Effective communication is, by definition, a fundamental necessity for all successful personal, social and business interactions. While most of us learn the basic skills necessary for engaging in personal and social interactions through natural life experiences, the same cannot be said about business communication.
To be able to maintain effective internal and external communication in today’s industry, we need an updated and relevant knowledge base, further development of existing communication skills, and training in the various facets of business communication.
Later in this post, we will be focusing on why professionals who possess the necessary skills in corporate communication often turn out to be instrumental in bringing about corporate success. Before we discuss the reasons though, let’s take a quick look at the four primary types of business communication since understanding the structure is important for the reasonings to make sense.
Internal Upward Communication
When the message or communication is coming in from a subordinate employee and it is directed towards someone who is higher up in the corporate hierarchy, it is officially termed as an internal upward communication. Internal upward communications may include survey results, analytics info, professional or personal feedbacks, work reports and the like.
Internal Lateral Communication
An essential part of employee engagement, productivity, and satisfaction, internal lateral communication is a broad category which includes all employee-to-employee, or peer-to-peer interactions. Although most of the internal lateral communication happens within departments, interdepartmental communication is also encouraged in any healthy corporate culture.
In the absence of clear communication and cooperation between the various departments of a company, bottlenecks are bound to slow down productivity. From emails and online chats, to calls and face-to-face chats, almost all forms of communication channels should remain open to facilitate internal lateral communications.
Internal Downward Communication
When a message or instruction is sent to employees from a manager or a higher-level executive, that’s an instance of internal downward communication. It could be in the form of an email, a memo, or a direct, in-person message, instruction or suggestion. Generally, internal downward communications are sent to several, concerned workers at once.
Internal downward communication is the exact opposite of internal upward communication, but they could be corelated in a causal relationship at times too. For example, the CEO may decide to make some necessary changes in the company’s employee safety policies, in response to prior internal upward communications they might have received.
External Communication
All communications made on behalf of the company with any external third-party would be considered an external business communication. This includes all communications made with clients, customers, leads, service providers, vendors, prospective investors, etc.
Now that we have a proper idea of how business communication is classified and structured, let’s take a look through the various reasons that make the various aspects of business communication so crucial for succeeding.
Building and Maintaining Business Relationships Would be Impossible without Effective Communication
A long-lasting and profitable relationship between two companies is defined as an example of a perfect business relationship. However, if we dig a bit deeper and try to understand how that relationship was built, and is maintained, certain other facts come to light.
Quite simply put, companies are run by people and, in order to both build and maintain business relationships, liaisons must be made with the most influential and powerful figures in those companies. No successful and long-lasting business relationship can be made between two obscure business entities, but instead, it’s always a result of successful communications, intelligent negotiations, and of course, mutual interests.
It’s the expert business communicators who build those important external business relationships with clients, customers and partners. They also maintain them throughout the years and devise dynamic strategies to keep the relationships profitable, even when certain facets of the business relationship change with time.
All Successful Marketers are Also Expert Communicators
The Saint Bonaventure University Online Master’s in Communication course is regarded highly within the industry, and the program highly emphasizes on training students in visual and written communication, alongside strategic thinking. Both skills are absolutely crucial for a marketing expert. Unless a marketer can think strategically and understand the target audience properly, they cannot possibly devise marketing strategies that will communicate and resonate positively with them.
Once they have devised the strategies for making the right marketing communications, there is another step to reaching the potential and existing customers/clients. The content must be created in line with this proper understanding of the target crowd, the product, and the prepared campaign strategies. In any sector with a diverse audience, it’s impossible for an untrained marketer to do all that effectively and continuously. That’s precisely why communications training is necessary for any marketer to accomplish their goals, especially in today’s complicated market.
Given that defining a brand’s values and goals depend so much on their marketing campaigns nowadays, marketing experts are one of the most crucial factors that decide the future of a company. For example, Apple would not be in their current position today without Steve Jobs, and Steve Jobs’ genius communication abilities as a marketer were largely responsible for that. He knew how to market and sell what they have, and to whom.
Boosting Internal Productivity without Two-Way Communication is Impossible Today
Unless certain aspects of free, two-way communication are met within a corporate infrastructure, the company’s chances of success are not going to be high in the near future. There are several reasons why simultaneous downward and upward internal communication is critical for maintaining productive business operations.
For example, if factory workers are unable, or simply not allowed to communicate the problems they are facing with a machine to the higher-ups, productivity will eventually and inevitably come down, when it should ideally go up. By the time the problem becomes too obvious to ignore for the executives, the company may already be suffering losses and running behind on orders because of the communication gaps created by their outdated bureaucratic stop gaps.
Thanks to digital technology in its multiple forms, internal and external communication can be made more effective than it could have been expected at an earlier time. However, since we are still partnering up with and selling to human elements at the end of the day, the importance of communication experts for using those digital tools to their maximum efficacy remains just as important as ever.
