The Importance of Communication at the Workplace

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No matter what industry you are in, efficient, effective, and consistent verbal and nonverbal communication skill are incredibly valuable in the workplace. Some companies even go as far to invest a large portion of their time and money to help train and aid their employees on effective communication. Why? The simple reason is that good communication can take you beyond the conversation to something more impactful for your business and your customers.

By understanding these benefits of effective, effective, and consistent communication, you will be able to help your company focus on building a strong and conducive work culture that will be vital for your business’s future success.

So what do we need to know about strong communication?

First and foremost, you need to understand how it can help on a diverse and holistic aspect. With effective workplace communication, the most important way for this to work is how it facilitates across a variety of departments. Oftentimes, bad communication can result in various misunderstandings that can be harmful for your company’s overarching goals and visions. To reduce this negative, try and see how you can train your employees to communicate across different departments. Think of this in a various situations such as mangers to employees or departments to department. Fine-tuning messages across these groups will allow you to avoid cultural confusion and miscommunication. See what your managers and leaders in your business can do to simplify the information in strong, informative, laymen terms. In addition, see what errors there were beforehand and how you can improve operations to run even smoother.

As for team building, try and see how you can create a strong and more effective line of communication in the workplace that helps employees and managers perform at their fullest. One of the biggest problems you can find in the office is that employees have a timid distrust for upper level management. To alleviate this pressure, try and create a role of integrity and responsibility between the two individuals. Show that the communication itself is meant to support rather than to criticize. Last but not least, try and produce a positive line of communication with recognition and positive reinforcement. Many employees can underperform because they feel that their work is not valued at the office. To avoid that hostile work environment, create positive incentives such as rewards or shout outs that can boost the overall morale of your company.

Last but not least, make sure the line of communication is easily streamlined to the customer itself. Regardless of your company’s field or product, make sure the customer knows the shift and changes your product will see in the future. Apple was able to streamline their new products through various showcases and presentations that tapped new markets and new audiences. While, we cannot all be Apple, it does not mean you cannot rationalize your company’s changes in simple explanations through your employees or through various marketing strategies.

The Three Types of Salespeople

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As an entrepreneur, you will find that the job consist of variety of hats. One of the most important hats, especially within the beginning stages of your business, is the position as a sales representative. As a sales representative, you need to have a strong, strategic, and communicative attitude when selling goods or services to businesses, government agencies, organizations, or consumers. Two main traits crucial for succeeding as a sales representative are a person’s enthusiastic personality and a person’s tolerance and drive. For the first characteristic, the ability to communicate with a genuine, or seemingly genuine, enthusiasm to others is crucial for sales. It provides a sense of trust and openness with the person you are talking to. As for drive, you will ineffably face a variety of speed bumps along the way. There will be many failures, but there will also be an assortment of successes. Having the ability to be cope with that’s ups and downs will play a large role in your motivation.

So what does the best sales representative look like? What can I personally do to optimize the best sales for my business?

There are a variety of different sales representatives that all share the characteristics of the two main traits stated above. While everyone varies based on personality and work experience, people tend to fall into the three main types for a sales person: 1. the Chameleon, 2. the Entertainer, 3. the Student

For the first type, the Chameleon, as implied by the name, is skillful at quickly adapting to a variety of different situations. These individuals are able to understand how the client sees himself or herself or would like to see themselves with the product and leverage this by creating a mirroring image. This means they feed off of the person’s imagination and bringing into something tangible. A good Chameleon sales representative is highly attentive and shrewd. Furthermore, they have strong mediating negotiation skills that are perfect when pushing your new product.

The second type of sales representative is the entertainer. The entertainer relies on strong, charismatic, and often times intimidating presence as an essential tool to close a sale. The Entertainer representative reverses the typical dynamic between the seller a buyer and convinces the client why they need this particular service or product. This aggressive type of personality is often scene more in the private sector such as banking, finance, or consulting. Most case scenarios, these people are often very successful and assume various managerial positions due to their robust personality.

The third and final type of sales representative is what we call the Student. The student is very astute of his surroundings and, often times, does his or her homework before meeting with a person or company. The student’s ability to desegregate useful data at a moment’s notice and analyze the overall background of a client is highly informative and effective of the overall material. As efficient as they are with their sales, their somewhat lack of assertiveness and leadership often holds them back from assuming a managerial position. Regardless, the student’s futuristic ability to strategically plan for a variety of steps makes this person a very strong asset for hitting your sale goal.

How to Effectively Communicate in Business

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Communication is simply the act of transferring information from one place to another. Although this is a simple definition, when we think about how we may communicate, the subject becomes a lot more complex. Your mentality and success rely purely on the idea of what your goal is for the overall conversation.

Within the business sector, communication is incredibly vital for day-to-day operations. To truly stand out with an employee, the manager or supervisor, needs to be clear, precise, and effective when talking, delegating, or presenting his or her ideas. Below, you will find key tips to help aid your communication skills in the private sector. Following these helpful hints will allow you to leverage strong efficient, effective work while adding to a positive and cohesive work environment.

Know Your Goals

Setting and reaching your goals is a mainstay theme in every portion of a manager’s day. Whenever you talking, whether that is in a meeting with your team or one-on-ones with an individual, make sure you there is a point or goal in mind. Supervisors often find themselves rambling on and going off on a variety of different tangents if they are ill prepared for their presentations. To prevent this from happening, internalize your goals for the meeting or conversation. Then revise and simplify your goal so that, no matter whom you talk to, you are confidently able to exert your goals for anyone’s understanding. While this may sound time consuming, this should take no more than a few minutes.

Be Precise

As much as people love flexibility and autonomy in the workplace, more specific and direct instructions can be more effective in achieving your daily goals. Many people can often get confused if you are not completely precise about what the task are. Any tangents or unrelated conversation, while positive at times, can often compromise both your time and your team’s success. The best way to avoid this is to communicate very precisely, usually step-by-step, of what you want to see at the end of the day or end of the week. This gives the responsibilities on the individual who should at that point then execute.

Be Accessible

Many times throughout the day, you will find a variety of problems or misunderstandings that can be easily resolved from a simple one-minute conversation. Being easily accessible for your team and co-workers will provide a sense of trust and support that people often need in order to succeed. Make sure you are positive and personable. Oftentimes people can feel intimidated or unconfident because of certain misunderstandings with the work. Showing these individuals that you are there for them can greatly pick up morale and boost productivity.

Create an Online Forum to Share Information

For many companies and enterprises, having an online social network for which employees can communicate is an incredible tool. These social platforms, like Slack, Google Hangouts, or Skype allow people to engage and interact on various levels such as announcements, knowledge transfers, delegated task, meetings, etc. Utilizing this within the everyday operations can only improve your productivity. Make sure that the overall concept is used in a professional yet positive manner.

Email Etiquettes

When communicating online, especially through emails, try and leverage the subject line. As stated before, be direct and to the point. Often times, employees will misread the title and will often delete or skip opening your email. Being precise about what you want in the subject line will clearly get the immediate attention of your workers so that things are fun smoothly and efficiently.