Every business communication aims at achieving some business objectives. Business communication must get some tasks accomplished. For instance, people in an organization may communicate in order to give some accurate information e.g. product information, or persuade managers to accept their proposals. All these forms of communications depend partly on writing styles. Therefore, the strategy is to improve the effectiveness of business language and presentation.
Business communication takes on two aspects i.e. external and internal communications. However, in all these communication processes, some aspects may go wrong. For instance, business may effectively fail to communicate to its external targets. Wind and Main argue that, top executives present themselves using lifeless and jargon-infested language that executives see at as a typical of the corporate world talks. Therefore, people who do not have the theoretical aspects of corporate functions may not grasp the jargons in the language. The application of such terminologies may fail to impress external customers and create an image of self-importance or exaggerate communication, which may result into mistrust (Hartley and Bruckmann, 2002).
Critics of written business communication argue that some presentations are often ambiguous, over-complex and unattractive. The solution lies in using communication means, which answers the questions in a hurry i.e. the use of plain English. Therefore, business communication must concern itself with choices. Choice may include words and phrase, and media of communication. Communication must make stylistic choices that create a document, which contain the effective content and tone.
There are content criteria we use in evaluating effective content of a business text. In this regard, any business communication must follow the following aspects of writing and presentation. First, every business communication and presentation must aim at achieving accuracy. Accuracy is the most vital criterion in business communication. This is because inaccurate and incorrect information is often harmful than no communication at all. However, the challenge lies on how accurate the communication should be. Business communication must aim for a higher degree of accuracy that often requires considerable detail and qualification of information. However, this may also lead to a long and turgid work that nobody will be willing to read.
The second element of a business communication looks at brevity. Business communications, which are over-long, result from inclusion of unnecessary materials or long-winded presentations. More often than not in any communication, writers and presenters have more information than is essential. Therefore, presenters should determine what people already know, what they need to know, and what they want to know. Writers and presenters who have a clear idea of this can trim the available information to fit presentation without leaving out any necessary information.
The third criterion of evaluating a content of a business communication is clarity. Lack of clarity occurs from poor style. Occasionally, difficult subject matter may also cause lack of clarity in communication. However, lack of clarity results from stilted phrases and clichés, abundant details and repetitions, lack of logical sentences structure, and excessive use of abstract and generic terms.
Fourth, emphasis in business communication must focus on necessary information. However, deciding what is important in a business text has become a challenge to many presenters. Emphasis must focus on information that is important to the audience, and information that will support the argument of the presenter. Presenters should leave out information of low importance in their presentations and writings. Emphasis should rank items of a presentation in order of their importance. Business communication can also achieve emphasis through the use of formatting and typography techniques. These techniques may include use of white space, use of lists and bullet points, and use of headings. Likewise, communication can also achieve emphasis through using grammatical structure like active voice in presentations. However, presenter must be cautious of emphases that distort information, or conceal of facts.
There are several methods of presenting business communication texts. Technological innovations have enhanced rapid and effective means of relaying business messages. However, we must take note that these methods are only effective in a given environment. Salespersons find it useful to use PowerPoint in presenting their sales pitches. PowerPoint offers several advantages in presentations. Salespersons can easily learn and manipulate PowerPoint slides. They can generate handouts for presentations, which give a summary of the sales pitches and show snapshot pictures of the slides. PowerPoint also gives sales people a patina of professionalism. It also gives the presenter an opportunity to concentrate on his message by avoiding flipping charts or waste of time using an overhead projector. Conversely, sales people must also beware of the downside associated with technical difficulties of using PowerPoint. At the same time, the presenter must also look for an appropriate place for projecting his slides (Schiffman, 2007).
These challenges should never break any business communication. People may reject poorly thought-out presentations. This implies that, as much as PowerPoint has made presentations easy, the presenter must demonstrate knowledge of his presentation. In other words, the presentation must reflect what the people want to see, hear, and know.
Most experts warn of giving handouts before presentations. This is because majority will stick to the paper and pay minimum attention to the presentation. Presentation should be short. There is no need of having too many words on a slide. The slide should reflect simple phrase that acts as a reference point for the speaker by expanding meaningful statement of his own in order to support his presentation. Slides should not be text-heavy i.e. there should be as few slides as possible. Studies show that use of several dozens of slides in presenting a sales pitch results into lack of coordination with what the presenter is saying. Such presentations tend to raise more questions than answers. Attendances are most likely to interrupt with questions. Worse still, what the questions reflect are coming in the next couple of slides. This creates a situation of back and forth, and presenter may not utilize the limited time allocated for his presentation.
Salespersons should use humor sparingly, including cartoon drawings in their presentations. It rarely works as the audience shift their attentions to animations and graphics, and visual designs. Use of humor must also take into account the diverse cultural orientations of the audience in order to avoid offending the rest of the audience.
PowerPoint comes with varieties of visual aids. Business communication documents must also adhere to effective designs just like in use of language for effective communication. Everything on a printed or slide document easily influence anyone looking at it. The overall arrangements of various elements in the text create an overall impression in the audience’s minds even before they start reading the text. Despite the importance of better designs, many organizations lack standard format that guide their presentations and interaction with both internal and external customers.
Business communications must follow some generic design features. Designs and layouts vary across organizations and can range from a simple to glossy multicolor presentations. It is fundamental to note that business communication documents, and their layouts and designs are important no matter how humble a task is. Well designed documents create a preferable effect and suggest a professional and competent approach. This enhances the credibility of the presenter and increases the likelihood of the audience accepting the message. On the other hand, poorly presented business documents put the reader off and create a poor image (Forsyth, 2007).
Memos, reports, sales pitches in business can create both better and poor impression on the audience depending on how they look. Business communication should not have any room for excuses for poorly formatted documents. There are modern word processing programs that can produce most characteristics of professional typesetting. Keen business executives and customers expect to receive communications that satisfy the criteria of professional presentations. Therefore, business communication must inculcate better design and layout features in their presentations. These features include proportion where all the content of a document must be in proportion to each other. Document contents must also reflect a sense balance in each page or slide. Sales pitches should adopt the use of contrast in order to capture audience’s attention on the page. Document rhythm functions to draw audience’s attention down the content without causing any distraction. Finally, unity in the document strives to create a coherent impression of various parts of the business communication contents.
References
Forsyth, P. (2007). The Art of Successful Business Communication: Iet Management of Technology. London: IET Press.
Hartley, P. and Bruckmann, C. (2002). Business Communication: An Introduction. New York: Routledge.
Schiffman, S. (2007). Sales presentation techniques. Avon, MA: Adams Media.