ASSIGNMENT No. 2
- Write a persuasive message to potential clients, marketing your latest Refrigerators.
A persuasive message is the central message that intrigues, informs, convinces, or calls to action. Persuasive messages are often discussed in terms of reason versus emotion. Every message has elements of ethos, or credibility; pathos, or passion and enthusiasm; and logos, or logic and reason. If your persuasive message focuses exclusively on reason with cold, hard facts and nothing but the facts, you may or may not appeal to your audience. People make decisions on emotion as well as reason, and even if they have researched all the relevant facts, the decision may still come down to impulse, emotion, and desire. On the other hand, if your persuasive message focuses exclusively on emotion, with little or no substance, it may not be taken seriously. Finally, if your persuasive message does not appear to have credibility, the message may be dismissed entirely.
In general, appeals to emotion pique curiosity and get our attention, but some attention to reason and facts should also be included. That doesn’t mean we need to spell out the technical manual on the product on the opening sale message, but basic information about design or features, in specific, concrete ways can help an audience make sense of your message and the product or service. Avoid using too many abstract terms or references, as not everyone will understand these. You want your persuasive message to do the work, not the audience.
Your product or service may sell itself, but you may want to consider using some strategies to help ensure your success:
- Start with your greatest benefit. Use it in the headline, subject line, caption, or attention statement. Audiences tend to remember the information from the beginning and end of a message, but have less recall about the middle points. Make your first step count by highlighting the best feature first.
- Take baby steps. Promote, inform, and persuade on one product or service at a time. You want to hear “yes,” and if you confuse the audience with too much information, too many options, steps to consider, or related products or service, you are more likely to hear “no” as a defensive response as the audience tries not to make a mistake. Avoid confusion and keep it simple.
- Know your audience. The more background research you can do on your audience, the better you can anticipate their specific wants and needs and tailor your persuasive message to meet them.
- Lead with emotion, and follow with reason. Gain the audience’s attention with drama, humour, or novelty and follow with specific facts that establish your credibility, provide more information about the product or service, and lead to your call to action.
TO: (Potential Customer)
From: PEL Refrigerator
Subject: New Promotion (Gas Refrigerator)
Dear:
We noticed it has been over 3 year since you last purchased of refrigerator. This is friendly reminder that when you change of your refrigerator, I had like to offer you Rs. 5000 off on new refrigerator change this month. Please email, call and we will help you.
Sincerely,
PEL Refrigerator, Manager
Bahawalpur
- The famous Footwear Center who has their main sales depot at their factory in Kashmir highway, Islamabad, decided to shift their office to Commercial Market, Rawalpindi. Draft a circular announcing the change.
Famous Footwear Center
Commercial Market, Rawalpindi
Ref: Circular/2022/21st July, 2022, Date…….
Dear Valued Customer
Owing to the parking problem faced by our valued customers, it has been decided to close down the Kashmir highway, Islamabad branch from 15th August and open two new branches at the following locations, keeping in view the long standing demands of our customers of these areas,
Branches opening on 15th August at:
- Commercial Market, Rawalpindi
You will find more variety and comfortable shopping at this branch, with fully air-conditioned showroom and facility of customer’s lounge of rest and recuperation.
An inaugural discount of 10% is being offered only for three days. We expect your valuable support as earlier.
Customer satisfaction is our prime motto.
Famous Footwear Center
Commercial Market, Rawalpindi
Q.3 Describe the steps to produce an effective communication messages.
Effective communication is a good business and very essential for the success of an organization. Communication takes place when one person transfers information and understanding to another person. An effective communication is one which is followed by the receiver of the message and his reaction or response is known to the sender. It is a two-way process. It may not be possible to achieve perfect communication.
The following steps may be taken to minimize barriers to communication and making it more effective:
1. Clarity and Completeness:
In order to communicate effectively, it is very essential to know the ‘audience’ for whom the message is meant. The message to be conveyed must be absolutely clear in the mind of the communicator because if you do not understand an idea, you can never express it to someone. The message should be adequate and appropriate to the purpose of communication. The purpose of communication, itself, should be clearly defined.
