Business Basics

March 2005

Business Tips

1. Picture your communication goal - what do you want to achieve with this person you are about to speak with?
2. Focus less on being clear, more on being understood - when you concern yourself with being understood, your attention is directed to your audience, where it belongs.
3. Know your audience - before you speak, ask yourself how others will listen to you.
4. Know yourself - ask others for feedback. Watch and listen to yourself communicating on videotape.
5. Create pictures with your words - don't ask, "Can your employees use a product that will make them more efficient and effective?" when you can say, "Could your accounting staff use an accounts payable package that would cut their processing time in half and reduce errors by 70%?"
6. Rid you language of cliches.
7. Stick with an upbeat tone - avoid negative expressions when you can send the same message with postive words.
8. Make your nonverbal communication reinforce your words - your vocal quality and your body language combine to account for as much as 93% of the messages people receive from you.
9. Speak less; listen more - the buyers you call on should monopolize the conversation. Speak no more than 30% of the time.
10. Learn and grow - every time you're unsuccessful in a communication situation, learn from it. Say to yourself "I just learned one more way not to speak to someone in that situation."

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