Booher BanterYour Resource for the best ideas to improve communications skills.

An interesting news story broke on Tuesday, August 29, in the Dallas/Fort Worth area:  A large provider of jobs, RadioShack, delivered lay-off notifications to 403 individuals by email.  No tap on the shoulder from a supervisor… no HR representative hovering near the cubicle…just an email saying that the recipient no longer had a job and to please be in a particular conference room 30 minutes hence.

The question of the day is:  How would you feel in that situation? 

Is it less of a shock to receive that type of news in an email, or would you prefer a face-to-face meeting?  Log a comment with your opinion and let’s start a dialog with other readers.

Click here for the full story in the Dallas Morning News.

Posted at 11:45am in Uncategorized | Permalink | Add Comment » |

You may have heard this adage to writers with a stuffy style, who fill their documents with “please be advised,” “pursuant to our meeting,” and “enclosed herewith.”

Generally, “to write as you talk” is good advice.  But misunderstood, that advice leads to rambling prose.  Instead of a period, writers often succumb to a confusing habit of linking scrambled thoughts with “which”:

“I emailed my broker about the problem with the duplicate entries on my IRA account, which he said was fairly common when you make two years’ contribution with the same check, which I did this January, including a contribution for the previous year along with the contribution for the current year, which is, of course, expedient for my purposes but not for the broker.  They’ve made several errors recently, which is why I had to re-send the last paycheck deposit twice, which is becoming a problem for our own payroll department, which is responsible for stopping payment on checks and reissuing them when there’s a problem, which is what I had to ask them to do this past payroll period.”

Speakers often punctuate with “which” and a breath.  Writers should not.

By all means, on most occasions, write as you would talk. That is, use a conversational tone, informal word choice, and flowing sentence patterns—but without grammatical errors, repetition, and disjointed ideas.

Send me a comment on your experiences with similar writers, or some other distracting writing style you’ve encountered.

Posted at 3:46pm in Communication—Written | Permalink | Add Comment » |

Please add Bill Marvel’s article, "Writing won’t kill you" (August 21, Dallas Morning News) to your reading list for today.  The article offers eight strong tips selected from several authors (myself included) and educators to help you deliver a clear message each time you write.

As I blogged in my previous post, I am in Brazil most of this week addressing many of Central and South America’s top Human Resource professionals.  I’ll give you a recap of the trip next week.  After Brazil, I’m off to North Carolina for my annual meeting of the Speaker’s Roundtable (an invitation-only association of 20 of America’s foremost motivational speakers, professional speakers and keynote speakers).

Posted at 10:25am in Communication—Written | Permalink | Add Comment » |

On August 20-25, 2006, senior HR executives, managers, and general professionals from all over Central and South America will gather in Sao Paulo, Brazil, for the annual CONARH conference. Their theme this year is "Transforming to Compete."  I’ll be delivering the closing keynote on Tuesday, addressing strategies to improve both personal and organizational communication.

In preparation for my coming, reporters in the business press there have been calling and emailing their questions.  See if you notice anything peculiar:

• Why is trust so low in most organizations?
• How has technology changed the way we communicate?  Have executives changed their communication style to accommodate the technology?
• How do we get people to share information rather than operate in silos?
• What can people do to increase their personal credibility with so many things vying for everyone’s attention?
• What tips can you give for increasing productivity with email?  People are already overworked.

Notice anything strange?  Neither did I.  Those are the same issues we deal with in the U.S. and in fact in most every country where I travel and consult. And that leads me to the central truth of the message I’ll deliver there:  Technology is a means, not a strategy. People want to have an honest dialog–clear goals, input on decisions, straight-talk about their performance. No matter the culture, heart-to-heart communication wins commitment; nothing less will do.

Please let me know your "take" on the communication culture where you work—whether in Sao Paulo, San Francisco, or Singapore.

