The 7 Essentials of Business Communication

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The 7 Essentials of Business Communication by Lee Hopkins There are seven essential elements to successful business communication: • Structure • Clarity • Consistency • Medium • Relevancy • Primacy/Recency • Psychological Rule of 7±2 If you are going to communicate effectively in business it is essential that you have a solid grasp of these seven elements. So let's look at each in turn... 1. Structure How you structure your communication is fundamental to how easily it is absorbed and understood by your audience. Every good communication should have these three structural elements: an opening, a body, a close. This structural rule holds true no matter what your communication is -- a memo, a phone call, a voice mail message, a personal presentation, a speech, an email, a webpage, or a multi-media presentation. Remember - your communication's audience can be just one person, a small team, an auditorium full of people or a national, even global, group of millions. In this instance size doesn't matter -- the rules remain the same. Opening An opening allows your communication's audience to quickly understand what the communication is about. Short, sharp and to the point, a good opening lets your audience quickly reach a decision of whether or not to pay attention to your message. Time is a precious resource, after all, and the quicker you can 'get to the point' and the faster your audience can make that 'disregard/pay attention' decision the more positively they will view you --- which can be VERY important if you need or want to communicate with them in the future. Body Here's where you get to the 'heart' of your message. It is in the body of the message that you communicate all of your facts and figures relative to the action you want your communication's audience to take after attending to your message. Keep your
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