Archive for category: Business Communications

Communication Levels- Importance of Quality Communication Channels

January 25, 2021/0 Comments/in Business Communications /by StrategyDriven

Communication is an integral part of any business’s operations and growth. Employees understand their roles, coordinate with one another, and operations run more smoothly. There are different levels of communication ranging from an upward, lateral and downward movement of information.

Upwards Flow

Communication starts from the subordinate levels to the supervisors, then the managers and finally reaches the executive. The upward flow of information enables the management to get feedback, state of affairs, clients’ needs and day to day reports and suggestions. The subordinate staff handle clients and other vital operations. They better understand the company’s needs and status and communicate the same to their supervisors or managers. To make the communication flow better, invest in collaboration solutions that improve and encourage free communication. It makes communication more transparent, faster, effective.

Lateral Flow

Different departments have their communication channels which enable a smoother flow of duties, coordination and transparency. Employees of a particular department can collaborate efforts and then pass reports to their managers. Managers have their horizontal communication channels where they compare performance and operations in the departments and detect any problems then extend the information to the executive. Lateral communication builds working relationships and friendships between team members and improves teamwork. Improved communication helps members work together to achieve a unified goal.

Downwards Flow

Communication about the company’s goals, vision and structural operations is passed down from the owner to the managers who work together with the supervisors to ensure the subordinate staff understand and work unitedly to achieve growth. The communication is not just through word of mouth but also the company website, training sessions, brochures, retreats and feedback reports. Through communication, a business owner can structure the operations to best suit the company vision, clients’ needs and current demands.

The Open Door Policy

Most organizations, although still uphold the three forms of communication, encourage the open door policy. Employees can freely walk to the manager or the executive without going through their supervisors and managers. The information flows more quickly, and employees and the company at large get faster solutions to problems. It also helps the managerial team better understand their employees, building more solid work relationships. Nowadays, most small businesses find it easier to work with lateral or horizontal communication channels as it encourages the team spirit.

Benefits of Improved Communication Systems

There is a better and faster flow of information, meaning that when there is a problem, it is detected, the concerned parties notified immediately leading to quicker solutions. Employees work better when they have stable communication structures. They build better relationships with their bosses and each other. Clients too are happier and more satisfied with the service delivery. Their needs and grievances are communicated fast and the appropriate measures sought in time. Everyone in the company better understands the businesses status and can easily access the information they need. Documents can be retrieved or shared easily, and knowledge passed on to different departments more efficiently.

Effective communication improves productivity which boosts company profits. In the end, everyone is happy.

How to Make Your Emails More Professional

December 18, 2020/0 Comments/in Business Communications /by StrategyDriven

Regardless of who you’re conversing with and who you’re having an email exchange with, it’s important you conduct yourself in a professional manner when using email. Making your emails professional looking will help you attract clients and keep existing ones and will also help your communication be far clearer and easier to understand when conveying information between team members.

There are many things you can do to keep your emails looking professional. Here are a few ways to do just that.

Use an Email Signature

An email signature is a great way to sign off on an email and make it appear organized, professional, and important. To make a great email signature, you can either create one yourself, or use many of the wonderful templates available on this email signature software for Office 365. A good signature should provide all the information an email recipient will need to contact you and connect and may include a name, job title, office number and business address.

Signatures can also be a good way to display a bit of personality and to display your brand in a better way. You can do this by making use of awesome themes, color schemes and fonts that convey your business or your own personal brand.

Avoid Grammar and Spelling Mistakes

There’s not many more worse email offenses than having spelling and grammar issues within the body of your message. This gives off the impression that you’re not professional and that you haven’t put enough effort into your correspondence to make sure everything is in order. A simple typo can easily be offensive and could make whoever you’re emailing with view you in a worse off light.

With tools such as Grammarly, making sure your emails are spelled correctly and formatted well is simple, as the application will scan through your email as you type it, highlighting potential issues. The premium version can also help you write to fit a certain tone of voice, which can be helpful when you’re dealing with different clients and people of different seniority.

Keep Things Short and Sweet

A professional email is one that gets straight to the details and isn’t overstuffed with pointless sentences and phrases. This is because saying the bare minimum will help to avoid misunderstandings as it keeps the content and the instructions within the email clear.

Of course, you’re allowed and are encouraged to ask how people are and be friendly, and it’s critical that you include all the relevant information, but you shouldn’t be writing essays for your emails. In addition, it’s also a good idea to have a line break between each paragraph, to make it even easier to digest.

Make Sure Your Email Address Is Suitable

If you’re using an email address that you created back in your early teens, then it might be worth evaluating it and making sure that it gives off a professional vibe. Too many working adults are using addresses like ‘[email protected]’ and it’s sending off a bad and childish impression. To ensure that you’re professional, change the email to simply your name.

