Assignment On Business Communication:

PART A 1) AIDA Principle

AIDA is a simple acronym that was devised a long time ago as a reminder of four stages of the sales process. AIDA stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.
Attention

First get their attention. Without attention, you can hardly persuade them of anything. You can get attention in many ways--a good way is to surprise them. Interest Once you have their attention, sustain that attention by getting the other person interested.
Desire

Once they are interested in you and what you have to say, then next step is to create a desire in them for what you want them to do. They can recognize that they have a need, but this is not desire. Desire is a motivation to act and leads towards the next stage. Action This is the magic stage when they take action on their desires and actually buy the product or agree to your proposals. The scariest point is where you ask for the sale or ask them whether they actually do agree fully with you. This is AIDA principle.
2) MEMO A Memo can be defined as a short note written as a reminder, A written record or

communication, as in a business office, A short written statement outlining the terms of an agreement, transaction, or contract, A business statement made by a consignor about a shipment of goods that may be returned, or A brief, unsigned diplomatic communication.
3) Grapevine Communication

Grapevine is an informal channel of business communication. It is called so because it stretches throughout the organization in all directions irrespective of the authority levels. Man as we know is a social animal. Despite existence of formal channels in an organization, the informal channels tend to develop when he interacts with other people in organization. It exists more at lower levels of organization. Grapevine generally develops due to various reasons. One of them is that when an organization is facing recession, the employees sense uncertainty. Also, at times employees do not have selfconfidence due to which they form unions. Sometimes the managers show preferential treatment and favour some employees giving a segregated feeling to other employees. Thus, when employees sense a need to exchange their views, they go for grapevine network as they cannot use the formal channel of communication in that case. Generally during breaks in cafeteria,the subordinates talk

about their superior s attitude and behaviour and exchange views with their peers. They discuss rumours about promotion and transfer of other employees. Thus, grapevine spreads like fire and it is not easy to trace the cause of such communication at times.
4) Proxemics & Chronemics

the study of the nature, degree, and effect of the spatial separation individuals naturally maintain (as in various social and interpersonal situations) and of how this separation relates to environmental and cultural factors is called Proxemics.

Chronemics is the study of the use of time in nonverbal communication. The way we perceive time, structure our time and react to time is a powerful communication tool, and helps set the stage for the communication process. Across cultures, time perception plays a large role in the nonverbal communication process. Time perceptions include punctuality, willingness to wait, and interactions. The use of time can affect lifestyles, daily agendas, speed of speech, movements and how long people are willing to listen.

5) Impromptic & Extemporaneous Impromtic is something which is Prompted by the occasion rather than being planned in advance.
Spoken, performed, done, or composed with little or no preparation. While Extemporaneous can be defined as Carried out or performed with little or no preparation, Prepared in advance but delivered without notes or text, Skilled at or given to unrehearsed speech or performance, Provided, made, or adapted as an expedient. 6) Crossed Transaction

Transactional analysis, commonly known as TA to its adherents, is an integrative approach to the theory of psychology and psychotherapy. It is described as integrative because it has elements of psychoanalytic, humanist and cognitive approaches. TA was developed by Canadian-born US psychiatrist, Eric Berne, during the late 1950s. Crossed Transactions: Communication failures are typically caused by a 'crossed transaction' where partners address ego states other than that their partner is in.

Example 1a: A: "Have you been able to write that report?" (Adult to Adult) B: "Will you stop hassling me? I'll do it eventually!" (Child to Parent) This is a crossed transaction likely to produce problems in the workplace. A may respond with a Parent to Child transaction. For instance: A: "If you don't change your attitude, you'll get fired." Example 2a: A: "Is your room tidy yet?" (Parent to Child) B: "I'm just going to do it, actually." (Adult to Adult) This is a more positive crossed transaction. There is however the risk that A will feel aggrieved that B is acting responsibly and not playing their role, and the conversation will develop into: A: "I can never trust you to do things!" (Parent to Child) B: "Why don't you believe anything I say?" (Adult to Adult) ... which can continue indefinitely.
7) Inductive Vs Deductive we often refer to the two broad methods of reasoning as the deductive and inductive approaches. Deductive reasoning works from the more general to the more specific. Sometimes this is informally called a "top-down" approach. We might begin with thinking up a theory about our topic of interest. We then narrow that down into more specific hypotheses that we can test. We narrow down even further when we collect observations to address the hypotheses. This ultimately leads us to be able to test the hypotheses with specific data -- a confirmation (or not) of our original theories. Inductive reasoning works the other way, moving from specific observations to broader generalizations and theories. Informally, we sometimes call this a "bottom up" approach (please note that it's "bottom up" and not "bottoms up" which is the kind of thing the bartender says to customers when he's trying to close for the night!). In inductive reasoning, we begin with specific observations and measures, begin to detect patterns and regularities, formulate some tentative hypotheses that we can explore, and finally end up developing some general conclusions or theories. These two methods of reasoning have a very different "feel" to them when you're conducting research.

