May 15 2011

Why Texting Doesn’t Cut It!

What you see is what you get,

                         

and with Txt Msgs,

                                                                                      

you see nothing!

 

 

In-person meetings are most telling. Phone calls? At least you can “hear” a smile or gasp or snort. And, if you’re paying attention, you can usually tell if the person on the other end is paying attention. Even emails give you a clue. Texting? Fuggetaboudit!

According to my friend Jeff Banning, president of award-winning third-party logistics provider, Trinity Logistics, Inc. in Seaford, Delaware:

effective communication is only 7% verbal. 38%, is (transmitted) by your tone of voice, and 55% is through non-verbal body language.”

Are you taking note, sales professionals?

 

In other words, more than half of effective communication is not spoken!

With hundreds of employee “teammates,” Jeff oversees more than seventy successful offices across the country, so I believe what he says.

Because we are humans (or is that too presumptuous?), we get fooled sometimes. But we all know instinctively that we are less likely to be fooled when we can take stock by looking someone in the eye.

Eye contact of course is hardly within the realm of txt msg textability.

. . . Or emails. Ah, but emails at least do provide us with some clues . . . I’m not referring to the chit-chatty ones or quick one-sentence back and forth emails. I mean significant emails — ones with proposals. reports, attachments, outlines, strategies, plans, applications, etc.

Someone who doesn’t use spellcheck, for example, or avoids greetings and sign-offs, or who clearly never takes the time to read what she or he wrote, and specifically to read it out loud to her or himself (which all great writers do, by the way), tells us the sender is likely rude and/or insincere.

How can you tell when someone is lying? Teasing? Taunting? Smiling but angry? In a superiority mode? Anxious to leave? Eagerly interested? Tolerating? Bored? Ready to explode? Thoughtfully considering? These and other responses are right in front of you, staring you in the face. The “eyes” (with apologies to Parliament) have it!

This doesn’t mean you must always be in some one’s physical presence in order to “read” the meaning or intention of his or her messages by checking eye movements and facial expressions.

If you’ve read enough of my blog posts over the last few years, you know when I’m kidding or serious. You know when I’m sad or angry or frustrated by the words I use and how I present them. You can generally discern other people’s “tone of voice” even when you can’t physically hear them.

But when situations and/or people involved are important, nothing beats the unspoken messages that come from other peoples’ eyes. Yes, like the song, there are indeed “Lyin’ Eyes,” but paying careful attention (not staring or glaring, mind you) to what you see in the eyes of a speaker or presenter will minimize being taken advantage of.

The only way on earth that you can be effective at “reading” others is by keeping yourself grounded, and focused on the here-and-now present moment as much of the time as possible. Aside from monitoring your pulse or heartbeat (which can get a bit awkward under some circumstances), this no-fail approach is worth your one-minute review.

 

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals. God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

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Mar 09 2009

The New Marketing = 140 Character Spaces!

It’s A Headline World!

                                                                     

With EIGHT MILLION people . . . 

     . . . now reported to be using Twitter, and millions more engaged in the explosive use of other social media tools as well, we are seeing businesses (especially entrepreneurs of course) rush to the ballgame with their gloves, bats and cleats barely broken in… and scoring runs! 

     Rumors abound that social media is racing past emails as the accepted new communications avenue. This means it’s time to reassess whatever you’ve been using as a marketing plan, and to start looking BOTH ways when you cross a one-way street! 

     At what has now become a maniacal rate of propulsion, blogs have been moving up on the outside rail and coming into full stride as legitimate business marketing vehicles.

     And fueled by the burdens of economic woes that now threaten to (literally) fold every major newspaper, blogs, and electronic books, and social media are re-inventing the long-stagnating worlds of publishing and print media, as ipods have muscled in on CDs and music radio. 

     Business marketers stand on the threshhold of communication revolution once again. And each new thrust now occurs in shorter time periods, each marketing message in shorter numbers of words. We are living in a headline world.

     From TXT MSGS to 140 allowed character spaces per Twitter “Tweet” (or update message), we are communicating quicker, more concisely, with more convoluted, contrived, abbreviated, and acronymed versions of words, and more instantly universal than even one year ago! 

     If you are serious about marketing, you need to re-examine where you and your business marketing interests are headed. As print advertising fades and TV continues to tangle itself up in cables of every description, as billboards dissolve off into the distance of green horizons, and direct mail bumbles it’s way through the vast post office sea of incompetency, we may be left with new options.

     Radio (especially talk) will survive, podcasts, videocasts, blogs, teleseminars, electronic books (which will surely include advertising, ala VCR tape and DVD rentals, as the $400 pricetags fall to $79 and less over the next couple of years) and webcam communications will lead the way. Oh, and yes, island-stranded Wilson soccer ball fans, there will always be a place for overnight deliveries. As this communications metamorphosis occurs, social media will be the blanket beneath and behind it all.

     It’s here. It’s not going away any time soon. Until computerized communication chips are embedded in everyones’ skulls, and one need only to think of a person or place or piece of art or writing or music or news item to bring it instantaneously to the brain’s front burner, we will be firmly entrenched in social media that we will be challenged to use effectively to sell tomorrow’s products and services. Oh, and the new theme song? “It’s a blog world afterall…”     halalpiar 

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