Business Communication Skills

Good Business Communication skills cannot be just a certificate that you can get by attending a course. Communicating with others in Business is slightly different from personal interactions you have with relatives and friends. Most of your business communication will be as a representative of your Company and hence is a very responsible function.

You may not be the PR officer or the Press Secretary or the chief negotiator for your company, but when you wear your ID card as belonging to Xyz Company, you are representing the company. Any and all your actions may be taken as those representing your organization.

So every corporate Honcho builds a shield of protection around himself using ambiguous, long winding, jargon filled sentences to avoid giving a simple and direct response when he is asked a question. This had lead to isolation of business establishment from its customers.

Some Examples of Protectionism, Poor Business Communication Skills:

Scripted talk and rebuttal-Especially over Phone.

Template responses to written communication with zero personalization.

Use of lots of complicated Tech Jargon.

Shifting Blame on Others.

"You'll believe us if our advertisements tell you to enough times" – Typical Advertising strategy

Instead of Training on over all customer experience and value building, many are only trained on scripts for conversation lending them powerless to use their brain and also isolating customers. Even if you were to talking to a Human Representative of a company, either in person or over the phone, he talks like a robot with text book responses like:

“I understand how you feel”

“I apologize” – a hundred times in a conversation.

" yes, but according to our terms and conditions"

" I can help you with that"

" Is there anything else I can help you with" Especially after denying a request

The Impact of Business Communication on Business

In every business communicating effectively needs to be drilled down in all employees no matter which department the person works for. Communicating effectively within the organization is also of paramount importance to avoid confusion and bigger mistakes.

In one of the companies I worked, I had a very hard time communicating with the senior technicians as they are more comfortable speaking to computers than humans. It was like speaking an entirely different language. You can only imagine how they would fare if they are sent to client sites for troubleshooting!! That is exactly why it is important to train everyone on business communication skills.

I was associated with an organization where Reps were making outbound calls to existing customers in the guise of a survey and then try to up-sell them to the next category of products…bottom line… make more profit from existing base, which I would say is a pretty good business strategy.

This strategy just had one small down side, A DARK ONE, you are disguising your sale as if you are afraid to make one or as if you are ashamed of your product. This is how businesses with good intentions gets shot in the leg although their strategy is convincing. Nobody gets anywhere by wooing the other person too often.

Often short term goals and necessity for instant satisfaction will take you away from the long term fruits. Unless you communicate the values of your organization/business to your employees, how can you expect them to be effective business communicators?

Another bad example will be the banks trying to take my money. If you say no, your phone number gets passed on to ten other banks so they can then try their luck. If I cannot trust a bank to keep my phone number safe, how can I expect them to keep my money safe? Or for that matter, my identity secure? what values are these type of businesses communicating to its customers?

Integrity in your Business Communication

I would always prefer to speak to some one who out rightly introduces himself as a salesman rather than someone who wants to take a survey and then tries to covertly sell something to me.

If these situations are happening in your company, it would be a good idea to have a look at your long term goal and ask yourself, if you can build a substantial business and a client list by lying to them? If the answer is Yes, probably you are working for a politician or a crook. I would have only one thing in mind when I meet such people....RUN

Although surveys by many research organizations show that customers will stay longer and spend more money with people they trust and believe, some organizations just do not take the time to build relationship with their communication.

Business communication is one of the areas many companies can do a lot better in. But not many companies pay the required attention in training their staff in business communication skills although they spend a huge amount time and energy in training them on all the tech stuff they might need.

One quick example would be to look at the target of any sales rep. almost always, he is judged on the number of sales. It would be a lot better for companies if he was also gets judged on customer satisfaction and retention.

Thoughts on Improving your Business Communication

1. Develop trust and you will get new orders, but the converse, getting new orders does not necessarily mean you have developed trust. When someone buys from you for the first time, do not assume that they trust you completely. 99% of the time, it will be a tester, unless of course they are buying a million dollar home or a plane :-)

2. No one in the world is satisfied with one sale. We all look for more and more sales. The easiest way of getting more sales is to develop a base of loyal customers who trust you and keep it growing.