Posted at 5:57pm in General Communication | Permalink | Add Comment » |

I’ve experienced the sales game from both sides of the table: making hundreds of presentations to sell our services, and hearing hundreds more from those trying to sell me something.  If the parade of presentations goes on for a few hours, buyers grow weary.  What can you do to your presentation to overcome your buyer’s sense of frustration?

These 10 suggestions deal with the finer points of sales presentations:

1. Influence, don’t just inform.  Your role is to make your information actionable for your buyers.
2. Act against your own self-interest to build trust.  If you know an extended warranty doesn’t make sense for a customer, let them know it’s available but advise against it.
3. Use the experience factor.  Buyers can refute your facts and figures, but your experience in your area of expertise is irrefutable.
4. Tell failure stories.  Buyers can learn from a case history involving one of your clients that didn’t find success with your product—as long as the failure was due to the client’s decision-making and not your product or service.
5. Prefer understatement to overstatement.  Use a range of actual results you’ve recorded rather than making promises that appear too good to be believable.
6. Know when to use exact numbers and when to round them.  Exact numbers are easier to verify, while rounded numbers are more easily remembered.
7. Make statistics and facts experiential.  Raw bits of data are not easily digested, so involve buyers in a discussion of how your statistics apply to their project. 
8. Never shy away from underdog positioning.  Because some people can’t help but cheer for the underdog, acknowledge that you’re the lesser-known brand.
9. Plant questions you’d like competitors to address.  While noting your key areas of strength, drop in issues that may be problems for the competition.
10. Never walk through your proposal—give a guided tour.  The buyer can either read or listen, but not both at the same time.  Don’t let the written proposal compete with your oral presentation.

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Review the full article, "Do You Have Perfect Pitch?" in the August issue of Sales and Service Excellence magazine.  You’ll find many quality articles in this publication from leading experts in sales and marketing like Patricia Fripp, Nido Qubein, Tony Alessandra, Bill Brooks, Harvey Mackay, Jim Cathcart, Thomas Winninger, and Bill Bachrach.

You may download the pdf version of the article from my website (Booher.com) by clicking on this link.  Open the PDF Version (allow a minute or two for the download).

Have you made a sales presentation that brought surprising results—good or bad?  Send me a comment.

Posted at 4:31pm in Communication—Sales | Permalink | Add Comment » |

Concise is good.  Clarity is better.  I hate those four-minute voicemails as much as the next person.  But some people have an annoying habit of condensing details at the wrong time, resulting in incomplete information, errors, and hours of rework.  A simple illustration from this week’s travel makes my point:

I checked into the hotel for my five-day stay, unpacked my bag, and discovered I was short on clothes hangers.  Housekeeping didn’t answer their extension, so I dialed the operator.  When she answered, I said, "I need one more skirt hanger and one more jacket hanger in Room 909, please."

"Okay," she said, "I’ll ask Housekeeping to bring them right up."

Forty-five minutes later, there was a knock on my door.  The maid stood at the door with an armful of more than two dozen hangers.  I said, "Oh, thank you, I was just about to call again to see what happened.  I only needed two hangers—a skirt hanger and a jacket hanger."  I pulled those two from her arms and left her with the rest.  She looked exasperated.  "Only two?  That’s what took me so long!  She didn’t tell me that!  I’ve been all over several floors, looking in closets to find enough.  The operator just said you needed ‘hangers.’"

In much more serious circumstances than this, providing incomplete details spells disaster for coworkers and customers. 

Do you have your own tales to share?  I’d like to hear them.

Posted at 1:50pm in General Communication | Permalink | Add Comment » |

I spoke with Alisha Wyman of the Union Democrat (CA) on August 11 about how electronic media has changed how we communicate. Whether we use email, cell phones, a Blackberry—or any other of the myriad of electronic options—we’ve all played a role in the evolution of information sharing. Review the full communication article here.

Send me a comment on your experiences (positive or negative) with today’s electronic media.  Are you welcoming the new gadgets?

