This article throws light upon the ten main qualities of a successful businessman. The qualities are: 1. Knowledge of Business 2. Accuracy 3. Time Sense and Foresight 4. Alertness 5. Honesty and Morality 6. Initiative and Capacity to Make Decisions 7. Ability to Co-Operate 8. Consistency and Dependability 9. Energy 10. Personal Qualities.
Quality # 1. Knowledge of Business:
The businessman should have a thorough understanding of his business. He should be clear about the aims and objectives of the business. The knowledge of business should be supplemented by knowledge of finance, marketing and mercantile laws. The knowledge of all these aspects is essential to tackle the problems of complex business.
Quality # 2. Accuracy:
The next main quality is that he realises what he is talking about and what he means. Precision in regard to the orders and their execution is imperative. It is essential that he should be a man of right thinking. He must be able to grasp his problems by treating them quantitatively.
Quality # 3. Time Sense and Foresight:
It is imperative for a modem business to appreciate the time and think in terms of time. There is a chain of action which must conform to the rapidly changing needs of the ultimate consumer. He must be able to forecast with foresight and look into the future. Having detected the wants, he must be capable enough to proceed intelligently to meet those wants.
Quality # 4. Alertness:
The businessman is required to keep in touch with the developments taking place in his own country and the world. He cannot be successful if isolated. He must be alert in not only meeting the wants but in creation of the wants.
Quality # 5. Honesty and Morality:
It is of utmost importance that the businessman should adequately satisfy consumer demands most honestly. He must use his ability to provide precisely what is demanded from him. He must maintain quality standard most honestly. The honesty and optimism which goes with it are attributes of the businessman at his best. Honesty with him should not only be the policy but actual practice.
Quality # 6. Initiative and Capacity to Make Decisions:
The success of businessman largely depends upon his ability to make decisions promptly and boldly. Indecision very often results in missing profitable business opportunities. Decision-making is the basic ingredient of executing any task. Accordingly, it is necessary that businessman should be in position to take correct and prompt decision.
Quality # 7. Ability to Co-Operate:
He must be soft-spoken and adopt co-operative and accommodating attitude towards all those with whom he comes in contact with. He must be able to compromise, adjust, adopt and be willing to admit that his judgement on occasions was wrong. He must also be temperamentally fitted to exercise divided authority. Understanding others is viewed as a pre-requisite-par- excellence as a most expedient stepping-stone for success.
Quality # 8. Consistency and Dependability:
The businessman must be of consistent mind so as to be able to exercise his firmness in the right direction in dealing with others. He should hold the organisation constant and hence dependable. A dependable businessman satisfies co-workers who are loyal to him and the unit directed by him. Therefore a businessman who wants results should avoid inconsistency, and its inevitable result, unfairness, etc.
Quality # 9. Energy:
A bountiful endowment of physical and nervous energy is another essential without which other qualities are hardly of any value. In addition to energy, he should be capable of putting up forcefully his suggestions and points of view which he considers to be in the right direction.
Quality # 10. Personal Qualities:
The businessman in addition to the above should also possess qualities common to a leader. He should be kind-hearted and have human approach to problems. He should be intelligent, mentally alert, of constructive imagination, self-confident, self-restraint, honest and sincere. Above all, he should be social and be a man of high character.