Elements of Business Communication

About the Book

The Elements of Business Communication (How to Get Along Until You Hire Specialists) is a practical handbook for generalists in business who must take practical action on a hundred daily communications tasks. Most companies are started by sales people, engineers, or other professionals with particular skills, who find themselves handling all sorts of work outside their own areas of expertise. In the months or years before they can bring in specialists to handle the different kinds of work, they must learn the ropes themselves, and do the best they can.

This small handbook, by a writer who has lived through the process repeatedly, deals with practical matters from managing ad campaigns to selecting letterhead, and deciding how to cope with a newspaper story attacking the company. This book does not tell you how to write an ad or a press release, but tells you why you might want to, lets you know what to expect when you do it, suggests who can help, under what circumstances. It points out the opportunities and pitfalls in phone systems, intranets, websites, trade shows, and many other matters in which the company will be involved.

The book presents and discusses "A Checklist of Basic Points To Consider" when starting any communications project, so the puzzled generalist has a familiar place to start on every task. Use of the checklist is demonstrated in several chapters.

Subtitled How To Get Along Until You Hire Specialists, the book's thirty-seven brief chapters answer questions like - How big is a BIG mailing? It points out non-obvious hazards, such as -Your ad agency may also become your banker, and neither of you will like it. It gives advice that aids survival in big matters - Never fail to distinguish between entering an existing market from creating a new market...and small - Before you distribute the business cards, make sure they are not cut cockeyed. On every page, the plain language and pointed examples are entertaining and informative.

About the Author

Nelson Winkless has been a commercial writer and consultant in just about every aspect of business communications, and an executive in a number of companies. Based since 1970 in New Mexico he was a pioneer magazine editor in the personal computing field, has published several books with Harper's Magazine Press, The Robotics Press, and Dilithium Press, and has been a speaker internationally on such topics as changing climate, machine intelligence, and innovation.