Posted at 10:43am in Uncategorized | Permalink | Add Comment » |

Check the New York Times (August 6) for Matt Villano’s article based on our recent interview regarding effective resignation letters (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/06/business/yourmoney/06advi.html).   Is it worth it to spend extra time crafting an effective, thoughtful resignation letter even though you are on the way out?  The answer is yes—unless you’re in the habit of burning bridges.

The structure of most resignation letters falls into three categories:  The basic, no-frills "I hereby resign" type; the "I resign and here’s why" version; and the "I resign and I’m going to use this letter to vent and tell everyone what a pathetic boss you are" version.

The first version, a simple resignation, does the job—but without creating any lasting impact.  "Please consider this letter my resignation from X position, effective Y date."  It’s the equivalent of a "no comment" when the reporter shoves a mic into the accused’s face. The tone sounds less than warm and fuzzy.  Two years down the road, should someone take a look at your record for the purpose of a reference or a strategic partnership, … well, let’s just say, there would be questions about the circumstances of your departure.

The second version provides the most flexibility and leaves the most doors open. Just be sure to make the reason positive.  You can be as specific (to accept a job with XYZ Corporation) or vague as you wish (to pursue a job more in line with my training).  And no matter how bad the situation, you can find something to express thanks for in the job you’re leaving (training, relationships, industry knowledge, stimulating conversations, blueberry donuts, purple cubicle—just kidding).

The third version is the worst choice if you want to leave on a positive note.  But if you simply can’t help yourself and just must vent, the trick is stating your reason for leaving as the essence of your excitement about the new job.  In other words, only imply the negative you’re leaving behind.   

A) "…This new position will dramatically reduce my heavy travel schedule …"
B) "…will be accepting a new position that will allow me to keep my weekends free to spend with my family…"
C) "…in this new job, I’ll be returning to much more face-to-face customer interaction, which has always been my passion…"
D) "… The new job will primarily involve project management, which is more in line with my training and similar to my original job description when I was hired here …"
E) "…As a single mom, it is important to me to reduce my workload to under 50 hours a week and even have the opportunity to work from home on occasion … This job provides that opportunity."

Have you had an interesting experience with resignations in the past—either giving yours or receiving someone else’s?  Let our readers here from you. What was the comment, and how did you react to it?

Posted at 6:00am in Communication—Written | Permalink | 1 Comment |

Why won’t the latest celebrity flap go away?  Such situations calling for a public apology come and go about once a month.  Some movie star, athlete, or politician gets caught shoplifting, driving while drunk, doing drugs, having an affair, uttering prejudicial slurs over an open mic, or taking a bribe and the public becomes outraged about the duplicity.  The public persona and principles preached don’t match the private behavior.  Typically, what further enrages us about such situations is that the celebrity involved first takes the stance:  "It’s none of your business."  When that line doesn’t work, he or she tries to make excuses, "I was drunk/stoned/conned/didn’t know blah, blah, blah … " fill in the blanks.  When those excuses don’t calm the waters, they finally come out with a belated apology.  The public accepts the apology—if there’s a true admission of wrong-doing. 

Let’s side-track here a moment on what makes a good apology: 

1)  Admission of guilt or wrong-doing. The person accepts responsibility for what was said or done and its inappropriateness, inaccuracy, error, weakness, hurtfulness, insensitivity, or whatever.

2) Specificity.  Apologizing specifically sounds sincere.  Global, blanket apologies convey lack of concern or understanding of the situation or damage caused.

3) Amends.  Apologizing typically involves some attempt to make things right, some words or gesture of goodwill toward the offended person or group.

If the apology follows these guidelines, life goes back to normal.  We once again buy their music, see their movies, go to their ball games, elect them to office.

So what has happened in the Mel Gibson situation?  He has apologized.  So why is the story still hanging on in the media after five days?  What do you think?

Posted at 1:10pm in Uncategorized | Permalink | Add Comment » |