2. Proper Language:
To avoid semantic barriers, the message should be expressed in simple, brief and clear language. The words or symbols selected for conveying the message must be appropriate to the reference and understanding of the receiver.
3. Sound Organization Structure:
To make communication effective, the organizational structure must be sound and appropriate to the needs of the organization. Attempt must be made to shorten the distances to be travelled for conveying information.
4. Orientation of Employees:
The employees should be oriented to understand the objectives, rules, policies, authority relationships and operations of enterprise. It will help to understand each other, minimize conflicts and distortion of messages.
5. Emphatic Listening and Avoid Premature Evaluation:
To communicate effectively, one should be a good listener. Superiors should develop the habit of patient listening and avoid premature evaluation of communication from their subordinates. This will encourage free flow of upward communication.
6. Motivation and Mutual Confidence:
The message to be communicated should be so designed as to motivate the receiver to influence his behaviour to take the desired action. A sense of mutual trust and confidence must be generated to promote free flow of information.
7. Consistent Behavior:
To avoid credibility gap. Management must ensure that their actions and deeds are in accordance with their communication.
8. Use of Grapevine:
Grapevine or the informal channels of communication help to improve managerial decisions and make communication more effective. Thus, formal channels of communication must be supplemented with the use of grapevine.
9. Feedback:
Communication is not complete unless the response or reaction of the receiver of the message is obtained by the communicator. The effectiveness of communication can be judged from the feedback. Therefore, feedback must be encouraged and analyzed.
10. Gestures and Tone:
The way you say something is also very important along with the message for gestures such as a twinkle of an eye, a smile or a handshake, etc., convey sometimes more meaning than even words spoken or written. Thus, one should have appropriate facial expression, tone, gestures and mood, etc. to make communication effective.
Establish trust among teammates
To build effective communication in a team, you’ll need to build trust in that team.
After all, teammates who trust each other communicate more.
And, teams who communicate more, have a better chance of solving issues faster, making decisions easier, avoiding conflicts, and exploring their creativity.
To establish trust among teammates, you’ll need to:
- Be transparent — you can achieve this by:
- Being accountable with your responsibilities;
- Providing and accepting feedback on a regular basis;
- Asking for task/project expectations upfront.
- Be respectful — you can achieve this by:
- Respecting your teammates’ time;
- Respecting your teammates’ ideas, even when they don’t align with your knowledge, experience, or expectations;
- Respecting your teammates’ opinions, even when they are different from your own.
- Be united — you can achieve this by:
- Not shunning members of the team;
- Avoiding negative gossip altogether;
- Helping when asked;
- Asking for help when you need it.
- Value teammates — you can achieve this by:
- Learning more about their likes, dislikes, and preferred workflows;
- Providing praise when and where due.
- Actively build team trust, by practicing appropriate trust-building activities, such as:
- Blind square — a trust-building game where a blindfolded group of people needs to form a rope into a square by collaborating;
- Back-to-back drawing — a trust-building game where two people sit back-to-back and provide each other with instructions on how to draw abstract shapes they’re tasked with;
- Night trail — a trust-building game where a group of blindfolded people holds on a rope and needs to navigate an obstacle course together;
- Minefield — a trust-building game where the first teammate is blindfolded, while the second teammate needs to verbally navigate the first teammate across an open space filled with obstacles.
Manage communication barriers
Communication barriers come in various forms — we typically recognize physical, perceptual, emotional, cultural, language, gender, and interpersonal barriers to effective communication.
Each of the listed barriers may manifest in different ways:
- Physical barriers. They represent the environmental conditions that disrupt the communication process. They may manifest as an abundance of physically separate offices that make it difficult for people to interact when they want to.
- Perceptual barriers. They represent people’s perceptions that stop them from assessing a person, topic, or piece of information in the ways they were intended. They may manifest as skewed perceptions about someone’s knowledge/experience.
- Emotional barriers. They represent the emotions that obstruct effective communication. They may manifest as conflicts caused by anger, anxiety, or pride.
