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Chapter 7: Communication Skills
As you already know, communication is vital to both the growth of your business and the ability for your company to sustain its growth. Communication is also important for developing trust with your business associates and with your employees. Good communication skills can help you to motivate employees, drive change, repair conflicts and become a better leader. Listening skills are extremely important for accomplishing these tasks, but there are other communication skills that all entrepreneurs need to have.
Better Ways to Communicate
While you are probably pretty good at communicating with other people, there are some better ways to communicate when it comes to running a business. These are evolutionary skills- meaning you develop them over time as a result of your experiences. Learning about some of these skills in advance will help you to incorporate them into your business life sooner.
#83- Good communication skills allow you to influence others.
The ability to influence others is vital for any entrepreneur. You will need to sell your employees your business’s principles and goals if you want them to get on board. You will have to convince investors and business partners to take a chance and support your business ideas. You will have to influence your customers through marketing and advertising. In order to get your point across and achieve your goal of influencing others you must be able to communication your ideas well through discussions and offer clear explanations of your thoughts.
#84- Learn how to manage questions well.
As a boss and a leader you will have to answer thousands of questions. Some of these questions will be simple while others will determine the success of your company. It is your job to answer these questions by making convincing arguments using the art of well-versed speaking. Your words must not only answer the question, they must also convey your meaning, desires and principles at the same time. If you take the time to learn the art, and it is an art, of managing questions well now it will have a positive impact on your career forever.
#85- Holding the audience’s attention.
All of the speaking skills in the world won’t help you to convey your point if you cannot hold the attention of your audience. Learning how to capture the attention of your listeners is vital, especially in the workplace environment. In order to master this skill you must learn how to read your audience, how to project your voice in a pleasing and attention getting manner and how to manage your speaking time. If you cannot make people pay attention to you it will be hard to get them to follow you to success.
How to Create Dialog
In addition to using your communication skills to motivate and convince others, you can also use them to capture new ideas, incentives and concepts and use them to your benefit. The best way to accomplish this is to create a dialog. This dialog can be between your managers, employees, peers, customers and even your competitors. Learning how to get a dialog going is another great communication skill that all entrepreneurs should have.
#86- Hold face to face interactions.
Getting your employees together for face to face interactions is a great way to get a dialog going and to get the creative juices flowing. Face to face interactions encourage brainstorming and the sharing of ideas in a way that e-mail and telephone conversations simply cannot.
#87- Provide avenues for your employees to communicate.
If you want to encourage dialog between your employees it is essential that you provide a way for them to do so. You need to give your employees a way to offer their suggestions and ideas.
#88- Make sure you and your management team are approachable.
All of the communication avenues you provide for your employees will be useless if they feel like they cannot approach you or the rest of your management team. Use your communication skills, your actions and your positive attitude to show your employees that they can come to you with their ideas and feedback. Your employees will come to you if you let them
#89- Act on what you hear.
If your employees see that you are willing to put their ideas and suggestions into action they will be more likely to share them with you. Also, encouraging a dialog among your workers will help you to develop concepts and ideas you may have never considered before. These breakthrough ideas may never have come to you if you didn’t encourage dialog with your employees.
Chapter 8: Marketing
As an entrepreneur you will have master many skills, including management, communication and decision making skills. One of the most important aspects that all business owners need to understand is marketing. This will be how you sell your business to its customers and therefore will represent how you will create profits for your business. There is a lot to understand about marketing and plenty of ways to make mistakes. All successful entrepreneurs have mastered the art of marketing themselves and their company.
Creating a Marketing Plan
Companies that are successful in marketing themselves start the process by creating a detailed marketing plan. The size and scope of your business’s marketing plan will be determined by several factors, including the size of your company and how many potential customers you will attempt to reach. It is a good idea to create your marketing plan and then refer back to it on a monthly basis to ensure that you are still on track. A lot of things can change for a business as the year progresses.
#90- Your business’s marketing plan should cover one year of time.
The ideal amount of time to plan ahead for marketing, especially if you run a small business or a start-up business, is one year. There are a lot of things to cover in a year’s time. Your business will gain and lose employees, the market will evolve and your customer base will (hopefully) grow. This represents plenty of time and factors to consider. Once your business develops and grows you can switch to a marketing plan that covers a period of time two to three years in advance.