How to Utilize Video Conferencing Properly

December 9, 2020/0 Comments/in Business Communications /by StrategyDriven

Do you want to retain a coherent connection with your remote workforce no matter how much distance physically separates you? Do you want to be able to seal deals with prospective business partners despite the fact that you don’t even share a time zone? Do you want to make use of today’s top tech in your bid to sustain a competitive advantage over your rivals? If you utilize video conferencing in a highly efficient and effective fashion, you will be able to do all of this and more on a daily basis.

To find out what you must do to take full advantage of all the cutting-edge video conferencing tools out there on today’s market, be sure to read on.

Strengthen your Internet connection

This should go without saying, but it’s worth mentioning anyway—you need a stable and secure Internet connection if you want to utilize video conferencing properly. You’re never going to maximize the potential of this tech tool if your connection is constantly cutting out, buffering, or being hacked into, which is why you must take some time to strengthen your connection.

To perform this all-important task, you must:

Carry out regular speed tests on your connection
Upgrade your router to the latest model
Optimize your router settings to ensure that it prioritizes video conferencing bandwidth
Switch your Wi-Fi channel from 2.4 GHz to 5 GHz
Update your security features and password-protect your broadband

Align yourself with an audio and video installation expert

Unless you, yourself are an expert in the field of audio and video conferencing, you won’t have the experience or know-how required to optimize this installation project. Should you fail to align yourself with a professional in this instance, you could end up doing some serious damage to your company’s reputation. You want to showcase your organization as a cutting-edge brand that has its finger on the pulse of the latest technology, right? Well, you aren’t going to do that if your video conferencing tech isn’t fitted correctly!

Fortunately, thanks in part to the current demand for telecommuting, there are now a plethora of experts out there willing and waiting to assist you with your installation project, Audio Image Solutions being one of them. With this team of expert tech designers by your side, you will find it easier to implement an audio and video solution that meets your company’s exact wants, needs, and specifications. For more information about the exact services that they provide, be sure to check out audioimagesolutions.com.

Get to grips with your conference features

Once you’ve sorted out the logistical issues surrounding the installation of your audio and video tech, it’s time to get to grips with its slew of conference features. As soon as you feel comfortable using this technology, you will be much more likely to utilize it properly.

First and foremost, this means knowing how to invite and block participants. This will help you to retain full control over who is allowed to contribute to your virtual conferences, which in turn will make you look far more professional whenever you are on camera. And speaking of being on camera, make sure you dress for the occasion!

Internal Communications Within Your Business

November 30, 2020/0 Comments/in Business Communications /by StrategyDriven

How your team communicates could be the difference between a project going smoothly, and some serious miscommunication that blows the budget. There isn’t a single communications style that is applicable to all industries.

For example, those who work within an office will be able to communicate via video calls, instant messaging, and emails. For those who work in construction, or in fieldwork a two-way radio can often be a better option. For more information about that communication type, read here for more.

Internal communication for your business can always be improved and modified to make sense for your company and team. Here are some of the ways that you can improve your business comms within the team.

Be the example

All of the management and team leaders should be in a position to show what great communication looks like. Since we aren’t all blessed with natural communication skills, it might be best to have training.

Work with certified communications experts to improve the skills of your leadership team. You can do it with formal training, having assessments, open feedback sessions, and more.

The better of an example that your leadership and management sets, the more likely it is that your other staff will follow suit.

Online

Face to face meetings, although they can be useful, take up a lot of time. 2020 has leaned heavily on online video calls and meetings. Taking communications online saves time and money. Although there is a balance to find within the online world, it is usually faster to communicate this way.

As leadership, it is important that you research and understand what video call fatigue is, and how you can best support your team.

Value

If there is no value for the people attending the meeting, then ask yourself do they need to be there? Requiring attendance at multiple meetings should serve a purpose for all involved. Make meetings impactful, so they always have a reason.

If there is a value for the project updates or they play a vital role it will be of value to them.

Attending meetings for the sake of it takes up time, resources, and costs money.

Open goals

There will be team specific goals and company-wide goals. Making these public will mean that everyone will always be held accountable for themselves, and within their team too. We know that setting goals are the best way to achieve progress, making the goals transparent to your team will encourage them to achieve more

Tools

When your team is working remotely, you need to make sure they have the tools to communicate well. It might include some of the following tools:

Slack
Zoom/Teams
Asana/Monday/Trello
Company email account access
VPN or otherwise managed security to keep communications secure
Hardware like a laptop, mobile phone, and other items to be able to do their job

Internal communication is one of the keys to ensuring that your projects, services, and products meet the high standards you set for your company. The right communication system can save money and increase productivity – but it starts with management.