3. Every time you communicate with your customer, you are building trust or breaking it.

4. People like to buy from people they like and admire as being honest and having integrity. I am not talking of the smooth operators or fast talking used car sales man, I am talking about a human being who is interested in building long term relationships.

5. Identify areas where you can add value to your customers without asking for more cash from him.

6. There will always be some freeloaders. No matter how nice you are to them, no matter how much you give away they are not satisfied. Keep away from such customers.

7. Focus on customers who have paid and are happy to pay for good service and add value to their business.

8. Stay in touch with customers just to say hi and just to check how things are working. Follow the golden rule.

“Make no promises and don't break the ones you make”

9. Just like some people, some companies are incapable of building a relationship, incapable of looking beyond the immediate sale. Don't buy from them and don't work for them. In business communicating and developing relationship it is one of the unavoidable truths and thus not all will succeed.

10. No one became a CEO by jumping jobs every 10 months. Nobody became a CEO because they just wanted a fat pay. Until you can identify with the organization as a worthy legacy to leave behind, you can not break into the management level.

11. When the whole corporate world is berserk with allegations and investigations only organizations and individuals who have stuck out with integrity have emerged from the neck deep woods. More than ever, there is great need for people who can be vouched for as being honest and filled with integrity.

It is not enough to have integrity but in all your business communication, you need to echo your integrity and trustworthiness

“When success for the sake of success becomes the focus of a person or an organization, the chances of long-term success are greatly reduced.” Quote from Hodu.com

Every Interaction you have with a customer or a client needs to have a certain amount of basic requirements in terms of your Business communication skills. Each organization which aims to be long term player should also strongly consider actively identifying the down spots and remove the “Trust Drainers”.

Build and Develop Trust. Always.

Trust is probably one of most basic thing required in the business world. It is not expensive to build trust but not necessarily easy either. Trust was rated as one of the top ten requirements many fortune 500 companies look for while selecting future business associates. Let your business communicate trust and get more business.

If you are out to sell something say so loud and clear rather than use misdirection or false claims. No one became a billionaire by continuously fooling people or by selling one product to one customers. All the Rothschilds and Buffets and Gates of the world depend of repeat customers for business existence.

Identify business communication tools which you are using right now that act as a ‘Trust Drainers’ . Check out the business communication tools kit in your corporate communications, sales kit of your sales workforce as well as the sales work flow to identify some of the tools which might be doing one of the following:

a. Calling customers only during renewal or reorders.
b. Junk mails and spamming.
c. Lack of Proper privacy policies on customer information.
d. Sharing customer information with other mass marketers.
e. Not addressing complaints/concerns in time.
f. Blaming internal departments for misinformation.
g. Lack of communication incase of delays.
h. FAILING TO DELIVER ON PROMISES.

I can go on and on about these areas but I guess you get the general picture.

The business world is moving away from filling jobs into building human capital. Recognizing and rewarding employees who build trust and relationships with clients is one of the best practices followed by many visionary companies.

But rewarding is not enough, let your business communicate these values to your customers who may also happen to be your future employees. Employees who communicate the core of your business values to your customers are one of the biggest assets of any organization.

Revisit you company mission and check if it includes Integrity and Trust as one of the important factors identified along with success. If company is focused only on the bottom-line, they will cease to exist within a short time span. this has been proven time and again in the big bad world of business.

Many research studies have proven that companies that have strong vision of future and who effectively communicate their ideas strongly to the market place tend to outlast the ones which are solely focused on margins.

Business communication is not an easy job and neither is it for the untalented. Hiring and retaining employees who can develop trust and relationship must be at the core of any communication strategy that an organization designs. It is very important for al business communication to be streamlined and focused on spreading the message that well enhance the public's understanding of the company.