Growing up, many people were in the Boy Scouts or the Girl Scouts. I was in the Cub Scouts for a few years, never making it to the upper levels, but their motto still sticks with me: be prepared. That motto is one of the best in its simplicity and also in practice.
Companies need to be prepared or else problems can arise affectIng: sales, customer service and employee turnover. Having a well thought out communications plan is essential and makes sound business sense. Let’s look at some ways your communication plan can save you money in the long run.
When you don’t have a good communications plan in place, people can easily get confused and it can lead to employee turnover. For example, a note from the CEO gets ping ponged around the company because no clear line of communication was in place and sometimes key people can be left out of the loop.
A “good job” message to an associate that went above and beyond might not reach its intended target and can frustrate the employee. A new way of doing things was never put into action because it was communicated poorly to the managers and leads to many new hires doing the job the wrong way and sends them down the path of progressive discipline.
A good communications plan is simple to install and will have long term benefits for your company in the area of turnover. Having an email service such as Ving, with read receipts in place for all the aspects of the message, helps keep those accountable to those aspects and also allows the sender to see who hasn’t heard the message. Also, having a clear path of progression when it comes to changes, news, and acknowledgments is key.
A good communications plan can help out your sales department in a variety of ways. Your sales staff, whether it be a small group or hundreds of stores, need to know what the best ways to sell your product is and without a good communications plan, that can be hard to achieve. Key items that need sold might be left on the docks or in your aisles because it wasn’t communicated properly. New techniques can be lost they don’t go through the ideal channels. New features to a product, something could sell a slow moving item, can go unnoticed without a good communications plan.
A great communications plan would be to make sure that you when you set up your company, you have a direct line to your sales department. They are the front line of your company and without them, you won’t be making money. Having a good rapport with the sales department is important. They can let you know what is selling, what isn’t, and any new tricks of the trade they have come up with.
Customer service can greatly be affected by a bad communications plan. A cashier that isn’t with the program can impact hundreds of customers if the customers don’t have a sounding board to go to. Vice versa, a good cashier can be discouraged because he or she only hears about the bad that is coming through the pipeline and never hears any compliments he or she has garnered.
Services such as Yelp have helped companies listen to their customers like never before. It allows them a direct line to corporate and allows them the freedom to express the good and the bad about your company. Make sure to share with your employees the good and bad, however, and don’t go too heavy on one or the other.
Using a product like Ving can help you have a great communications plan. You can message your entire team with videos and pictures, as well as quizzes and surveys to make sure that your message is clear. It also allows you to have read receipts so you can know when someone on your team reads an aspect of your message, which helps cut down the confusion and chatter. A good communications plan can greatly affect your company. Make sure you take after the Boy Scouts and be prepared for the good and the bad from your company. Otherwise, you could be lost in the woods.
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