Chapter 11 – Report and Research Basics

Reports are necessary in business. Employees need to communicate both horizontally with each other through reports and vertically to supervisors. One of the most important steps of making a report is the process of collecting information.

Data can be categorized in two categories, which are primary and secondary. Primary data is based on firsthand experience, while secondary data is based on reading what others have experienced, observed, and written down.

Gathering information from secondary sources can be obtained through print resources and electronic databases.

1. Print Resources

Despite this sophisticated era, print sources are still the most dominant part of most libraries. Not all of information can be found in electronic data. You may begin your research by talking to a reference librarian about your project, so he or she will give you the right direction.

a. Books

They offer excellent historical, in-depth data locate data through print or online listings, such as card catalogs,and online catalogs.

b. Periodicals

Magazines, pamphlets, and journals are considered as periodicals because of their recurrent, or periodic, publication. Periodicals can be found in print indexes and electronic indexes.

2. Electronic Databases 

Gathering information from primary sources can be obtained through survey, interviews, observation, or experimentation.

Chapter 10 - Persuasive and Sales Messages

Persuading others is a crucial thing in business communicative skill. Mastering that skill means being able to create successful persuasive messages as well as effective and ethical business messages. A lot of people have already known what persuasion is, and what the purpose is. However, only a few people know what the effective persuasion techniques are: establishing credibility, making a reasonable and precise request, tying facts to benefits, recognizing the power of loss, expecting and overcoming resistance, and sharing solutions and compromise.

In making successful persuasive messages, being aware of your own culture is no less important. You are insisted to interact with many countries with different cultural background. This means you need to be persuasive in both high-context cultures and low-context cultures, in order to avoid confusion and miscommunication. 

Based on figure 3.2 Comparing Low- and High-Context Cultures , it can be seen that low context and high context culture have their own tendency. 

Therefore, there are several important aspects that you need to note in order to be persuasive in both contexts.

What aspects do you need to be persuasive in high-context culture?

• Indirectness

Use of indirect expressions, such as perhaps, probably, somewhat; use of preference for softened words (e.g would appreciate rather than must or expect).

• Politeness

Expressions of politeness, use of honorifics, wishful requests (e.g we hope).

• Soft-sell approach

Use of simple facts without superlatives.

• Relationship appeal

Attempts to build a long-term relationship.

• Collectivist view

Use of we and our rather than "you" view

How about being persuasive in low-context culture? What aspects do you have to notice?

• Directness

Precision in expression is preferred.

• Superlatives

Use of superlatives, such as the lowest price, highest quality.

• Hard-sell approach

Agressive promotions, incentives, testimonials, deadlines, and product advantages using explicit comparisons with competitors.

• Short-term goal

Little attempt to establish long-term relationship.

• "You" view

Emphasis on benefits to individual, not on group perspectives.

By mastering these aspects, you will be able to make successful persuasive messages since you pay attention to the tendency of people with different cultural backgrounds, categorized into high-context culture and low-context culture.

Chapter 9 - Negative Messages

In business, we certainly must face bad things, such as poor service, undelivered goods, customer dissatisfaction, and other matters. Of course, you need to apologize for mistakes. Bad news may disappoints and irritates the receiver. Therefore, you need to use a suitable strategy, either direct or indirect, to deliver bad news.

Direct strategy is effectively used when

• The bad news is not damaging.
• The receiver may overlook the bad news.
• The organization or receiver prefers directness.
• Firmness is necessary.

Indirect strategy is effectively used when

• The bad news is personally upsetting.
• The bad news will provoke a hostile reaction.
• The bad news threatens the customer relationship.
• The bad news is unexpected.

The comparison of these strategies can be seen in this figure.

Personally, I think the most important part for both direct and indirect strategy is the closing part. It is not about delivering your apology, but providing your solution regarding bad news you delivered. Customers need apology. However, getting the solution is the biggest need of customers. Therefore, you need to do closing pleasantly through:

• Forward look

Thank you for your bid. We look forward to working with your talented staff when future projects demand your social expertise.

• Alternative Follow-Up

Although the lot you saw last week is now sold, we do have two excellent view lots available at a slightly higher price

• Good Wishes

We appreciate your interest in our company, and we extend to you our best wishes in your search to find the perfect match between your skills and job requirements.

• Freebies

Your loyalty and your concern about our frozen entrees are genuinely appreciated. Because we want you to continue enjoying our healthful and convenient dinners, we are enclosing a coupon that you can take to your local market to select your next Green Valley entree.

• Resale or Sales Promotion

The computer workstations you ordered are unusually popular because of their stain-, heat-, and scratch-resistant finishes. To help you locate hard-to-find accessories for these workstations, we invite you to visit our Web site where our online catalog provides a huge selection of surge suppressors, multiple outlet strips, security devices, and PC tool kits.

