We do it consciously and unconsciously every day. Done right, marketing communication can transform the worldview of your target audience. Unfortunately, this true wonder, proper communication skills, is not taught at school.
You really have to work with your communication literacy.
Sales and marketing are all about communicating with other people on different levels. If you have the skills of communication, you have it all, no matter what position you are looking for or what obstacles might come your way. You need to have the basic understanding of negotiation and networking techniques. Why? Because you are already doing those things even if you are not fully aware of it.
- How to understand and communicate your ideas to others across the company and to your supervisors?
- How to handle obstacles and objections?
- How to inspire people from different age groups?
- How to work with business partners outside the company?
- How to use powerful communication with different personality types?
By its definition, communication is the imparting or exchanging of information by speaking, writing, or using some other medium.
We prefer the term communication literacy which by our definition is the possession of the set of skills and knowledge that:
- allows an individual to be able to communicate on any level necessary,
- helps to relate with different people despite of their religion, age or other background, and
- helps to make informed and effective decisions.
If you want to be a powerful marketer, it’s crucial to have good communication literacy, in order to develop strategies and work with tactical planning. Because when you need to communicate on any level inside and outside your organization, it means you have to communicate with your colleagues, bosses, employees, with your partners and service providers, with your family and friends, etc. While communicating with different people you need to be ready not to evaluate, but to understand and relate to them in order to be a good communicator, right?
And finally, based on all the information you have, you need to make objective, up-to-date decisions and in order to do that correctly you need to know how to differentiate the important and relevant trends and information from the noise. In addition, you need to understand the legislation in order to perform at best in your marketing. So, it’s not as easy as it first might seem – it’s really important to understand all the parts of communication literacy in order to be professional.
Powerful marketer is intelligent enough to understand how the following affects people’s expectations, hopes, fears, dreams, obstacles and everything else related to their personal and/or professional life:
- Aging and the life curve principle,
- Different generations,
- Social and cultural environment,
- Education level (if you are an under-educated or narrow-minded person, you are more influenced by background information and noise), and
- Personality types
Looking at people from different angles, we can support both ourselves and others. Make sure you work with your communication literacy every day. Learn & practice it as much as possible. As you discover the use of behavioural psychology in your internal and external marketing, you will become more powerful!
PS! If you'd like to better understand your own behavioral style and how you should approach different personality types according to DISC, then check out the Behavioral Styles Test & Approach Generator.