Real-Life Communication
You're busy working on a website at your company, E-Tailor Internet
Consulting, when the phone rings.
"Hello?"
"Hello,
my name is Judy Nubee. I'm thinking about selling my products
on the Internet, but I don't know anything about it. Can I meet with you to
talk about it?"
You reply: "Well, Judy, I'm pretty busy the next few
days. Tell me, how many pages are you going to need? And how much space are
you going to need on our server?"
She says, "Megs? I'm afraid I don't
understand. I hardly even use a computer, never mind the Internet. My friend
recommended I see about getting a website to sell my soapstone carvings. People
say they're quite good."
You say: "Yeah, I'm sure they're great. Look,
we charge about $10,000 for a typical website. How much are you looking to
spend? If it's just a basic website you need, you probably just need us to
do some HTML programming. That isn't too expensive."
That's too much
for Judy. "Huh? HTML? I'm sorry for disturbing you, but I don't think you
can help me. Goodbye."
If you were an Internet consultant
and spoke to potential clients this way, you wouldn't be in business long.
Of the many skills Internet consultants need, "The ability to communicate
is the most important," says Internet consultant Allan Todd.
"You're
kind of like a teacher," says Todd. "Sometimes you have to teach a client
what it is you're doing for them to trust you. You don't want to tell them
everything you do, but you want to tell them sort of at a medium level so
that they understand what you're doing."
Having good communications
skills means using words that the client understands. It also means talking
to the client respectfully. The telephone conversation above contains impolite
phrases and technical terms. Rewrite the above exchange, eliminating the technical
terms and replacing the impolite phrases with polite ones.