Business communication skills are essential to the success of any entrepreneur. Communication skills include both verbal and non-verbal communication. With strong communication skills, you as an entrepreneur can communicate with business investors, employees and customers more effectively and skilfully. Whether you need to pitch your big idea to a potential investor or want to make a good impression with your new hires, improving your communication skills will always be a smart investment that helps you to achieve better outcomes with your company. Here are some helpful tips for improving your business communication skills.
- Be a listener: There are many people who only talk and are not good listeners. The biggest business communication killer is also the failure to listen. Instead of thinking about how you’re going to respond when someone is finished speaking, give them your full attention, and when possible try to verbally recap their points before you respond.
- Read non-verbal cues: We instinctively judge people by their posture, appearance, handshake and dozens of other signals that are processed unconsciously. If you want to be able to interpret what clients, vendors, investors or employees are telling you about themselves or what they’re thinking about you, you need to learn to both control your own body language, and read theirs.
- Writing Skills: Whether you are looking for an investor to invest in your new start-up or you want to form a partnership with other companies, you need to have outstanding and convincing writing skills. Taking the time to improve your writing skills is an incredibly beneficial thing to do.
- Speaking skills: Conversation is one of the most basic forms of communication, but don’t underestimate it. A simple, friendly conversation with your employees can build trust and expose issues before they become serious. An innocuous bit of small talk with a stranger can turn into a sales opportunity. Learn to speak in an approachable, friendly way that you can apply to any situation.
- Ask questions. These help you get feedback, show that you’re listening, confirm understanding and give respect. Questions are wonderful tools and should be used often. If you’re not sure about a detail, ask for confirmation. If you want to hear feedback from the other person, just ask. When you combine listening with asking relevant questions, you’ve opened up powerful two-way business communication.
- Leading: Your responsibilities as a leader are multifaceted, but from a communications perspective, your biggest responsibilities are instilling confidence, trust and passion in your team. You’ll be inspiring people through everyday messages, public and private, and retaining your poise as a leader throughout those situations is key to achieving and maintaining a powerful image.
- Engage the audience in discussion: Regardless of how compelling the speaker is, all audiences have limited attention spans. To become a more effective communicator, make presentations and discussions interactive.
- Collaborate: Lectures, monologues, and ramblings don’t belong in business communications. If you find you’re speaking more than a few moments (except when giving a presentation or leading a demonstration), stop. Simplify what you’re trying to say as much as possible. Allow others to offer their input on the issue.
- Start and end with key points: Clear communication is of paramount importance. To ensure that the audience understands the key takeaways from a presentation, reiterate key points at the start and finish.
- Empathy: Emotional awareness in communication is often overlooked. Although some people may feel that feelings are unprofessional or unwelcome in the workplace, feelings play a big role in communication, even in business. Emotional awareness, or the ability to recognize and understand feelings, will help you succeed when communicating with colleagues, employees, and customers.