The Strategic Communicator » Corporate Communications

How Poor Communications Is Costly to Your Business

Sharí Alexander — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:43:41 +0000

Poor Communication Skills Costly to Businesses

I often talk about the importance of effective communication and presentation skills. I usually focus on what the benefits are for your business. Today I realized that perhaps some companies aren’t aware of the cost of poor communication skills. I believe that this must be the case – a general unawareness – because businesses are not focusing enough (or any) of their development efforts in this area.

Today, allow me to make it very clear how your business suffers because of underdeveloped employees and poor communication skills.

Lost Business: When things go wrong, how your team handles the situation will determine whether or not your client will stay with you. In our “flat world”, you are replaceable. If your employees don’t handle a crisis situation with strong and effective interpersonal communications, all your client has to do is hop onto Google and contact your competitor.

No Business Growth: Without good interpersonal communication skills, networking efforts are futile. New connections will not be made. Discussions with the decision maker will never happen. Phone calls will not be returned. You may have a good product or service, but if it is not presented well, it won’t get bought.

No Advocates: If your people can’t clearly communicate what your business does and how it can help, how can you expect outside people to turn around and tell their friends, family, coworkers, and others? It won’t happen. The message needs to be clear, concise, and presented effectively. With a strong message, outsiders will be able to spread the word and drive more business to you. Without it, you’re on your own – literally.

Personnel Issues: 80% of office complaints are a result of communication misunderstandings. Think of the time and money that could be saved without the distraction of inter-office communication problems. Plus, people who are happier in their work environment are more productive. With communication training and development, you will not only save money, but also increase revenues.

Underdeveloped People = Underdeveloped Business: Training and developing your people to become highly effective communicators is one of the best investments for your business. How we communicate with the rest of the world directly determines the outcome. Strong communications equal strong relationships, which result in a strong business.

These are only a few of the costs you will be incurring if you allow poor communication skills to fester in your organization. Communications training and professional development are a critical element to the future and continued success of your business. Without improving this crucial area and allowing the communication skills of your employees to stay stagnant, you are choosing to let your business lag behind.

Find resources and training programs that will help you develop your employees, and therefore increase your business success.

Related links:

Why Meetings (and Meeting Presentations) Matter

Sharí Alexander — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:01:28 +0000

Meeting Presentations Matter to the Bottom Line

Meetings and effective meeting presentations matter more than ever.

I recently stumbled upon some interesting statistics about the ROI organizations receive from coordinating their large company-wide meetings at the Meetings Mean Business site – http://www.meetingsmeanbusiness.com/.

With the unfortunate economic downturn, companies and other organizations drastically cut back on their meetings. And as the statistics below demonstrate, these organizations could be doing themselves more harm than good by canceling such gatherings.

Meetings Mean Business:
1. For every dollar invested in business travel, companies realize $12.50 in incremental revenue.
2. More than half of business travelers stated that 5-20% of their company’s new customers were the result of trade show participation.
3. According to business travelers across all industries, 25% of existing customers and 28% of revenue could be lost to competitors if customers were not met in-person.

Face-to-face conversations, networking, and presentations obviously lead to wonderful business opportunities. So if your company is thinking about canceling any important event in the near future, provide them with this information and other enlightening facts found at www.meetingsmeanbusiness.com.

Effective Business Communications and Twitter

Sharí Alexander — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:00:18 +0000

When Twitter first came on the scene, I must admit I thought it was ridiculous. 140 characters to say something. What in the world could you have to say that’s worth saying in 140 characters? Well, I’ve been converted to the Twitter world.

After posting through the restrictive medium, I have found communication through Twitter to be fascinating. Especially when you compare how much CAN be said in 140 characters vs. how very little is said in meetings that last over 2 hours. I believe Twitter has taught us to be more specific, succinct, and powerful in our communications.

In my business presentation training, I teach there is power in brevity.

“I have a dream.” | “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” | and more recently “Yes we can.” … All in less than 140 characters! These guys were way ahead of their time, in more ways than one!

William Henry Harrison

And just to prove the point, on a rainy day in 1841 President William Henry Harrison delivered the longest inaugural speech in American history (8,444 words) and 31 days later died of pneumonia – thus serving the shortest presidency in history.

So, not only is there power in brevity, but it can save your life!

