Sadly if you’re a poor communicator, you actually become poorer. Research carried out by the Carnegie Institute of Technology showed that 85 percent of your financial success is due to skills in “human engineering,” your personality and ability to communicate, negotiate, and lead. Shockingly, only 15 percent is due to technical knowledge. Businesses get this wrong all the time. Here’s how:
Perfecting The Technical
Most business owners I know would rather work in the business than on the business. In addition, a lot of my clients have issues around thought leadership (the dreaded who-am-I syndrome), visibility (you want me to make a video with this ugly mug?) and actually communicating what they do in a concise way (but Chala I don’t want to pigeon-hole myself, what if everyone wants to buy?). Therefore, businesses that don’t enjoy communicating, don’t spend as much time doing it. Naturally they don’t develop the ease and flow of communicating what they do in an impactful way and yes, they become poorer for it.
Jumbled Communication
Businesses communicate what they do mainly through their website, business card and even their brand name. The big issue that I encounter in business is that companies are unclear themselves on what exact problem they solve. They are not sure who they should be targeting (everyone?) and what they should be communicating to them to get them to buy. As this is what I do for a living, I can tell you that this is simply a process that you have to put into action in order to come up with the right strategic direction for any company. Unjumble your communications, make more money, it’s that simple.
Do-It-Yourself-ers
One of the biggest stumbling blocks to cleaning up the Communication Act of small businesses is the I-have-to-figure-it-out-on-my-own-itis. Once these businesses figure out that they have to stop guessing at how to communicate, their bank accounts really start to go up!
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