Success Advice
5 Ways To Become A Master Communicator
How many of us have ever wanted to become the most valuable person in our profession and/or professional position?
As I continue to improve and become a more efficient leader within the automotive industry and sales profession; as a whole, I’ve been fortunate to learn from the best in the business. This concept of being the most valuable person is centered around becoming a master communicator, one that I train on with my professional and personal mentor, Andy Elliott, who coaches me to this very day.
I utilize these five things every day in my professional roles in automotive sales with our customers, staff, and community members as well as being diligent to apply them in my personal life with family, friends, and anyone I say hello to. I believe that if you take these five things serious; and want to become masterful at communicating, you can become the most valuable person to anyone and everyone that you come into contact with.
1. Master Public Speaking
This is an area that everyone should want to master and it will create an immediate impact. Think about it. Every verbal interaction with another individual is part of the definition of public speaking, or the “act of speaking face to face to a live audience.” Have you ever said, “Let me rephrase that”, or “Does that make sense”?
When we say either one of those statements, I believe, it’s because there is a lack of confidence that what we are saying to someone is being understood by the other person/persons. Do you view yourself as a public speaker? Do you view what you do as part of a public speaking role? If you are serious about mastering your communication skills then you have to accept the fact that you are a public speaker first and foremost.
After accepting this, it’s time to go to work on becoming confident with how you speak. The more effective you are with how you speak and communicate with others will create so much self-confidence that you start seeking out opportunities to create new conversations and improve on the ones you’re already having.
2. Master Listening
Communicating is such an important skill that you have to be great at, regardless of your profession. In order to best serve your customer base, staff, and/or community at large, you have to be great at speaking to them; however, if you aren’t actively listening, you will limit your ability to successfully communicate with others and ultimately will lose credibility as well.
Asking great questions and then writing down the “hot button” responses from those questions you’ve asked, is crucial to becoming a master at listening. In my opinion, people believe more of what they see versus what they hear so your actions in the listening process are paramount. Whatever you do, don’t write things down to just write them down.
Write down what is important to those you are speaking to because they will see the benefits from that and feel more confident that you’re someone that is listening to them, not just appeasing or hearing them.
3. Master Your Personality
The way you’re “easy to talk to” or “difficult to approach” is part of the way your personality is engineered. It’s important to understand your energy level during the communication process because it will create the impression that you’re either going to be someone others want to talk to or someone that they don’t.
Your personality is a reflection of how you will be to work with and/or communicate with long-term; and, can either be an asset for you or a liability in all of your interactions. Do you sound confident and excited to others when you are engaging with them? Are they moving towards you in the communication process or are they retreating from you?
To best start mastering your own personality, reverse engineer the process by studying and auditing how others communicate with you. Remember that personality is reflective. So being able to observe how others communicate with you and what their personality is like with you, is a great way to see how they might already perceive you and your personality with them.
How did they make you feel during the interaction? Did you feel they were excited to be speaking with you or just going through the motions?
4. Master Your Tonality
Your ability or inability to inflect during the conversation and the timing of your inflection is exactly how the person on the other end of that conversation is going to react to you so that they match your current level of the communication as well.
By becoming a master of your tonality, what you are showing is a discipline to controlling your emotions. What I want you to do right now is think about two conversations that you’ve had where one went well and the second one went bad.
I can almost bet that you can identify the exact moment in those conversations where you knew it was moving in the right direction and where it had taken a wrong turn. One great way to begin mastering your tonality is to record yourself having a phone conversation with a customer, prospect, or family member.
Now replay that conversation back and write down the areas during the conversation where you hear yourself shift the tone of the conversation as well as the same areas in which the person on the other end of the phone or in-person interaction does the same thing. This is a great way to start identifying how to master your tonality right away.
5. Master Your Ability To Transfer Emotion
This is where your current state of mind, mood, and knowledge on the topic being communicated about is shifted by you to the other party you’re communicating with. When you’re around someone that captivates you, that peaks your interest, and holds your attention, it’s because they’ve created an emotional reaction from you that you want to invest more into.
At the same time, if you are around someone that frustrates you or makes you want to cut the interaction off with them, it’s because they’ve created a reaction from you where you feel that they are withdrawing energy from you.
Imagine if you were the cause of that happening to someone else? Possessing a grateful mindset and having the best attitude is key to mastering your ability to transfer emotion and is where you need to start right away.
It’s important now more than ever that our ability to communicate with one another is transparent, in a state of reciprocity, and deposits more first into others than it withdraws. If you focus on being great at these five things you will become a master communicator and dominate your professional and personal interactions with precise efficiency and effectiveness.
Success Advice
How to Alter Your Business Approach With Technological Advancements
Keeping up with technological trends has become a challenge for almost every business owner.
Technology’s evolution has impacted everything, and business is no exception. Keeping up with technological trends has become a challenge for almost every business owner. Entrepreneurs unable to do so are being wiped out of the market.