Public Speaking Coach: Creating a Successful Relationship

Sharí Alexander — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 12:00:13 +0000

As a Public Speaking Coach who works with various public figures on their public speaking, I find the dynamic of the coaching relationship fascinating from client to client. Every client is unique in their wants, needs, challenges, and goals.

Earlier this year Harvard Business Review posted some interesting findings on why coaches are called. They found that ten years ago executive coaches were hired to fix “toxic behavior”; however, now coaches are being hired to develop skills and improve potential. This is probably why we have seen speech coaches hired more and more. Couple this finding with the fact that communication skills ranks high in necessary leadership skills and you have a growing need.

So when it comes to speech coaching, how can both the client and the coach create a successful relationship?

1) Motivation

As the survey shows, the client must be motivated to change and improve. The coaching relationship will come to a screeching halt if the client isn’t motivated and willing to make changes. In a speech coaching relationship, this means trying new approaches and tactics, doing the homework, practicing, and taking an honest look at their communication style and effectiveness. Continuous push-back does not facilitate growth and improvement.

2) Trust

There needs to be complete trust between the client and their speech coach. When you either reach a certain level of fame or rank within your organization, fewer and fewer people will give you their honest opinions, especially when it comes to speeches and how meetings were run. No one wants to feel the backlash of upsetting the “the big guy” (or gal). That’s why the client needs to trust the coach to give them honest and educated feedback.

3) Work

Hiring a good public speaking coach isn’t the same as hiring a speech writer. Speech writers will give you the words to say. A speech coach works with you on anything from developing the message of a speech, setting goals for the speech, the delivery of the speech, measuring the effectiveness of the speech, the persuasive power of the speech, and the follow up communications after the speech. Needless to say there is a bit more effort involved for the client than just reading words on a page. Plus, the return on investment is much higher because the client is developing a skill-set that will serve him/her for the rest of their career, improve their leadership abilities, create an improved corporate culture, increase positive publicity,…the list can go on and on.

That’s it. Only 3 main ingredients, but all three need to be present in order to create the best speech coaching relationship possible.

Affluent Magazine Publishes Sharí’s Article…

Sharí Alexander — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:39:37 +0000

Please visit Affluent Magazine’s Web site and read my article “Communications 101 for Managers”.

Give ‘Em What They Want!: Getting Your Audience Interested in Your Presentation

Sharí Alexander — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:54:35 +0000

As I’ve discussed in previous posts, it’s important in your presentation to have a balanced mix of what your audience wants to hear and what they need to hear. It is sometimes difficult for presenters to distinguish the difference between the two – because it’s all interesting to us!

So to help you find the “want to knows” here is a small (and growing) list of ideas. Please keep in mind, the “want to knows” are not necessarily the steps, processes, or action items. Instead, a “want to know” is the picture you paint of how their life will be if they implement your suggestions. You have to make the end-result crystal clear in their minds in order for them to even consider listening to you action plan. Read through the list and see if you have any “want to know” you’d like to add…

Tomorrow will be better than today – How will your information make their life a little better?
Make more money (ideally as easily as possible) – Please, no scammers here.
Have more time – We all wish we had more of it. Paint the picture of how your information will give them more time with their family, more time for their hobbies, more time…for anything!
To be heard – Ever wish you could be more assertive and get what you want? So does your audience!
To achieve their dreams, no matter how distant they seem.
Be more attractive to the opposite sex.
Be less stressed and find peace.
To find love
To get (earn) respect

“Want to knows” aren’t extremely complicated. We all want the same things. We all have the same basic and innate dreams. It is best if your presentation can appeal to those basic desires.

Leadership Communications: Avoid Being a Bad Leader

Sharí Alexander — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:34:22 +0000

Recently my article “Being a Bad Leader: 5 Ways to Improve Your Leadership Abilities Through Communication” was featured in Training Magazine Online. Click here to read the article!

Getting Presentation Feedback from Your Audiences?… Don’t Trust the Usual Sources (Part Two)

Sharí Alexander — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 13:39:56 +0000

In Part One of this series, I discussed how to gauge if your audience thought you did a good job when you spoke, or if they are simply being polite.

Another source people use to determine if the audience enjoyed the speech or not is evaluation sheets (or as Alan Weiss calls them “smile sheets”).

