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Every aspect of a business is governed by communication. Effective communication between the executive and those that do the work is essential to ensure that the right work is being done. Every business must be able to communicate with its customers. A lack of communications skills can affect the bottom line. How often does your interaction with a company’s call centre drive you to the opposition? Never underestimate the importance of communication skills in business.

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Communication in business takes place on a number of levels.

Communication between the business and the outside world is of prime importance. Effective communication with clients is one of the keys to keeping a business alive. Without its clients, a business has no reason to exist. Only a monopoly with ‘captive clients’ can sustain itself without effective external communication.

Client communication begins with marketing. Marketing lays the foundation of a business’s communication with its clients. Marketing is the ability to communicate the benefits of the products and services that a business offers. It establishes the image of the organisation, and creates an element of public trust in the organisation.

The sales force provides the next level of client communication. The sales force must be able to represent the company and its products accurately to potential clients. A failure on the sales front can cause irreparable damage to the business.

Many companies fail on the third level of client communication. The call centre is often the first line of support for a company’s products. Often too little time and effort is invested in the call centre. All too often call centre consultants are under-trained, incompetent or lacking in motivation and commitment. The call-centre is the business’s window to the world. A good call centre consultant is able to retain a client even where past service has been bad. A bad consultant can lose almost any client!

Also in the realm of communication with the outside world is communication with stakeholders, other businesses and the media. These areas of communication are crucial. Appropriate communication skills are required to represent the company to the world through the media. Stakeholders may include shareholders, government and other interested parties.

From time to time it may be necessary to use other businesses to provide services for the company. In a typical scenario, a firm of consultants is brought in to achieve specific objectives. Three years and many millions

Election prognosticators point to a few familiar indicators in concluding that President Barack Obama’s chances of winning a second term right now aren’t so great. No president since World War II has won re-election with unemployment above 7.2%. Last month it sat at 8.6%.

But pollsters say mood can matter even more than cold statistics as voters ask themselves: Are things getting better? Some tentative signs of improvement are sprouting in several electoral swing states, maybe just in time to give Mr. Obama a lift. Of the 12 states notching the best employment gains over the past year, six are …

Newspaper advertising is the top source that consumers turn to for making shopping and purchasing decisions, according to a survey conducted for the Newspaper Association of America by Frank N. Magid Associates.

The study titled “How America Shops and Spends 2011,” found that 79 percent of adults said they “took action” as a result of newspaper advertising in the past month including clipping a coupon (54%), making a purchase (46%), visiting a website to learn more (37%), and trying something for the first time (20%).
Newspaper-Ads

“This important new research reaffirms the power of newspaper advertising to engage consumers and drive them to take action,” said NAA President and CEO John Sturm.

“More than all other media, adults continue to turn to newspapers to inform shopping decisions that lead to purchases. They are an opt-in media in an opt-out world, making newspaper advertising an ideal and effective choice for advertisers who want to reach consumers ready to shop and spend.”

Advertising on local newspaper websites ranked second (behind only e-mailed store or product information) among online options for advertising sources, beating general interest websites, paid ads that appear on the right side of the search engines , ads on social network pages, and ads on mobile devices.

The study found that other media trailed behind newspapers as the main source for checking advertising. he closest competitor – the Internet – trailed newspapers by seven percentage points (35 percent vs. 28 percent) Direct mail received a 12 percent response, and television was cited by nine percent of respondents.

*More than half of all adults (52 percent) identify newspapers as the medium they use to help plan shopping or make purchase decisions.

*Almost three-fourths (72 percent) of all adults regularly or occasionally read newspaper preprints; For Sunday inserts, this figure increases to 90 percent of all adults. Over the course of 30 days, 8 in 10 adults (79 percent) acted on newspaper preprint advertising.

*Nearly four-in-10 (38 percent) adults who identify themselves as newspaper “non-readers” recalled other forms of engagement in the past week, including checking sales in local stores, clipping coupons, comparing prices, checking movie or TV listings and classifieds.