How Effective Communication can Help You Grow Your Business

Effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion has sev­eral ben­e­fits that can be applied to not only your busi­ness endeav­ors, but also to your per­sonal as well. 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, because when peo­ple feel you are the one that not only under­stand their prob­lems, but also the one that fix them, more and more peo­ple will get attracted to you.

Fol­low­ing are some quick tips to help you get started.

Count to 10

When deal­ing with clients, some of them may talk to you in a less than pro­fes­sional man­ner due to peo­ple have dif­fer­ent ways of express­ing fear or frus­tra­tion. If you find your­self in 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 can give 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 appro­pri­ate to say and let your client know, instead of say­ing “It is not my fault!” You can 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 of the answers is OK. For in case, if your clients expected lots from you, you should let them know that you do not have the answer right 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/she was say­ing. 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 builds a strong foun­da­tion for 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 encounter this prob­lem, ask your­self, ‘why you’re 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. I want to see your busi­ness succeed.”

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