How do you ensure effective communication with your team, colleagues, clients, or leads?
Do you have a list of ‘power words’ for writing your fancy business emails? Or maybe you’re sprinkling your industry jargon in conversations for impact.
Once done, while you’re patting your back, the other person is searching for the meaning of ‘synergy’.
Communication is not about just words, it is about comprehension as well. If the person you’re talking to won’t understand you, it would make very little difference even if you stopped talking.
Unfortunately, you can’t adopt a superficial, one-for-all strategy and then hope for hands full of satisfied employees & successful customers. This resonates even more in today’s remote working culture.
An efficient communication strategy aims at:
- Maintaining healthy work relationships
- Developing meaningful relationships with customers
- Enhancing the brand identity & reputation
Here’s the list of 5 effective business strategies to transform your operations:
1. Clearly define company values & goals:
Setting a consistent set of goals & company values will align your employees to work toward the common objective.
Apart from this, knowledge banks & guide books can be introduced so that employees can understand what kind of communication is practiced across the organization.
This will allow consistent communication internally & externally.
2. Streamline Communication:
The market is flooded with tools that have all kinds of attractive features. Don’t get overwhelmed & purchase the subscription of every collaboration tool out there.
List down your necessities & then start exploring the software that can help you achieve exactly that. Multiple communication channels will confuse your team & clients. This can lead to unread messages and data clutter.
Phone calls are still the most popular form of communication considering 80% of businesses take place over calls. So it is crucial that you focus on not just written communication but verbal as well.
VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is an effective & affordable solution that can streamline your calls, messages, & conferences. You can monitor the conversations & train your team without spending extra money & time on any physical phone installations.
Explore how VoIP can help you enhance your business communication strategies.
3. Active & Emphatic Listening:
Often when we’re talking to someone, we think of what our response will be, instead of actively listening to the person. Communication involves body language, facial expressions, tone & pitch, along with words. Paying full attention to the speaker can give you great insights and help achieve the goal in a much shorter time.
4. Prioritize Tasks & Stakeholders:
In order to have productive discussions & to conclude quickly, it is important to structure your meetings accordingly. We all know how tiring a day full of pointless meetings can be. Here’re some things to keep in mind while scheduling conferences.
- Identify key stakeholders required for the meet & invite them only.
- Draft the points to discuss so that the discussion doesn’t digress.
- Share the agenda along with the invite to prepare the participants beforehand
- Schedule calls for only the time required. For eg- If the call is for the introduction of a new project, then schedule a 30-minutes call instead of blocking an hour of participants.
- Don’t schedule calls for what can be conveyed through email. Respect others’ time.
Prioritizing tasks helps get things done properly and effectively.
5. Collect Feedback:
Feedbacks are the reality check. Ask for proactive suggestions from the team & clients to improve your current communication strategies.
Brainstorm the suggestions to figure out what works best for your organization & what doesn’t.
Radical candor & timely action is the key here.
Bonus: Recommended Tools for Effective Business Communication
Author bio:
Trevor is a SaaS growth consultant and managing partner of Ring4. He leads the product development and drives innovation for building the best light-weight business phone solution in the cloud.
