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What is Effective Business Communication?

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The success of your business comes from sales, yet how many times have you walked out of a meeting feeling misunderstood? Or as if your audience didn’t really see the value you provide, like they didn’t ‘get’ how your solution would work for them? Wouldn’t it be great if you knew the tricks to getting your potential client’s full attention, and having them hungry to test out your solution right away? If this rings true, then read on. We’re going to teach you what is effective business communication, and the tricks to crush it every time!

Learning all the nuances of sales is a huge task. You can try to learn everything with thousands of hours of reading blogs and textbooks, or you could take the fast and guaranteed ABA route. If you would like to learn more about our tried and tested method that has helped hundreds of companies grow their sales rapidly and exponentially, book a free chat with ABA, and we’ll assess the ability for you or your team to use our training system. 

We communicate with people all day every day, so it is easy to develop a false sense of competency when, for most, there is significant room for improvement. The goal of this article is to provide deep, insightful information to help you transform your sales. This is not the usual generic stuff you read on the internet- we’ve cherry picked the best tricks and insights from our training system, and provided them here as an overview. So let’s get to it.

What is Effective Business Communication?

The #1 mistake people make is selling the sausage not the sizzle. This means selling the physical attributes of the product, not how it solves a customer’s problem. The latter is infinitely more powerful in business. The most powerful tool for boosting sales is your ability to communicate what problems you can solve and what value you provide. 

This applies to every business conversation, marketing strategy, as well as any written and non verbal communication you put out into the world. The way we listen, talk, write and interact with others can determine our success in life- both personal and professional.

Definition time! Effective business communication is the process of sharing information in such a way that it is clear and is received as intended. Another way to think about this is that communication is the transfer of data from one terminal to another, in a way that ensures that duplication occurs upon arrival to the second terminal. For this to happen, it is essential that an exchange, or progression of ideas occurs that leads to understanding.

Types of Communication 

World-class business leaders know that communication is more than just the spoken word, and they use this to their advantage. On average, we spend around 70% of our waking hours engaging in some form of communication. Of this time 45% is spent on listening, 30% on talking, 16% on reading and only 9% writing. By understanding the different types of communication, you will be better able to locate your weak spots and find room for improvement. 

The Underlying Trick To Effective Listening

Effective sales isn’t about telling, it’s about listening for opportunities and pain points and providing value at just the right time. Effective listening is an easy skill to study, but a difficult one to master, which is why effective listening is high on ABA’s list of highest priority effective communication skills to develop.. By knowing how to focus your attention, you are much more likely to spot and take advantage of black swan opportunities.

Let’s face it, listening intently can be difficult for most of us. In a nutshell, listening is your willingness and interest to give thoughtful and patient attention to what someone else is saying. Developing the skill of listening really comes down to being able to direct your attention intentionally; rather than allowing yourself to be easily distracted, or constantly in competition mode.

Oral Communication & How To Trick The Brain

Did you know the brain translates tone and creates subconscious buying decisions long before your conscious mind kicks in?  Imagine what would happen to your sales if you could master this, and use toneology to give yourself an advantage in supporting people to buy?

Oral communication can be either face to face, over the phone, or through video chat. Whatever type of spoken communication we engage in, our tone is just as important as our choice of words. 

Effective oral communication happens when there is duplication and understanding in the person we’re communicating to. In other words, when mutual understanding is achieved. This happens when we communicate in a neutral, natural tone, rather than with an unintended tone. What is an unintended tone? It’s the way your partner speaks to you when you’ve pressed their buttons and they’re upset with you. The unintended tone creates an upset, and gets in the way of the words being understood. The main advantage of oral communication is that it allows immediate feedback. Furthermore, it can convey emotion very effectively.  

Written Communication – the Music of Written Words

As William Shatner once said, “Well written words are music”. Music that will ideally have your target customer base dancing to it and buying what you have to sell. The main goal of any written communication is to disseminate information in a concise and clear way. Unlike oral communication, written communication has an indefinite shelf life. 

Especially in this digital age, written records can be stored indefinitely- so it is important to write to the best of our abilities. Poorly written communication is not only potentially embarrassing, but can lead to misunderstandings and missed opportunities. We live in a world of hypercommunication, so writing clearly and directly increases the effectiveness of your message. 

Non-verbal Communication & the Importance of Tone

“It’s not WHAT you said, it’s HOW you said it”! You would have heard some form of this comment at some point in your life. Non verbal communication is all communication that does not take the form of words. This includes posture, body language, eye contact, breathing patterns, touch and so on. 

Non verbal communication is great at conveying emotion, but is often very difficult to consciously control. The unintended tone we mentioned earlier is not limited to our voice. It can also appear in the form of non-verbal communication cues that are observable by others, no matter how much we attempt to hide them. 

If you come across as tense or uncomfortable while speaking, your words are less likely to portray sincerity and conviction. Even if you have an impeccable choice of words, they might not reach the intended goal if you avoid eye contact, have bad posture, or seem stand-offish or unengaged in any other way. These things tend to happen when we have resistance on the subject being discussed. Once you start paying attention to your non verbal communication, you can work on syncing your words with the message your body is sending.

You could spend thousands of dollars on personalised coaching, but in our experience stiffness comes from internal resistance.  Even if you have an impeccable choice of words, they might not reach the intended goal if you avoid eye contact, have bad posture, or seem stand-offish or unengaged in any other way. These non-verbal red flags usually develop from a fear or feeling of being out of place. Once addressed and removed, you’ll be a social expert in any situation and sales will come much more naturally.

How to Develop Effective Business Communication Skills

There is no silver bullet technique that will make you a communication savant overnight, and there is definitely no one size fits all technique. One way to develop effective business communication skills is by trial and error. Many people have doubtless become masters of communication by graduating from the school of hard knocks. Unfortunately, if you get knocked down in the business environment it can permanently damage your reputation and adversely affect your credibility. 

If you feel that you are putting in a lot of work only to see diminishing returns, working on your effective business communication skills is a strong step in the right direction. For any real improvement to take place, it is vitally important to identify communication blind spots and pain points. The ABA system uses a bespoke analytical data driven profiling tool that makes this process both streamlined and detailed. This method saves you over twenty hours of consultations, and the result is an in-depth picture of your communication landscape. Once you have a clear understanding of where you currently are, it is a lot easier to plan steps towards further improvement.  

Our team has a 90.7% success rate in massively increasing sales results through our authentic, proven sales system. No tricks or sleight of hand, just genuine data driven advice about how to grow sales exponentially by identifying and removing bad habits that torpedo your sales without you even knowing it… Enquiry is free. We’ll arrange a meeting personal sales coaches to discuss your situation, show you a few pointers and get you on your way to becoming a highly effective business communicator.

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