Your business communication is lacking. Here are 3 fixes.

Hot off the SMB press this week: 

• Improve your internal communication with this guidelines template.
• And three fixes for your business’ external communication issues.
• Here’s another way to utilize the power of images in your employee training.
• Plus, all the software tools your growing business needs.

STARTER PACK

Template of the week: Internal Communication Guidelines

True or false: Your company hires good, solid employees — they’re all responsible adults who communicate with other people on a daily basis. That means there’s no need for rules around internal communication. 

Bzzt bzzt! If you answered true, you have a lot of faith in your team. Which is important for any business leader! But, you need guidelines to ensure that every single person is adequately prepared for what’s all good — and what isn’t — communication-wise at the workplace. To protect your company and your people.

📣 So, don’t wait! Equip your employee training with this Internal Communication Guidelines template. Teach them about professional language, timeliness, confidentiality, and more!

‍Want more templates to help you build your business playbook? Check out our entire template archive of free, multimedia-enhanced, and customizable policy, process, and role starters. New to Trainual? Get a demo.

WAIT, WHAT?

Tips for improving communication and collaboration at your business

Tell us if you recognize any of these issues in your business:

• There’s inconsistency in your “scheduled” marketing content — weekly webinars come out monthly, if they come out at all, or you upload social media posts every so often as opposed to every day.
• Your messaging isn’t aligned with your products and services, delaying your marketing efforts and wasting your resources.
• Your communication fails to really show the hype behind your products and services. AKA, it’s just. Plain. Boring.

Better it comes from us now than you figuring it out the hard way later. 🤷 Because communication issues like the ones above aren’t unusual in business. But clearly, they’re not something to be proud of either. Good news: They can be fixed — here’s how:

1. Be purposeful with your communication plan to customers. No need to overcomplicate it — what do people need to know? What’s the best way to communicate that? And how frequently are you going to communicate?
2. Train good communicators. Good external communication starts with good internal communication. Employee training and communication guidelines (see above!) can set your team in the right direction.‍
3. Use the right tools. Your attempts at communication are only as effective as the tools you use. Whether that’s communicating with customers, bridging the gap from employee to employee, or training your team on everything they need to know to do their jobs effectively, choosing the best software and platforms is crucial.

TRAINUAL TIPS & TRICKS

Add some flair to your training with topic cover photos

You’ve always been able to spice up your training material with things like photos, GIFs, and videos — but we’re bringing you one more way to make training absolutely gorgeous: topic cover photos.

Cover photos are like book covers for the topics in your content. They stay visible at the top of the page as your team navigates through the topic and learns.

Just hover over any topic title and click “Add cover photo.” After uploading your image, you can reposition it as needed.

🔥 Tip: The best photo size for the cover photo space is 720px wide x 200px high.

👉 See cover photos in action on Trainual Tips & Tricks.

FAB FIVE

Your growing business needs these 5 tools. 

As your business grows and evolves, you’ll reach a point where you just can’t do business operations on paper anymore. And you’ll gravitate towards these four tools:

Check x 4. Now how do I teach my team how to use these systems?
That’s where software #5 comes in: Trainual. The one source of truth for how and why you use all of your other systems. Here are some examples of how they work together:

• Trainual and HRISs. Give your employees an HRIS to sign up for benefits. Use Trainual to teach your team things like what medical insurance options you offer and what the heck coinsurance is. 
• Trainual and CRMs. Head to your CRM to collect customer contact information. Head to Trainual to find out how to actually sell to and care for your customers when you get them on the phone.
• Trainual and project management systems. Remind yourself to submit quarterly reviews for your team using your project management system. Remind yourself how to submit those reviews using Trainual.
• Trainual and performance management systems. Outline who’s in charge of what using Trainual. Then, set goals for your employees based on those responsibilities using your performance management system. 

👉 Learn more about how Trainual works with these systems.