Speaking of effective communication, it has several benefits you can apply to your business endeavors, also to your personal life.
Learning or relearning toward how to listen and speak skillfully not only shows your clients that you understand their needs and issues, it can also help you grow your business.
Effective communication is a two-way process – sending the right message, that is also being correctly received and understood by the other persons.
For communication to be effective, it is important to understand how the people you are interacting with may interpret your message.
We get information through our senses, and it is therefore recommended that your communication includes aspects of the visual, auditory and kinaesthetic language to appeal to all listeners.
When people feel you are the one that not only understand their need, but also the one that guide them, give them ideas, advises and help them fix the problems (if there any, example), and then more and more people will get attracted to you.
So how to get that effective communication ball roll, following are some quick tips to help you get started.
Count to 10
When meeting, communicating and dealing with clients, because of different ways of expressing fear or frustration, some of them may talk to you in a less than professional way.
If you find yourself get into this kind of situation, do not take it personally, just take a deep breath and count to 10, use these ten seconds to relax and wait. 10 seconds is not long, but it gives your client time to tell you the real reason he/she wanted to speak with you.
Respond and Do Not React
If you are a participant in the project, when you need to express responsibility in the communication with the client, you need to be responding instead of being reacted.
For example, if something happens, you know it is not your fault, you feel it is proper to say and let your client know, instead of saying “It is not my fault!” You want to respond skillfully in saying, “I understand your frustration.”
I Do not Know
Let us be honest, accept the fact that you do not have all the answers is OK.
For if, if your clients have high expectation on you, or they expected a lot from you, you should let them know that you do not have the answer now and you can get back to them later.
You can told your clients that I will (try to) find that answer for you, because part of being a good business person is to have integrity about your business.
Be a Listener not a Hearer
Have you ever heard of the term, “in one ear and out the other”? That’s not listening, that’s hearing.
When you actively engage in listening of what your client say, you will be able to learn more about your client and understand his or her needs better.
Listen with an open-minded and be attentive. If you are not clearly of what was said, just ask questions. When you asking questions, it shows your client that you are not only listening, you are also interested in what he or she was saying. As a result, people will feel more inclined to do business with people who are proactively showing them the interest.
Taken Active Interests in Your Client’s Agenda
When you take an active interest in you client’s overall agenda, respectfully, your clients will feel more appreciated.
Discussing topics that are important to your customer do help you build a strong foundation of a lasting business relationship.
Think Positive (I know, you hear it all the time)
We all do this – sometimes when we are working with others in the business, we will find ourselves subconsciously focusing on the differences instead of commonality, which will not bring any benefits out.
So next time when you and another business owner meet this problem, ask yourself, ‘why you are both working together?’
You can say something like, “My reason for working with you is to assist you in taking your company to the next level, and I want to see your business succeed.”
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