- Cultural barriers. They represent culture-based differences between communicators that trigger misinterpretations of other people’s messages. They may manifest as misunderstandings caused by culture-based norms and customs.
- Language barriers. They represent words, phrases, pronunciation, and grammar whose use can confuse the people we are communicating with. They may manifest as the overuse of jargon and slang.
- Gender barriers. They represent stereotypes, prejudices, and biases that influence how we view and communicate with people of different genders. They may manifest as gender-based misconceptions about someone’s communication habits.
- Interpersonal barriers. They represent interpersonal difficulties that stop people from reaching their full potential in terms of communication skills. They may manifest as someone’s lack of a desire to participate in conversations.
To manage communication barriers, you’ll need to:
- Identify the communication barriers you are facing — once you do, it will be easier to tackle them;
- Learn about different cultural norms and customs, as well as cultural differences in terms of verbal and nonverbal language use — once you do, you’ll decrease the chances of misunderstandings and confusion;
- Identify your assumptions, stereotypes, biases, and prejudices — once you do, you’ll be able to work on overcoming them;
- Pick an appropriate official team language — in case the members of the team have different mother tongues.
According to the often-quoted, popular piece of statistics, 93% of communication is nonverbal — but, this number has also been heavily disputed by experts and proven to be a misinterpreted version of the findings from the original study by Albert Mehrabian, a famous psychologist.
Regardless of its actual percentage use, nonverbal communication is still an important element of many communication processes. Moreover, it’s a form of communication we often overlook. This is tied to the fact that it is often not the dominant form of communication — it usually accompanies in-person verbal communication.
Namely, we may use facial expressions, gestures, and body movements to underline our words.
But, our body language can also communicate messages we do not wish to convey. Alternatively, our facial expressions, gestures, and body movements may also be unintentionally misleading — or simply misinterpreted by others, just like the above-mentioned piece of statistics.
Because of all this, nonverbal communication sometimes represents perceptual barriers to effective communication. For example, when someone’s idea of what our raised eyebrows mean gets in the way of what we are really trying to communicate.
Moreover, nonverbal communication may sometimes also represent cultural barriers to effective communication. For example, when the person we are communicating with interprets our nonverbal language in accordance with their own cultural norms — which do not align with what we are trying to convey.
Proper nonverbal communication is an important step towards effective team communication — and you’ll need to make the effort to properly convey and interpret nonverbal language.
How to manage nonverbal communication
To manage nonverbal communication, you’ll need to:
- Learn how to use nonverbal communication to your advantage:
- Read the room and act accordingly — don’t smile when the message is serious, or frown when engaging in casual chats with colleagues;
- Maintain frequent eye contact with the people you are communicating with;
- Introduce yourself with a firm handshake;
- Don’t fold your arms — you’ll avoid looking defensive;
- Adjust your voice to a pleasant and comfortable volume;
- Avoid too much gesticulation — you’ll lessen the chances that you’ll convey something you don’t want.
Q.4 What is meant by Business Ethics? What care would be taken to prevent litigation in this regard?
Business ethics is the study of appropriate business policies and practices regarding potentially controversial subjects including corporate governance, insider trading, bribery, discrimination, corporate social responsibility, and fiduciary responsibilities. The law often guides business ethics, but at other times business ethics provide a basic guideline that businesses can choose to follow to gain public approval. Business ethics ensure that a certain basic level of trust exists between consumers and various forms of market participants with businesses. For example, a portfolio manager must give the same consideration to the portfolios of family members and small individual investors. These kinds of practices ensure the public receives fair treatment.
The concept of business ethics began in the 1960s as corporations became more aware of a rising consumer-based society that showed concerns regarding the environment, social causes, and corporate responsibility. The increased focus on “social issues” was a hallmark of the decade.
To understand the gap between business ethics and the concerns of most managers, it pays to recall how managers and management academics thought about business ethics before it became a formal discipline. Indeed, much of the research and writing in contemporary business ethics can be understood as a disgruntled reaction to the way ethical issues usually were addressed at business schools—in particular, to the traditional answers to the fundamental question: Why should managers be ethical?
