As an entrepreneur, you send many messages every day.
You send messages to your employees. You send messages to your customers. You send messages to your potential customers.
They can be sent through word of mouth when you talk with your employees or customers. They can be sent through written words that can be in the form of email, letter, report, or marketing materials…
The messages can be automated, as when you use autoresponders to send an email newsletter or different marketing messages. Furthermore, you can send them manually when you talk in meetings or send emails to your business partner.
Such messages are an important part of your business communication. Your business depends on them.
But what about the perception? How are they perceived by the recipients?
Remember that there is only one reliable source that will tell you about the perceptions of your messages: the recipients of the messages.
- Do you have clear goals for the different types of communication you or your business performs? It is important to have clear goals for the different communication channels that you use in your business. Clear goals are something that can tell you about the success of your communication. Without them, you can’t evaluate the recipient’s perception.
- Evaluate perceptions from recipients. The only test of the success of your communication effort is what recipients perceive. You need to find ways how you can evaluate that perception regardless it is internal or external communication.
- An unfavorable perception needs your action. If you find something wrong in the messages that you communicate internally or externally in the form of unfavorable perception, you need to do something. Start analyzing the reasons why that happened. It will give you the basis for effective communication in the future.
- You need to get useful feedback. The process needs to have a system that will enable you to receive useful feedback from the recipients about your messages. But the more important is what you can do about the feedback. You need to make something to improve your future communication.
- If you find more than one recipient to have an unfavorable perception, there are probably many more. This is an important rule if you want to improve your overall communication. Don’t think that this is a minority. Always think that there are probably more persons with unfavorable perceptions about you. Only in that way will you be highly motivated to improve your communication process.
- Get outside the building and search for real feedback. I know that you can use surveys, focus groups, and meetings internally in your business, but if you want to know what’s the perception outside your company about you and your company, you need to go outside.
- You need to listen before you send messages. If you want to increase the success of your messages, you need to know what the recipient wants to hear, read and do. Listen to your employees, customers, and potential customers. That’s the best feedback that you can get from them to improve yourself.