Inductive reasoning, by its very nature, is more open-ended and exploratory, especially at the beginning. Deductive reasoning is more narrow in nature and is concerned with testing or confirming hypotheses. Even though a particular study may look like it's purely deductive (e.g., an experiment designed to test the hypothesized effects of some treatment on some outcome), most social research involves both inductive and deductive reasoning processes at some time in the project. In fact, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that we could assemble the two graphs above into a single circular one that continually cycles from theories down to observations and back up again to theories. Even in the most constrained experiment, the researchers may observe patterns in the data that lead them to develop new theories. Deductive

Inductive

8) Telephone Etiquette Telephone etiquette refers to a set of rules that apply when people make calls to others or when they are receiving a phone call. There are slightly different rules for a variety of situations. Making and receiving personal calls are not the same as making/receiving business calls. Within this set of rules there can be differences, especially for business calls where companies may want callers or receivers to say certain things. For personal telephone etiquette, calling someone means doing several things. A caller should identify him/herself when not recognized right away. In calling a friend or relative, for instance, after the initial Hello, the caller should come up with a greeting and identification. Hello/Hi this is John. Sometimes a last name is needed if the person being called is an acquaintance or a business representative. The next thing that is needed in telephone etiquette is a request for something, such as speaking to someone else in the house. Variations exist on this

like May I speak to Horatio, or Is Horatio available? If Horatio is not available, it may be necessary to leave a brief message, but it should be one easy to right down. Sometimes the only thing necessary is to leave a phone number. Even this simple telephone etiquette takes a while to learn. It s a good thing to teach children, as they often don t know it, can t identify themselves, and won t leave any form of concrete message. Children should also be taught how to answer a phone, and all people can benefit from the following some standard etiquette concepts
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Pick up the phone promptly with a salutation like Hello, and not Yeah or Go! Be prepared to take a message and always have pencil/pen and paper handy. If the call is undesired, as from a solicitor, merely inform the person in an even tone that there is no interest for the product or service, say goodbye, and gently hang up. Alternately, screen calls and let unwanted calls go to voicemail.

9) Types Of Communication
Communication is the activity of conveying meaningful information. Communication requires a sender, a message, and an intended recipient, although the receiver need not be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast distances in time and space. Communication requires that the communicating parties share an area of communicative commonality. The communication process is complete once the receiver has understood the sender. The Types are, Nonverbal communication Nonverbal communication describes the process of conveying meaning in the form of non-word messages. Research shows that the majority of our communication is non verbal, also known as body language. some of non verbal communication includes gesture, body language or posture; facial expression and eye contact, object communication such as clothing, hairstyles, architecture, symbols info graphics, and tone of voice as well as through an aggregate of the above. Non-verbal communication is also called silent language and plays a key role in human day to day life from employment relations to romantic engagements. Visual communication Visual communication is the conveyance of ideas and information through creation of visual representations. Primarily associated with two dimensional images, it includes: signs, typography, drawing, graphic design, illustration, colours, and electronic resources, video and TV. Recent research in the field has focused on web design and graphically oriented usability. Graphic designers use methods of visual communication in their professional practice. Oral communication Oral communication, while primarily referring to spoken verbal communication, typically relies on both words, visual aids and non-verbal elements to support the conveyance of the meaning. Oral

communication includes discussion, speeches, presentations, interpersonal communication and many other varieties. In face to face communication the body language and voice tonality plays a significant role and may have a greater impact on the listener than the intended content of the spoken words.

Written Communication
Over time the forms of and ideas about communication have evolved through progression of technology. Advances include communications psychology and media psychology; an emerging field of study. Researchers divides the progression of written communication into three revolutionary stages called "Information Communication Revolutions" (Source needed). During the 1st stage written communication first emerged through the use of pictographs. The pictograms were made in stone, hence written communication was not yet mobile. During the 2nd stage writing began to appear on paper, papyrus, clay, wax, etc. Common alphabets were introduced and allowed for the uniformity of language across large distances. A leap in technology occurred when the Gutenberg printing-press was invented in the 15th century. The 3rd stage is characterised by the transfer of information through controlled waves and electronic signals. 10) Barriers To Communication
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Physical (time, environment, comfort, needs, physical medium) Cultural (ethnic, religious, and social differences) Perceptional (viewing what is said from your own mindset) Motivational (mental inertia) Experiential (lack of similar experience) Emotional (personal feelings at the moment) Linguistic (different languages or vocabulary) Non-verbal (non-word messages) Competition (noise, doing other things besides listening) Words (we assign a meaning to a word often because of culture -- note the difference in the meaning of "police" (contrast Berrien Springs versus Benton Harbor or any inner city perspective) or "boy" (contrast white male with black male perspectives) Context (high / low) Purpose (example: note the difference in communication between men versus women; for men it's report-talk versus rapport-talk or information versus bonding Mode (differences in way a message is sent). Note the black versus white modes: Black High keyed Argument White Low keyed Discussion

Spontaneous Boasting Person Oriented

Controlled / SelfRestrained Understanding Task Oriented Whites perceive Blacks perceive blacks as aggressive, whites as detached, over-emotional, devious, impersonal, angry, condescending, confrontational, hypocritical, avoiding interruptive, too eye contact, and too personal, silent showboating

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Gestures (misunderstood gestures are a major barrier see discussion on nonverbal language) Variations in language accent, dialect Slang - jargon - colloquialism Different forms or reasons for verbal interaction Dueling seeing who can get the upper hand (playing the dozens) Repartee conversation taking short turns rather than monologue Ritual conversation standard replies with little meaning to words themselves (i.e. most US greetings) Self-disclosure. The level of self-disclosure is culturally determined. Not all cultures wish to give personal information; some want to do business without knowing the other person while others insist on full knowledge first.