Starting well before World War II and culminating in the 1960s and 1970s, the dominant approach to the moral dimension of business was a perspective that came to be known as corporate social responsibility. Largely reacting to neoclassical economics, which holds that the sole responsibility of business is to maximize its immediate bottom line subject to only the most minimal constraints of the law, advocates of corporate social responsibility argued that ethical management requires more than merely following the dictates of the law or signals of the market, the two institutions that otherwise guide business behavior. Rather, ethical management is a process of anticipating both the law and the market—and for sound business reasons.
For example, when managers voluntarily undertake socially responsible actions beyond the bare legal minimum required (in environmental protection, say, or antidiscrimination policy), they tend to forestall punitive social regulation. As corporate scholar E. Merrick Dodd, Jr. stated in a 1932 Harvard Law Review article, the purpose of ethical management is “to catch any new spirit” and embody it in voluntary standards “without waiting for legal compulsion.” Or as Berkeley professor Edwin Epstein more recently and succinctly put it, “being ethical heads off the law.”
Some competitors’ advertisements tout high-fiber cereals that have the potential to reduce the risk of some types of cancer. The cereal company in question wants to gain more market share, but the marketing department cannot make dubious health claims on cereal boxes without the risk of litigation and fines. Even though competitors with larger market shares of the cereal industry use shady labeling practices, that doesn’t mean every manufacturer should engage in unethical behavior.
For another example, consider the matter of quality control for a company that manufactures electronic components for computer servers. These components must ship on time, or the manufacturer of the parts risks losing a lucrative contract. The quality-control department discovers a possible defect, and every component in one shipment faces checks.
Unfortunately, the checks may take too long, and the window for on-time shipping could pass, which could delay the customer’s product release. The quality-control department can ship the parts, hoping that not all of them are defective, or delay the shipment and test everything. If the parts are defective, the company that buys the components might face a firestorm of consumer backlash, which may lead the customer to seek a more reliable supplier.
When it comes to preventing unethical behavior and repairing its negative side effects, companies often look to managers and employees to report any incidences they observe or experience. However, barriers within the company culture itself (such as fear of retaliation for reporting misconduct) can prevent this from happening. Business ethicists have two basic problems with the enlightened self-interest answer to the question of why managers should be ethical. First, they disagree that ethical behavior is always in a company’s best interest, however enlightened. “There are no vanilla solutions,” writes Bentley College ethicist W. Michael Hoffman in his article, “The Cost of a Corporate Conscience.” “To behave ethically can cost dearly.” In other words, ethics and interests can and do conflict.
Second, they object that even when “doing good” is in the company’s best interest, acts motivated by such self-interest really can’t be ethical. Moral philosophy tends to value altruism, the idea that an individual should do good because it is right or will benefit others, not because the individual will benefit from it. For many business ethicists, motivation can be either altruistic or self-interested, but not both. A participant in a symposium called “Do Good Ethics Ensure Good Profits?” (recently sponsored by Business and Society Review) put it as follows: “To be ethical as a business because it may increase your profits is to do so for entirely the wrong reason. The ethical business must be ethical because it wants to be ethical.” In other words, business ethics means acting within business for nonbusiness reasons.
Indeed, fear of retaliation is one of the major reasons employees cite for not reporting unethical behavior in the workplace. ECI says companies should work toward improving their corporate culture by reinforcing the idea that reporting suspected misconduct is beneficial to the company and acknowledging and rewarding the employee’s courage for making the report. Business ethics concerns ethical dilemmas or controversial issues faced by a company. Often, business ethics involve a system of practices and procedures that help build trust with the consumer. On one level, some business ethics are embedded in the law, such as minimum wage, insider trading restrictions, and environmental regulations. On the other hand, business ethics can be influenced by management behavior, with wide-ranging effects across the company.
Consider an employee who is told in a meeting that the company will face an earnings shortfall for the quarter. This employee also owns shares in the firm. It would be unethical for the employee to sell their shares since they would be subject to insider information. Alternatively, if two large competitors came together to gain an unfair advantage, such as controlling prices in a given market, this would raise serious ethical concerns.