Chapter 8 - Positive Messages

Business messages are divided into three content areas: positive messages, which deliver straightforward requests, replies, and goodwill; negative messages, which deliver refusals and bad news; persuasive messages, which include sales pitches. These business messages are exchanged in the form of e-mails, memos, or letters. Therefore, in this chapter, it will be discussed which channel is appropriate for the message and situation you face.

When should you use e-mails, memos, or letters?

When you need information from a team member in another office, you might send an e-mail.

E-mail is most appropriate for short messages, such as sharing ‘need to know” facts, setting up appointments, distributing documents, giving updates, requesting information, getting answers to specific questions, and documenting conversations when a paper trail is needed.

Business e-mails prioritize getting work done rather than interacting socially.

Although e-mail is popular, printed hard-copy memos still play a great role in the workplace. It is useful for important internal messaged which require a permanent record for formality, such as official policies, short reports, long internal documents, and important announcements.

Those are channels mostly used for internal. Then, how about positive messages delivered outside an organization? One important channel for external communication is business letters, as one of the most powerful and effective ways to get your message across.

In delivering positive messages, you can use direct pattern, which is directly stating requests, replies, and goodwill you want to convey.

Chapter 7 - Electronic Messages and Digital Media

Electronic messages and digital media are not unfamiliar things for us, especially when we live in business world. I believe that we have already known and understood electronic messages commonly used, such as electronic mail, instant messaging, text messaging, podcasts, blogs, wikis, and social networking (Facebook, MySpace, Classmates.com, and LinkedIn).

In this chapter, I will not discuss how to use those electronic messages. Instead, I will focus on pros and cons of instant messaging and text.

Everything certainly generates pros and cons, so do the use of instant messaging and text messaging. Some people state that it may be useful for business; while the others argue that it may be dangerous for business.

Here are some pros of instant messaging and text.

• Instant Messaging (IM) allows people to share information immediately and make decisions quickly.
• Texting can be a low-cost substitute for voice calls.
•  Messaging avoids phone tag and eliminates the downtime associated with personal telephone conversations.
• Both IM and text enable users to get answer quickly and allow multitasking.

Despite its popularity among workers, IM and text causes cons; Some organizations forbid employees t use them based on these several reasons:

• Organizations fear that privileged information and company records will be revealed through public instant messaging systems.
• Companies worry about phishing (fraudulent) schemes, viruses, malware (malicious software programs), and spim (IM spam).
• Companies fear that business track and store messaging conversations need to comply with legal requirement.

Electronic messages seem dangerous, aren’t they?

Suppose that the subject of instant and text messages you have sent are subject to discovery or disclosure. These can become evidence in lawsuit. What do you think?

The existence of electronic messages and digital media cannot be avoided. You just need to use electronic media professionally. Below are Dos and Don’ts of using electronic media professionally.

Dos: Know Workplace Policies and Avoid Private Use of Media at Work.

ü  Learn your company’s rules.

ü  Avoid or minimize sending personal e-mail, IM messages, or texts from work.

ü  Separate work and personal data.

Dos: Treat All Online Speech as Public and Protect Your Computer

ü  Be careful when blogging, tweeting, or posting in social networking sites.

ü  Keep your virus and malicious software protection current.

ü  Pick strong passwords and vary them.

ü  Keep sensitive information private.

Don’ts: Avoid Questionable Content, Personal Documents, and File Sharing

ü  Don’t send, download, print, or exhibit pornography, sexually explicit jokes, or inappropriate screen savers.

ü  Don’t open attachments sent by e-mail.

ü  Don’t download free software and utilities to company.

ü  Don’t store your music library and photos on a company machine, and don’t watch streaming videos.

ü  Don’t share files and avoid file-sharing servi[ces.

Chapter 6 - Revising Business Messages

Revising for conciseness

a.       Eliminating flabby expression

What does it mean by flabby expression?

Flabby expression is extra words that make your writing seems unclear, weak, rambling, and unstructured. It often contains overused words which seem meaningless to the reader.

It is required to eliminate the unnecessary words in order to make your writing reach a higher level. You need to make your message become concise. These examples show you how to change the flabby expressions into the concise ones.

Flabby	Concise
As a general rule	Generally
At a later date	Later
At this point in time	Now, presently
Despite the fact that	Although
Due to the fact that	Because

b.      Limiting Long Lead-Ins

This means you need to delete unnecessary introductory words.

For example:

Instead of saying “I am sending you this e-mail to announce that we have hired a new manager”, you can say “We have hired a new manager”.

I am sending you this e-mail to announce that we have hired a new manager

c.       Dropping unnecessary there is/ are and it is/ was fillers

d.      Rejecting Redundancies

Redundancies are expressions with repeating meaning or including unnecessary words (redundant. For example,  the word unexpected surprise can be changed into surprise because unexpected carries the same meaning as surprise. Here are the examples of redundant and concise words.