PowerPoint Strategies – How to Create a Data-Driven Presentation

November 5, 2020/0 Comments/in Business Communications /by StrategyDriven

Presenting information can be done in several different ways with high-end softwares and extensive tools on the internet. With the help of these infrastructures, design and the display gets full points. But do these highly-captivatingly prepared presentations actually pass the message through or just intrigue the audience? The answer is that even though most presentations make people and shareholders get in awe with it, but leave them with several questions and confusion. And when this happens, people either become displeased with your presentations or make diverse decisions about it.

Your presentations must not only be crystal clear and captivating but must come with highly supportive data. It’s true that finding supportive data that is also resourceful can include extensive research and take time, but many times it is needed and required. Other times, it can be a professional addition to the presentation that makes it knowledgeable. While there are several other benefits of a data-driven presentation, we believe that you may have grasped the idea by now. So let’s move onto how your presentations can be more data-driven than design replete:

Simplify the Grounds

Before placing your data and while constructing your designs, make sure to understand the space your ideas will take and make way for them. This means that you must build a presentation space that can include the data clearly without splitting it up in weird sentences or unrecognizable places. For inspiration on well-formatted presentations, you can view some samples online or get help from quality presentation design services with the know-how. If the result of the data and design combined comes out distorted or even slightly awkward, make sure to redesign it quickly.

Identify Your Purpose

Or the presentation’s purpose. Think about the exhibition as an entity that can speak for itself. For this, you have to identify and stay stern on the meaning of the presentation. Many times adding too much information into one presentation can confuse the preparer and make them transcend far away from the cause. For this reason, it’s best to write the ideas down first and craft the purpose efficiently to not stray away from it.

Highlight the Main Takeaways

Unlike an article or a pdf on the web, your presentation needs to be interactive and highly comprehendible. This is due to the fact that presentations are given in a set amount of time and should be mostly intuitive for attendees to understand the concept quickly and positively. For this reason, a data-driven presentation must have a thorough analysis of a point and must highlight the key facts for fast coherence. In the end, there should be an area for takeaways that is simple yet comprehensive enough.

Smarten the Data

Data is always in the raw form when collected and needs to be streamlined to create a natural flow from it. In a presentation, the data you collect needs to be distributed efficiently in tables and charts. For this reason, it needs to be divided, trimmed, and brushed up where needed to make sense out of it. In order to create a data-driven module, you need to filter the data to your audience’s liking and make it aim towards the purpose. You can start by first sorting out the data and place it in different categories. Then gradually add it to each slide by necessity.

Title Your Information Nicely

A data-focused presentation is never a bad idea that gives out copious information and supports the statements well. However, this data should be marked efficiently to create a sensible outlook. This should be done by careful titling the charts and graphs as well as written material. Always make short descriptions of your data to make it more comprehensive even for people who are far seated or enter the room late.
This also creates a uniform look to make the presentation proposal be seen through. Furthermore, try to look at ways presentations can be made more efficient by observing these tips https://www.skillsyouneed.com/present/presentation-tips.html.

Choose Charts Carefully

Charts and graphs in excel are impendent for showcasing data the right way. In addition to giving out written forms, it’s wise to choose visual charts that present data in simplified and intuitively understandable means. However, make sure that you choose the right kind of bar, line, or pie charts for the display of data. While bar and line charts are the most straightforward, pie charts can also be highly natural but only in certain situations.

Go in Depth

Making presentations that easily get through can be a skill in itself. It needs an eye to detail as well as an eye to the boundary. Talking about specifics, for a data-driven presentation, a slide can go more in-depth than any other aspects. To prove your point, don’t hesitate to include as much information as needed. Or hand out more data in the form of presentation flyers to make your point. Make all the data captivating enough that the audience doesn’t lose interest due to the length and help them go into detail to understand all technicalities.

Describe Developments

Each style of facts or statistics presentation comes with its specifications to be followed. Similarly, there are specific ways to make a data-driven presentation to make it engaging. In every piece of information, there is a part that has the biggest impact by being an amazing or fascinating fact. Likewise, you need to choose these development points where the information is going somewhere and highlight it from your data. This information can be anything that needs more attention to make it stand out.

Make an Intriguing Story

Lastly, when creating a data-driven presentation, you need to strategize your slides of graphs and charts in such a way that it becomes a fascinating story. Nothing can be more engaging than a show that has a story-like interface and a lesson at the end.

You can create a story-like streamlined structure of a presentation that builds as it moves along, and in the end, the purpose is clear, and there is something in it for everyone. Such a structure can help your data-filled presentation be appealing enough to make its purpose successful.