How to Stand Out with Communication

Focus on the People

I’m in the process of delivering a series of training programmes for clients at the moment. This week I ran a session supporting a client implementing price increases and next week I will be running a programme for account managers who want to make a better impression, and secure better value joint business plans.

What they have in common is the need to stand out with excellent communication.

Price increases are all about your communication. This is a topic that I will talk about in other posts, suffice to say in this case communication is central to you.

It is important that your customer understands the price increases and any reasoning behind them. It is also critically that you communicate it in a way that avoids unnecessary confrontation and tension.

Joint business plan proposals to customers frequently encounter problems because teams are unable to “sell in” their ideas to the customer.

What happens, is that the account team believes they have a good idea of how to secure better results working together. Sadly, your customer simply doesn’t understand.

The lack of understanding is manifested as rejection, rejection leads to frustration and frustration leads to your lost opportunities and damaged trust.

At Foxleigh, we understand these challenges and we focus on fixing them. In fact, we are so passionate about excellence in communication that it is one of our core values.

We go further. We measure through client feedback how effective we are at communicating.

Considering that sales are at heart, a communication game, it often surprises us that our clients don’t focus more on the power of their communication.

Below you will find our key tips about how to communicate better.

Foxleigh Insight

• Be clear about how you want the other party to feel about your communication.

When you know the impact you are trying to make it will change how you communicate, the language that you might choose, and perhaps the channel that you used to communicate through.

• Keep it short.

We are all very busy and live in a world where there are multiple channels of communication open at any one time. Long drawn out communications, are hard to understand and interpret. Start by writing out what do you want to say and then call out the key bullet points of the message, discard everything else and start your message with those three or four points.

• Let the message sink in.

Too often we are expecting an immediate reaction or response from somebody. In reality, they need time to digest what you have said, think about the implications for them, and then respond. Give them that time, be prepared to be silent, which means stop talking.