Business ethics are important because they have lasting implications on several levels. With increased investor awareness on environmental, social, and governance issues, a company’s reputation is at stake. For instance, if a company partakes in unethical practices, such as poor customer privacy procedures and protections, it could result in a data breach. This, in turn, may lead to a significant loss of customers, erosion of trust, less competitive hires, and share price declines.
Q.5 Discuss the characteristics of business reports.
Reports are important in modern communications. Thousands of reports—formal or informal, special or routine—are written every day.
A foreman reports to the manager the progress of the work, a manager report to the general manager, and the Board of Directors report to the shareholders.
Characteristics of a Good Report:
Reports Need a Clearly Defined Purpose
The purpose of a report should be clear to the reader from the beginning. The purpose should be stated in the title of the report if possible and included in the introduction. Identify whether the intent is to persuade the reader to do something. It should also be clearly noted whether past information or future predictions will be provided as evidence to support the points of the report. These are distinguishing qualities of good reports.
Features of a Business Report
Business reports come in all shapes and sizes and when considering the features of business reports, you should be structuring the report in a way that best conveys the information. One feature that almost all reports share, however, is an executive summary. The executive summary section on a business report is typically a single page that outlines the key points contained within the full report. The summary is essentially an overview that acts as a reference for readers by offering the key takeaways. Writing the executive summary can happen before the report or after the report is completed, but you may find it easier to write this section last so you can p In a similar vein, be aware that a business report can vary in length from one page to a massive document containing multiple chapters. All readers may not be looking for the same information, so it’s helpful to include a table of contents for all except the briefest reports. This page includes all the main sections of the report and the page numbers where the information can be found. This allows a reader to flip right to the information he needs, without having to search through the entire report.
Easy to Understand
A good business report should be easily understandable, so it can hold the attention of the audience. Before you begin to write, consider the audience. If it consists of people with a great deal of experience in the industry, it’s fine to use complex terminology and provide detailed information. However, if the audience doesn’t have much experience in the industry, the report must be written in simple, straightforward manner, providing definitions for any industry terminology used.
For example, a report written for shareholders who are focused on financials rather than technical specifics should cater to that crowd. A blended style report is also possible and it will satisfy everyone with an interest in the business. Some reports are actually written for an outside audience to draw attention to the business while others are strictly insider information.
Accurate and Neutral Facts
It’s essential that facts provided in the report are accurate, as the information is used to prove points and draw conclusions. Any inaccurate facts will skew results and could cause the company to make an ill-advised business decision.
Clear and Concise Presentation
Including filler content distracts from the point at hand and wastes the reader’s time. The report should be written in a concise manner, using a minimum amount of words to make a clear point. This is not to say that a long report cannot be effective, it simply means it’s important to avoid including unnecessary information.
Relevancy
The facts presented in a report should not be only accurate but also be relevant. Irrelevant facts make a report confusing and likely to be misleading to make a proper decision.
- Reader-Orientation
While drafting any report, it is necessary to keep in mind about the person who is going to read it. That’s why a good report is always reader oriented. Reader’s knowledge and level of understanding should be considered by the writer of the report. Well, reader-oriented information qualifies a report to be a good one.
- Simple Language
Simplicity is the best for anything. It is just another essential feature of a good report. A good report is written in simple language avoiding vague and unclear words. The language of the report should not be influenced by the writer’s emotion or goal. The message of a good report should be self-explanatory. A good reporter should be careful of using simple sentences instead of using a complex sentence in the narration of facts.
Grammatical Accuracy
A good report is free from errors. Any faulty construction of a sentence may make its meaning different to the reader’s mind. And sometimes it may become confusing or ambiguous. If a report is not accurate grammatically, then it will lost its usefulness to its users. So, while writing a report, a reporter should keep in head about the grammatical accuracy of his writing.
- Unbiased Recommendation
Recommendation on report usually make effect on the reader mind. So if recommendations are made at the end of a report, they must be impartial and objective. They should come as logical conclusion for investigation and analysis. A reporter should try to use universal and proven truth in his report rather than using the concept which is not yet established or completed.