While I understand the urge for businesses to use a quantifiable measurement to judge the success or failure of a speech, the evaluation sheet process has become arbitrary. They ask the audience to rate the skills of the presenter on a scale of 1-5, one being the lowest and five being the highest. What does a 1 rating mean? It was the worst presentation you’ve ever seen in your life? What does a 5 rating mean? The speaker should be earning 6-figures just to come in today because they are so fabulous? And – my biggest problem with evaluation sheets – what’s the difference between a 4 and a 5?

The 1-5 scale means something different for every person in the room. Therefore, you don’t know if the audience member gave a 4 because they never give 5’s, because 5’s to them signify perfect performance. Who knows? And then there could be the jerk in the audience who marked a 1 on the sheet even though it had nothing to do with the speech, he just didn’t want to be at the stupid conference that day. Who knows?

Which is why I suggest creating an evaluation sheet with open-ended questions and a few yes/no questions. For example, you will learn much more if you ask “What are the 3 main take-aways you learned from this program?” or “How could today’s presentation been improved?” Force your audience to explain their impressions of the presentation.

You can also ask yes/no questions. For example, “Would you recommend this program to your colleagues? Why or why not?”

Think of how much more valuable feedback you’ll receive from evaluations with these types of questions as opposed to the 1-5 scale which leaves you wondering.

Presenting What You Want to Say Vs. What They Want To Hear

Sharí Alexander — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 14:49:43 +0000

In my workshops and seminars, I teach my audience to determine what the audience needs to hear and what the audience wants to hear. More often than not, the two can be as different as night and day. And yet, having a balance of both in your presentation will aid in the success of your speech.

Unfortunately, many of us have a difficult time figuring out which is which – a “need to know” vs. what is a “want to know”. Presenters usually confuse a “need to know” as a “want to know”, which is a big mistake. If your entire presentation is delivering “need to know information”, you run the risk of your audience getting bored and suffering from left-brain fatigue.

Look at it this way, as an audience member, would you prefer going into a presentation telling you everything you “need to know” (step-by-step process of a new business policy), or what you “want to know” (how new policy will give you more free time)?

The problem is that as presenters, our “need to know/want to know” filter is faulty. What sounds like a “want to know” to a presenter is actually a “need to know” to the audience”. So how can we fix our faulty filter?

You have 2 options.

Interview a potential audience member. Get it straight from the source. Say, “I’ll be speaking on X. What would you like to learn from a program that covers this?” Or, “I was thinking about covering X and Y. Which of those would be more of interest to you? Do either pique your interest?” And then, shut up. Don’t go into your speech. Don’t disagree with what they say. Just listen. You’d be surprised at how much valuable information you can learn from your audience members.

If, for some reason, you can’t get a hold of a potential audience member, you can have a friend interview you about your topic. This is another great way to find the need/want to knows. You will easily be able to tell what is interesting to your friend by the questions they ask you. Pay attention to what topics they ask more questions about. You should easily be able to discern what you should keep in your speech and what you should cut.

Can you think of any other ways to help you differentiate “want to knows” and “need to knows”?

Presentations: Being Natural in an Unnatural Setting

Sharí Alexander — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 12:49:12 +0000

Very often we become baffled by the fact that speaking in public is more difficult and uncomfortable than it should be. After all, we speak every day to people. Why should a group of people be any different?

What we must realize is that when we are speaking to a group we have to work hard on being/appearing natural in an unnatural setting.

Think of it this way: You’re at a family reunion and your crazy Aunt Clarra is trying to get candid photos of everyone. She never puts down the camera and is telling everyone to just “act natural”. As much as you try to ignore it, you know that there is a camera somewhere near by that could be focusing in on you. Doesn’t it feel slightly unnatural? Ar you more aware of your movements? Do you keep a smile on your face a bit more than normal? Is your posture just a bit more straight than usual? Even though part of your mind is consistently scoping to find the location of the wondering camera, you still try to act perfectly normal when talking to your other relatives. You are trying to be natural in an unnatural setting.

Now, multiply that feeling by 10, 50, or 500…however many people you have in your audience. A part of you mind wants to focus on all the people (cameras) focusing on you.

Don’t get frustrated if you don’t instantly feel as comfortable in front of people as you would like. It takes practice.