It has been cited that verbal communication is 10% what you say 
and 90% how you say it. In today's technology driven world, you 
would not know that though. Today, people across the world have 
become so dependent upon non-verbal methods of communication that 
the verbal communication methods have been falling by the 
wayside. 

Take a look at the popularity of text messaging and emails. These 
written communications often leave much to the imagination and 
create a great deal of confusion for those who are attempting to 
communicate with each other. When trying to communicate the 
importance of a message to another human being, the reader can 
lose the intent or the real meaning of the message. 

At particular risk for misinterpretation are those important 
messages that are sent at times of high emotion. The tone, 
inflection, and the stress placed on individual words can be lost 
when using only the written word. This could be disastrous when 
trying to tell a loved one your feelings or when trying to close 
an important business deal. People often misinterpret the written 
words and may take offense to messages that were meant to be 
completely harmless or even humorous. 

This is why we must always remember that 90% of communication is 
how we say what we want to get across to the other party. Emails 
and text messages only give us 10% of the communication process, 
thus leaving 90% of the communication process up to the recipient 
to guess. 

If you want to communicate an important message to a loved one or 
to a business contact, you may be better off going the old 
fashioned route of using the telephone. This eliminates any 
confusion in the communication process, and also allows you and 
the other party to ask for any needed clarifications. These 
clarifications can be made via the telephone, before unintended 
interpretations have been made. Using verbal telephone 
communication allows you to emphasize the importance of the 
message and to communicate the excitement of your words to the 
other party. 

It often seems easier to simply send an email to someone, but 
many people actually prefer telephone communication to emails. 
Telephone communication maintains the bit of humanity, which is 
lost in emails. Many business people who are not comfortable with 
emails don't even read their emails. I once sat in the office of 
a Chief Operating Officer of a major corporation and saw him 
inadvertently delete many of his emails. When I asked him about 
it, he said that if the messages he accidentally deleted were 
important that the senders would call him. He was not a fan of 
emails and even though he was often stretched thin on time, he 
said that he preferred telephone calls, because he got a chance 
to visit briefly with his business contacts. 

Many business executives today are of a generation who held jobs 
before emails, so they do not rely as much on computers as their 
younger counterparts. Many of them ignore emails for the most 
part and look for the telephone follow up from the sender and 
take the attitude that "If it was important they will call me." 
Taking care of important business transactions over the 
telephone, instead of by email, assures that the right person 
receives the message and that it is not simply going to an 
assistant or worse, to a bulk mail folder where it gets deleted. 

If you communicate with people on an international level, be it 
personal or business, you may believe that your only choice is to 
email because of the expense of international phone calls. While 
this may have been true in the past, it is not true today. There 
are options in making international telephone calls. One of these 
options includes inexpensive international calling cards that 
allow you to call overseas at a rate as low as 2.9 cents per 
minute. It is well worth the money, in my opinion, to assure that 
the importance and the intent of the message is not lost in the 
written word of an email. 

International telephone calls are not as outrageously expensive 
as they once were, and you can be sure that the recipient 
understands the meaning and true intent of your communications. 

Jim Headley, (jheadley@telecents.com) VP of New Business 
Development, Telecents Communications Inc
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