If you are like Led Zeppelin and have experienced "communications breakdowns" that "drive you insaaaane" (my best textual Robert Plant impersonation!), I have good news. I know a couple of communication superstars. Like most real entrepreneurial innovations that impress me, and often motivate me to rave about them here, these are very simple, and immediately implementable by anyone.
Business communications are a messy and noisy realm these days, with all of the electronic options available to us in getting our message out to prospects, clients, associates, and service providers alike. And, there are inherent challenges in using these modern modes of communicating. For example, the inability to express emotions in emails (other than silly emoticons) can lead to misinterpretations and misunderstandings that harm business relationships. And, using emails as a promotional medium means you have to fight through the spam-weary recipients to actually get your message read.
My communication superstar #1 is a client who has put a very simple, but I thought very effective, message as part of his "signature" for emails sent from his mobile. Instead of the stock "Sent from my wireless device", he has made his say "Sent from my mobile device (please excuse conciseness and typos)". A subtle, but effective, way to let you know very plainly why his response might be as it is, and takes away most opportunities for the recipient to deem a short message as abrupt or rude, or one containing spelling errors as unprofessional.
My communication superstar #2 is a client who uses a monthly e-newsletter to share info about his business, info about upcoming shows and performances (he is a magician and speaker) and includes a link to view a video trick of the month (check his site out at www.trommater.com). At the very top of every newsletter, he lists the word count and number of minutes required to read the message. So, for busy recipients wading through overflowing inboxes, they can tell right away that Dan only wants about 2 minutes of their time. This helpful quantifying of the time commitment involved HAS to help these messages get read, instead of immediately being trashed or ignored because its unknown by the reader how long it might take to get through it. Maybe this kind of thing is common practice in e-marketing and I've been too quick on the "delete" button for others to notice, but Dan's newsletter is the only one I can recall seeing this innovation on.
Once again, "simple" rules the day in effective innovations or improvements to doing business. How will you become a communication superstar in your business?
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