-scaling your conceptual and business skills. 

So Which skills do you need to train yourself and your managers on? The Purpose of business according to Peter Drucker is to get and keep satisfied customers, hence you should focus on trainings that equip and empower you and your people to acquire and keep satisfied customers: Strategy, Marketing, Operations, Business law, Leadership and People Management.

So go training hunting today to get the skills and knowledge to grow your business.

The Author, Dr. Kennedy Ononaeke, is a business growth strategist and CEO of Winning Edge Consulting Limited- a healthcare consulting and training firm. For a free consultation on how to grow your business productivity, call: 2348035875796 or email: [email protected].

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