In the current business ecology of hyper-competitive and commoditised service or product value feature offerings, saturated communications in an attention deficit globalised marketplace, compounded by infinite verticalised yet siloed customer asks, a paradigm shift is mandatory in the way businesses manage their communication channels and challenges so as to raise the bar on securing scant customer attention; and in turn secure better opportunities to deliver win-win results to all stakeholders across multidemographic sectors.

In other words: isn't it about time businesses cut the crap and start having genuine conversations with people?

We are not trained to listen.

We are trained to tell others stuff. We have to speak up, make ourselves heard. So everyone is talking. But no one is listening.

Conventional business training, marketing and advertising all emphasises telling over listening. How to compose, focus, and target your pieces; so as to penetrate, cut-through, drown out the competition. Certainly a few minutes in front of a TV will clearly illustrate the continued belief that louder is better.

The advertising and PR industries are very powerful. Many of them continue to push the idea that "perception is the ONLY truth". And that managing perceptions, telling people what they should believe about you, is the main thing you need to do to get the right perception out there.

The problem is, people do form their own opinions, eventually. As soon as they start interacting with a business, the PR spins will be revealed as lies. And it is incredibly hard to recover from that position.

Want to differentiate your business? How about starting to listen more than you talk? Given that most of your competitors are out there shouting each other down, you as the quiet one who listens will suddenly stand out!

Listening is a skill that can be learnt. I learnt from friends with social work training, and also by doing courses in counselling skills.

The three truths:

• Everyone wants to be heard.
• Everyone wants to be acknowledged.
• Everyone wants to feel valued.

Listen. Speak from your customers' side of the table. It is about them.
Feel their needs and pains. There is no other way to truly understand. Show you understand. You can only help if you understand.

Don't go on and on about you.
We have one mouth, and two ears. This should be the baseline ratio of the number of "about you" vs "about them" messages across all your communications.
"More about them" is good. "More about you" needs careful justification.

Really get to know your customers. Do you know what drives them?
Identify commonalities between you and them. You want to be on their side, and get their side, where at all possible.
Mirror their language, tone and look; genuinely.

Acknowledge all input and feedback; the positive and not so positive ones.
Your ego is less important than listening.
Respond to feedback; even if this means telling them you disagree or will not be doing anything in response to their feedback.

Just because you hear and understand their point of view does not mean you agree with it. If you disagree, acknowledge their input anyway; then say why you disagree.
Empathy is a useful and difficult skill to learn.
If you make a mistake, acknowledge that and take steps to fix it.

Beware the use of spin and padded truths. "PR" can often be a bad word.
Always do what you promise to. Talk is easy. Many talk well but can't do.
Get very clear about your intention behind each communication.

There are many different approaches to writing business communications for different situations and media. And they all have useful points to add to the conversation.

What I have noticed is that corporate-speak is going out of fashion. Increasingly, we want to read stuff that sounds real. We don't want lines of text that sounds cool but is essentially meaningless gibberish. Many years ago, corporate-speak may well have been the way to appear "professional". Now, it just seem to convey a sense of insecurity.

The most important lesson I have learnt about writing is this: Picture the person (a typical representative of your target audience) you are speaking to sitting there in front of you. Now write as if you were speaking to this person.

Simple, powerful and mighty effective.