I've been thinking a little about how we've been geting our message across - what methods we've been using to complete tasks in the Diploma which involve communicating with others.
This is a pretty broad topic - Units 2 and 3 have involved a lot of communication – whether presenting a plan of action at the Purley Cross centre, or pitching a sponsorship offer to Barclays, we’ve needed to hone our skills, and research the different methods available to us. The main formats of communication we’ve used are:
Spoken Media
- Face-to-face meetings / pitches, a two-way form of communication, for example, presenting at the Purley Cross centre
- Phone calls, another two-way communication method, enabling real time communication across long distances, for example, contacting John Lewis’s head office in London.
- Voiceovers on videos, a one-way communication method, used when creating a trailer for the Diploma in IT as part of unit 3.
Written Media
- Email / post. We used email often in the later stages of sales in unit 3.
- Titles / subtitles on video, used often when creating trailers for the Diploma in IT.
- Flyers / promotional texts. We each created a flyer at the start of the project, and my finalised flyer was presented at every pitch, and made available digitally (over the web).
Going out into Croydon, we put to use our face-to-face communication skills, attempting to pitch the possibility of attending or otherwise supporting the quiz to various businesses, including shops and banks. I believe we all performed well during pitches, coming across as professional and well organised. We all made contributions during pitches, occasionally swapping roles. For example, when pitching to the manager of Nationwide, asking for a table from the staff and any possible support from the main office of the Bank, I made a short, to-the-point introduction, explaining where we were from, what we were doing and what we wanted from the Bank, while Tevin backed me up, going into more detail on the quiz and our objectives, talking about the raffle and auction at the event, and the high-quality prizes on offer. The manager was so impressed that he offered us jobs at the Bank. When attempting to pitch to Allders, we swapped roles, with Tevin attempting the introduction. While I feel we performed well during pitches, this ultimately didn’t lead to any sales for our team. Looking back, I feel this is due to a failure to obtain adequate contact information for those we spoke to, and the fact we were too focused on finding new leads (and not following up old ones). We also had difficulty finding the right people to pitch to – managers were often difficult to get hold of, or not present at the store at all. When this happened, we tried talking to shop floor staff, who sometimes expressed interest, but couldn’t afford the high price of the Quiz. It was at this point that we realised face-to-face meetings were, in this case, somewhat inappropriate. If we had pre-arranged appointments, and done more research on which businesses to approach, perhaps we would have seen more success.
When we discovered the downside of face-to-face meetings, we began additional research on various businesses around Croydon, but also across the country in general. We found that we could often obtain good contact information from corporate websites, and decided that calling or emailing the companies would be a good way to open a dialog. We had found during our face-to-face meetings that contacting the head offices as directly as possible would provide a better response. With this in mind, we attempted to contact a number of companies through customer service email addresses, telephone numbers, and, when available, direct email addresses of executives. However, once again, this provided no real leads, and we often received no reply or acknowledgement for the emails we sent out. This may be down the the volume of mail large companies receive through these addresses, or perhaps the style of writing (I don’t believe the sample email provided to us for use was appropriate for opening a dialog). Whilst calling companies, we had the problem of being ‘shunned’, where the person on the other end was able to simply cut off the conversation and hang up. This was never really a problem when talking face-to-face, as the other person essentially has no choice but to listen.
The difficulty in securing sales was eventually solved by approaching more familiar faces; I gained a table and a number of donations by calling and emailing family and friends across the country. I also accepted what many had been telling us – that the price was too high for most members of the public. I therefore offered a lower price where appropriate, and was able to gain more places at the family table.
So, selling was difficult, and tested many of the formats that one would think of when “communication” is mentioned. But how else did we communicate our message? We’ve also created videos and other media during the course, and each of these is an example of communications media.
My flyer is an excellent example of this. Out of the class, my design was chosen, and there’s a reason – it looked professional, with a subtle, modern design (no glaring bright colours), and while it may not be as eye-catching as some of the other designs, the way it is meant to be presented (send by email or shown in-person during a pitch) means that this isn’t a problem. Potential customers were consistently impressed with the design, and I believe that having something to show them really helped our confidence during face-to-face meetings.
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