Do You Have It In You? Shiv Khera Reveals Most Important Skills Of A Successful Entrepreneur Don't motivate an idiot, you'll have a motivated idiot! – Shiv Khera cracks up the audience.

India's best known guru of positive thinking was in action at Entrepreneur's Accelerate Your Business event with Microsoft, at The Leela, Gurgaon. Talking to a packed house, the renowned motivational speaker, in his own inimitable style, outlined the traits of a successful entrepreneur and positive living.

The motivational speaker extraordinaire and the author of best-selling self-help books said that the only people who will succeed in life are people who have three skills. People who have people skills, people who have selling skills and people who have prioritising skills.

Selling and Persuasion Skills

In life results are rewarded, efforts are not. We judge ourselves by our intentions but the world judges us by our actions. To build and grow there are very clear set of values, vision and mission. To succeed as an entrepreneur, one needs clear set of values, vision, and mission. Vision is destination based on which you get directions. Mission is an action that a person needs to reach the destination.

Persuasion skills means ability to influence, ability to convince, ability to negotiate and the ability to sell. If an entrepreneur does not have the ability to persuade, he should back off. Anyone who sells a product , service, or idea is selling for which we need persuasion skills.

Why do I say selling skills? When I wrote my book You Can Sell, they asked me is this book for sales people? So I turned back the question and asked: "Tell me who's not selling?" In the book, I have said that a salesperson is anyone who sells a product, service or an idea. Based on this definition, you tell me who is not selling? A candidate at a job interview what is he doing?

A boy-girl proposing to get married what are they doing? A lawyer arguing in front of the judge what is he doing? A politician speaking to get votes what is he doing? We are all selling either for or against because selling is not neutral.

Many times people say you need to learn the tactics of selling. I say no, you need to learn the principles of selling because principles are based on the foundation of integrity. Tactics are manipulated. And then they said you need to learn the tricks of the trade. I say no, only cheats or crooks learn the tricks. Get professional or get out. So success depends on our ability to sell.

Prioritizing skills

Priorities in life are based on values. Whenever we talk of values, many times people say whose values are we talking about? Who are we to judge?

Are values subjective and keep changing from person to person or situation to situation? No, it cannot change. Values are universal - cut across country, culture and religion. They are eternal - they were here before we came and they will be here after we are gone.

Simple Philosophy

It doesn't matter what you do today; if you take pride in it, have your eyes fixed on a goal, remain focused and goal-oriented, any hurdle that comes your way will only be your stepping stone to climb to the next level. For negative people, the hurdle is a stumbling block. For positive people, it is a stepping stone. If you are focused nobody can stop you. That is nature's law. Have you wondered why some individuals, organisations and countries are more successful than the others? They think and act more effectively.

You need to imbibe a set of core values that don't change. You can be flexible on policies and procedures but not on values. Be focused on goals: Short-term, mid-term, long-term, immediate. Most people have no goals in life. They only have dreams. Less than three per cent of the people in the world have goals. How will you reach a destination that you don't have? Finally, always give more than what you get.

Shiv Khera's philosophy in life is simple: "Winners don't do different things, they do things differently."

The difference in a winner's outlook means that you do anything and everything in life with a sense of pride. When doing any job comes down to self-gratification and you feel you have done a great job, your self-esteem goes up; it motivates you to further better yourself – that is internal motivation.