Before discussing the benefits of oral communication, shall I tell you some interesting facts?
Do you know over one trillion dollars are spent annually on sales forces?
Why not? Sales are such a crucial element of any business that can make it or break it. Any company’s performance is analyzed solely based on its sales performance. Undoubtedly, sales have a lot to do for any business success or failure.
I know you are not here to learn about stocks and sales. I am very well aware that the title of this article is “12 Striking Advantages of Oral Communication”, and its context should be about communication, not investment.
My intention of bringing these points is to help you realize the importance of oral communication. In any selling process, Oral communication skills are used extensively by any salesman. He first convinces his prospect that he is missing an opportunity. Introduce his product as the one-stop solution that solves his problem. Creates scarcity through his limited-time offers and finally makes a sale.
Guess you agree with me that oral communication is an important skill to be mastered by any individual. Now let’s find out what are the other benefits of Oral communication.
Benefits of Oral Communication
Below are the benefits of Oral Communication
1) Time Saving
2) Economical
3) Personal Touch
4) Flexibility
5) Instant Feedback
6) Secrecy
7) Coverage of Audience
8) Effectiveness
9) Persuasive Power
10) Reliability
Time-Saving
Take an instance where you boarded a flight to Goa for an exotic vacation. You went to the check-in counter and presented your e-ticket to get the boarding pass. The boarding staff glares at your e-ticket and her computer screen. With a surprise expression, she congratulates you for winning a lucky draw and promotes you to business class.
Overjoyed and excited, you handed over the boarding pass to the flight attendant standing at the entrance. Another attendant assists you personally to your allotted seat in the business class. Further, she hands over a glass of champing as a compliment.
Enjoying the luxury, you are about to have your first sip and see the person on your side. Your jaw drops with an utter shock. Your companion on the journey is Mr.” X”. Wait! Who is Mr. “X”? Yes, he is the person whom you were dying to meet or dreamt of meeting at least once in your lifetime. Now, what would you do?
I am sure you would not be writing mail or planning a meeting. Having good oral communication skills, you would initiate a conversation, establish some connection instantly to build a strong relationship.
Getting an unexpected opportunity could happen once in a while but, utilizing an opportunity could save a lot of your time.
Economical
The unnoticed benefit among all the benefits of the oral communication. You do not need any presentation to express yourself. If you know how to hook anybody with your words, the conversation itself is sustainable and economical. You need not spend a penny to speak.
Personal Touch
Let’s say you have fallen for a girl or boy and decided to propose to her or him. Would you prefer to write a letter about your feelings or would you express yourself looking at her eyes and holding her hand?
I am sure you prefer the second option, as there is a greater chance of accepting your proposal. So, what difference did you feel in both the situations? It is the personal touch.
When you choose verbal communication to express yourself, you could easily add some personal touch to it without much effort.
Flexibility
Let us assume you are giving an exam. You have written all the answers in time and submitted the sheet to your examiner. Happy with your performance, you stepped out of the examination hall and paused. You realized that you wrote the wrong answer to a particular question.
Is it possible to take your answer sheet from the examiner and correct your answer? To correct ourselves or represent our words is known as flexibility.
You do not have the flexibility to correct yourself once you submit your written argument. However, you always have the flexibility to rephrase when you speak.
Instant Feedback
Flexibility is dependent on feedback. If we do not get feedback from our listeners on what we speak, we cannot rephrase ourselves to make our thoughts more presentable.
Feedback need not always be direct. If we notice our audience’s reaction, we can make out our speech. A Q&A session at the end of a presentation is a source to take feedback from the audience. In verbal communication, we can get it instantly.
Secrecy
Have you watched any secret service-based movies like James Bond 007 or Mission Impossible series? All the agents have to authenticate themself first with a secret code, the fastest mode of authentication.
Even when you want to share some secret with your friends or trustworthy people, I am sure you would like to tell them personally(ensuring no one is listening to you in your surroundings).
In oral communication, you can easily maintain secrecy while keeping an eye on your surroundings. Isn’t this one more unnoticed benefit among all the benefits of oral communication.
Coverage of Audience
To communicate any message, we need two parties, one who informs and the other who listens. Familiarity with the mode of communication is also a requirement to establish successful communication.
If the informer informs a message through written format and the receiver is found to be illiterate, who cannot read or write, then you cannot communicate.
However, if the informer informs a message through verbal or oral format, even an illiterate person can understand the message. If an illiterate person understands a language, any person can communicate his message to him.
Effectiveness
A manager in a corporate environment spends 50 to 60 percent of their time in meetings. Have you wondered why?
They have to keep track of the requirements and planning with the stakeholders and convey that information to their team.
All stakeholders attend the meeting to give instant feedback that helps them come up with a decision quickly. The effectiveness of oral communication keeps things moving.
Persuasive Power
There is no better tool than oral communication when it comes to persuasion. Have you ever tried convincing any of your loved ones through emails or letters only? Probably not, at least in my case.
You could persuade anyone successfully with the appropriate use of oral communication skills combined with a personal touch and instant feedback.
Reliability
If you are an outlook user, have you noticed an option “Read Receipt”? This option is for getting acknowledgment from the recipient that he read the mail. With email or with any written format, you are not sure your recipient has received your message.
However, in oral communication based on instant feedback, you always get acknowledged that your message is well received. One can blindly rely on Oral communication.
Summary
Now, we have reached the end of this article. I hope you agree with these “12 striking benefits of oral communication” we discussed so far. If you want to know more about oral communication, I recommend you to read my article “What is oral communication? Why is it given such importance?”
PS: In the meantime, if you are working in a corporate organization, you will be glad to know that we have a separate section for corporate communication itself. If you wish to find out more about corporate communication, I would recommend reading this blog post to begin: “https://englishtalktutor.com/what-is-corporate-communication/“