"According to a variety of surveys, an individual's greatest fear is public speaking. The next biggest is death. Does that sound true? That means to the average person, if you show up at a funeral, you're better off showing up dead than delivering the eulogy." John Steinbeck, Writer
If you are writing or speaking in public, successful communication starts and ends with the what -- the content. The how will come easier. If writing training and presentation skills training help you in gaining confidence (and you will have confidence because you'll be an expert) you'll have no worries writing or speaking in public.
To get there, aided by writing skills training, keep in mind the three foundations of effective business communication, written or spoken:
Writing is thinking. Compared to a spontaneous conversation, writing -- whether a presentation at a meeting or a report for the boss or a sales pitch -- gives you the time to show how smart you are.
Understand your audience and your readers. How much do they know already? Are they specialists? Do they want to be amused or informed or persuaded? What do you want them to get from your speech?
Study and revise and, when delivering presentation skills training, practice time and again. If you don't check your work carefully before sending it, or practice the details and delivery of your presentation, you risk looking careless and unprofessional. It's called quality control, without which successful communication is nearly impossible.
Dave G., Media Relations Trainer
Business communication can be broken down into two major types:
1)internal business communication and 2)external business communication.
Under internal business communication, we can find some examples of this type of business communication:
- communication of corporate vision - communication of corporate strategies - communication of corporate plans - communication of corporate culture - communication of shared values - communication of guiding principles - communication to motivate employees - communication to generate ideas
Under external business communication, some examples exist such as:
- branding - marketing - advertising - customer relations - public relations - media relations - business negotiations
All these examples of business communication share a commonality - to produce value for the business. To become masters at business communication, it is important to understand that we communicate what we perceive. So to become a master at business communication, you should know how to manage perceptions.
Business leaders and followers alike have to figure out how their customers perceive them. There are customers who favor their sense of sight, so to reach out to such customers, the business has to promote itself through visual means. There are customers who prefer to taste and feel things, so perhaps the business could provide samples of its products to give the customer a favorable perception of what that business is about. Other customers prefer to rely on what they hear from other people and from media - such customers may be wooed through catchy music (like background music played in malls and car showrooms.)
When a negative perception exists among many people and the business does not take steps to correct this mis-perception, business will have a harder time to correct this and later reach out to the affected customers. And when a mis-perception goes uncorrected for a prolonged period of time, the mis-perception may become absorbed into the belief system of the customers. This could be disastrous for the company. This is why many businesses invest so much money into conducting surveys - they want to find out how their customers perceive them so that problems can be caught early on.
Even the very employees of the business may have a negative perception of the business - a problem exists with the company's internal means of communication. Many business leaders are aware of this so they make an effort to reach out to their employees and find out what they are thinking.
Even surveys about management performance whose respondents are anonymous are useful because they give management a good idea of how they are perceived by their own followers. When employees are disgruntled but find it difficult to voice out their opinions for fear of reprisals, they may react in negative ways - like sabotaging the company's product or service. Or the business may experience fast employee turnover, resulting in losses for a business which has invested heavily in employee training.
So, to improve internal and external business communication, organizations should do the following:
1)Constantly reach out to target audiences through various means (i.e. surveys, online contact forms, targeted mailings of questionnaires)
2)Review the content of feedback and figure out how the feedback can be integrated into future business activities
3)Inform target audiences of improvements and changes that have been done because of their feedback.
A business that takes these steps will find that effective business communication is not so impossible to achieve after all.
Both Dave Griffiths & Peter Murphy are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Dave Griffiths has sinced written about articles on various topics from Marketing and Communications, Marketing and Communications and self improvement and motivation. To learn more about me and how I can help you achieve your goals for more effective business communication -- including writing skills training, writing seminars, business communication skills, and presentation skills training -- please check out my websi. Dave Griffiths's top article generates over 6600 views. to your Favourites.
Peter Murphy has sinced written about articles on various topics from Modelling, Marketing and Web Development. Peter Murphy is a peak performance expert. He recently produced a very popular free report: 10 Simple Steps to Developing Communication Confidence. Apply now because it is available only at:. Peter Murphy's top article generates over 90500 views. to your Favourites.