Redundant	Concise
Absolutely essential	Essential
Adequate enough	Adequate
Basic fundamentals	Fundamentals or basics
Big in size	Big
Combined together	Combined

e.      Purging empty words

Empty words and phrases: case, degree, the fact, factor, instance, nature and quality.

Because of the degree of active participation by our sales reps, profit soared.

It sounds better when we remove them.

Avoid saying the obvious.

If it comes, omit it.

This is to inform you that we have a toll-free service line

Clauses begin with that, which and who can often be shortened without loss of clarity.

All employees who are among those completing the course will be reimbursed.

Revising for clarity

a.       KISS

KISS stands for Keep It Short and Simple. KISS formula is using active-voice sentences that avoid indirect, pompous language. Here is the example.

Wordy and unclear	Improved
Employees haven’t been made sufficiently aware of the potentially adverse consequences regarding the use of  these perilous chemicals.	Warn your employees about these dangerous chemicals.

b.      Cliches and Slang

Cliches are expressions, words, and phrases which are overused. For example, you say “below the belt” instead of “last but least”.

Slang is informal words with changeable meanings. For example, you write “gr8” instead of “great”.

c.       Unburying Verbs

Buried Verb	Unburied Verb
Conduct a discussion of	Discuss
Create a reduction of	reduce
Give consideration to	consider
Make an assumption of	Assume

d.      Controlling Exuberance

Exuberance is commonly shown by using  very, definitely, quite, extremely, really, totally,etc. These may strengthen your meaning, but using them too much may seem unprofessional.

Excessive Exuberance	Businesslike
We totally agree that we actually did not really give his proposal a very fair trial.	We agree that we did not give his proposal a fair trial.

1. Designing Documents for Readability

a.       Employing white space

Use headings, bulleted numbers, effective margins, and Improve readibility and comprehension (shortening sentences & paragraphs) to increase the white space

b.      Understanding Margins and Text Alignment

Business letters or memos usually have side margins of 1 to 1 ½ inches.

c.       Choosing Appropriate Typefaces

Two most categories in business message are Serif typefaces whichh have small features at the end of strokes (e.g. Times New Roman, Century, Georgia and Palatino), and Sans serif typefaces which are clean and widely used for headings, signs and material that doesnt require continuous reading (e.g Arial, Calibri, Helvetica, Tahoma, Univers and Verdana)

For less formal message or decorative effects :

Happy, Creative script/ funny (Comic Sans, Brush script, Gigi, Jokerman, Kristen)

Assertive, Bold, Modern Display (Britannic Bold, Broadway, Elephant, Impact, showcard)

Plain Monospaced (Courier, Letter Gothic, Prestige Elite)

d.      Capitalizing on Type Fonts and Sizes

During revision process, you need to think about font style and size appropriately. Make it looks comfortable according to the necessity.

e.      Adding Headings for Visual Impact

By adding headings, you can improve readability, encourage the writer to group similar material together, and help busy readers to skim.

Chapter 5 - Organizing and Writing Business Messages

Guffey’s 3-x-3 Writing Process

Prewriting: analyze, anticipate, adapt

Writing: Research, organize, compose

Revising: revise, proofread, evaluate

Formal and Informal Research Methods

In formal research methods, you can access electronically, search manually, go to the source, investigate primary sources, and conduct scientific experiments. Meanwhile, in informal research methods, you look in the files, talk with your boss, interview the target audience, conduct an informal survey, brainstorming for ideas, and creating cluster diagrams.

Organizing Ideas Using Lists and Outlines

Lists and outlines are used to organize ideas. There are two outlining formats: format for alphanumeric outline, and format for decimal outline as you can see below.

Organizing Ideas into Patterns

You need to organize ideas into pattern in order to attract the attention of audience. When should one use direct pattern or indirect pattern? Direct pattern is used when the audience seem to be pleased, mildly interested, and neutral. In this case, you can directly go to the point.  How about the indirect pattern? You can use it when your audience look uninterested, displeased or hostile.

Direct Pattern for Receptive Audiences

Indirect Opening	Direct Opening
Our company has been concerned with attracting better –qualified prospective job candidates. For this reason, the Management Council has been gathering information about an internship program for college students. After considerable investigation, we have voted to begin a pilot program starting next fall.	The management Council has voted to begin a college internship pilot program next fall.

Do you see the difference? In indirect opening, explanation will be given to get the audience’s interest. However, in direct opening, a clear statement is straightly given.

There are some advantages of applying direct pattern and indirect pattern.

When you use direct pattern, you will:

    1.Save the reader’s time;

2. Set a proper frame of mind;
3. Reduce frustation.

When you use indirect pattern, you will:

    1.  Respect the feelings of the audience

2. Facilitate a fair hearing
3. Minimize a negative reaction

Coherence

In order to create coherence paragraphs, you need to sustain the key idea, dovetail sentence, use pronouns, and include transitional expression.