There is no doubt that AI (Artificial Intelligence) and ML (Machine Learning) have taken over the business world. These technological advancements are impacting decision-making, success percentages, and other entrepreneurial aspects.
Adapting to these developments is integral to business success. Let’s explore how you can accomplish these milestones.
Embed the strength of AI and ML.
AI has modified business operations in major ways. For instance, companies have employed bots for customer support. These bots go through an effective learning process via Machine Learning before being able to answer like humans.
Bots can also perform detailed data analytics and make business moves with high success percentages.
ML is used more for the analysis of data chunks and generating successful predictions. This simply means that business owners do not have to worry about large-scale financial losses.
In terms of deployment and usage, a reputed company like Netflix employs machine learning for decision-making.
Blockchain is increasing the count of business opportunities
Tampering of financial transactions is quite common and causes severe monetary damage to customers. With the rise of digital payments, this risk has increased.
Blockchain is used to elevate your experience for monetary transfers. It combats penetrating events to extract confidential customer information.
Most business sectors are using block chain but finance and supply chain management sections have a higher count. These two corporate sections have several monetary deposits and withdrawals taking place.
In terms of percentage, approximately 72% and 5% of finance and supply chain firms have implemented block chain successfully.
Dedicate Yourself to Continuous Learning and Individual Development
You invest in learning some of the very important skills, including digital marketing, financial management, and how to gain customers as an entrepreneur.
You need to set up your knowledge base about doing business on Coursera and Udemy with the basics that are necessary for the business, building further by networking with experts through webinars.
Besides, Agile methodology will introduce elasticity to your company: this review and feedback system with further correction regularly will allow for enhancing efficiency and promptly reacting to the market.
Developing key skills to achieve goals
Running a business successfully is not only about having niche/domain knowledge. Business owners need to have communication / soft skills as well in addition to niche information.
Here are some key technical/domain-related areas that business owners should have a strong grip on.
Data Storage on Cloud: These days, companies do not store their data on physical servers. Therefore business owners should know how data is stored/edited/removed/updated via AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and other platforms.
Data Analysis/Interpretation Qualities: These days, data is as precious as gold. Business owners with data analysis abilities make correct predictions. As a result, their ventures grow in volume.
Development/Coding Knowledge
Programming knowledge gives business owners an edge whether the application is developed in-house or outsourced. It assists in getting updates deployed and handling application underperformance without getting professional support every time.
Hacking proof framework
There is no benefit of having an advanced automated system if can be penetrated. Successful business owners have above-average knowledge of cyber security and hacking attempts. They are able to choose top-notch anti-hacking software without much of an ambiguity.
Communication Abilities/Soft Skills
Here are some key communication qualities that business owners should have:
Communication/Conversation: Business owners should use to-the-point sentences in both written and oral communication.
Issue Resolution Abilities: Business owners should be able to drill down to problems and solve them. This is done successfully only if an entrepreneur has in-depth business domain knowledge.
Agile Implementations
It is mandatory for business owners to have knowledge of iterative/agile models. With such a competitive environment, it is impossible for business owners to succeed without adopting an agile framework.
Create a productive well-crafted Business Strategy
A productive business venture starts with a clear vision. The first factor making a business successful is the idea behind it. It helps with endless growth and combating competition successfully. Katherine Philips once mentioned that business goals are inevitable if goals are set concretely.
- Goals should be based on smart achievements instead of complexity. Focus on the value that each one of them adds.
- Business objectives should not be vague. Key indicators should be constructed to measure the success/failure of each milestone.
- Be realistic when setting goals. Do not aim at impossible milestones since they can be demotivating.
- Milestones/goals need to be time-bound. Set a completion deadline for each one of them.
- Business goals should not be alien. Owners can think out of the box but not be obsolete / unrelated.
Create a productive well-crafted Business Strategy
Business owners cannot succeed without having a network. Some tips help in this case. Attend conferences and professional gatherings to connect with other entrepreneurs.
Here are some other related points business owners should pay attention to.
- Attend meetings and conferences to stay updated with trends and meet business owners who already have well-set ventures. This helps in enhancing the learning curve of new / growing entrepreneurs.
- Being a part of business communities/groups is very productive. When one shares opinions and discusses decision-making tactics, it helps in preventing errors and enhancing success rate.
- Even the most experienced business owners have mentors as learning never stops. Take part in mentorship programs so there is an assurance that you are following the correct roadmap.
Conclusion
There is absolutely no doubt that business dimensions have evolved with technological advancements. Successful entrepreneurs have grabbed these changes in due course of time and continue to evolve. On the other hand, people following old paths and conventional steps fade out of competition. In a nutshell, keep an eye on the processes and practices you follow as these factors decide success rate.
Success Advice
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Motivation
From Couch Potato to Go-Getter: A Step-by-Step Motivation Plan for Everyone
By understanding what motivates you, you can turn your dreams into reality
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10 Micro Financial Habits for More Wealth and Peace of Mind
The World Economic Forum still reports that half of U.S. adults lack financial literacy
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