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.
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.