A gangster enters a darkened room with his lieutenant. In the corner, tied up and cowering on a small wooden chair sits his foreign accountant.
“Where’s the million dollars you embezzled from me?” barks the gangster.
His lieutenant steps forward, “Boss, the guy’s from overseas and doesn’t speak any English. I’ll have to translate for you.”
The gangster pulls out a hand gun and shoves its muzzle into the accountant’s temple. “Ask him where my money is” he commands.
The lieutenant speaks to the accountant in a foreign tongue, and in the same language the accountant yells: “Okay! Okay! I’ll tell you! The money’s hidden behind a false panel in my office wall, right behind my desk!”
“Well” says the gangster “What did he say?”
“He says you’re bluffing Boss and you don’t have the guts to pull the trigger” smiles the lieutenant.
There’s no doubt about it, not being able to make yourself understood can get you in an awful mess!
In my experience the root of most problems, be they in the workplace or in the home, rest with communication difficulties.
How many issues could be resolved quickly and easily if people just learnt how to communicate effectively with each other?
Poor communication is responsible for the breakdown in many relationships, both business and personal.
In the words of a past British Telecom advertising campaign encouraging people to use their telephones more often – “It’s good to talk!”
But even more importantly this should be developed to – “It’s good to be understood!”
If the other person doesn’t understand the message you’re trying to put across, it can lead to some pretty extreme results, as suggested in my opening.
Things can get a little easier when communicating face-to-face with someone. They have the opportunity to question and ask you to repeat things they don’t understand. However, where predominantly one-way communication takes place, as in the Internet business environment, things become somewhat harder.
So what strategies can you employ to overcome this hurdle?
Firstly, you can provide as many opportunities as practicable to facilitate the transformation of customer communication from a one-way to a two-way process. You could achieve this by prominently displaying you’re contact details and positively encouraging people to communicate their questions and concerns with you by telephone, fax or e-mail.
You could also expand upon this by using online services such as ICQ and Yahoo Messenger, which facilitate real time conversation.
Secondly, you could critically assess, review and edit the message that your website is communicating to your potential customers. This is not just a case of changing the text of your sales copy. The design and layout of your site can often transmit a strong message that may not always be positive in the eyes of others. However, the text alone is a good place to start.
Perhaps the easiest way of assessing the effectiveness of your sales copy is by trying it out on other people. Print it out and have your friends, family or colleagues read through it.
Do they have a question after reading it?
Are any passages confusing?
Using this approach will discover potential for communications breakdown that can be resolved quite simply. If you can anticipate what people want to know and provide the answers before they ask the questions, you’re well on the way to establishing effective communication with your customers.
Be successful.
Technorati Tags: being understood, communicating, communication
Author’s Note: I wrote this article some years ago after returning from Jamaica where we went to celebrate my wife’s birthday.
I remember a particular relaxing family holiday in Portugal. And yes it was very agreeable, thank you for asking. One afternoon I was lazing by the pool, as you do, and for want of something else to do began thinking about ideas for an article. As time goes on, it certainly seems harder trying to think of original and entertaining ideas to write about. But I digress.