From Pinging to Communicating

I have always grown up with strong affinity for social networking ... long before they were called "social media". From the good old days of post cards (early 80s), through stamp collection and snail mails to pen friendship and penpal clubs. After then came emails, collaborative computing and chat engines (yahoo, hotmail, etc). With every new innovative communication tool comes an adventurous instinct in me - I gladly test them and then, deploy them in advancing my networking skills with the aim of achieving sales/service level targets on the job.

I like to write and chat, using the powers of letter writing, internet and other communication tools, I have been able to transform these hobbies into advantageous skills over the years. As a field technical sales officer, I briefed my clients and prospective business partners through chat engines, closed deals before hitting the streets for mere hardware configurations - no talking is required. As an equity research and investment banker, I used chat windows as medium for offering investment advisory services to"total strangers", closed more deals than conventional sales team did. The power of "chats" or "pings" as we now know it with the advent of personal mobile devices/computers (like blackberry, androids, tablets) seem very effective until the clients insist on having the salesman pick up the cheques in person.

Then comes the challenge "pinging" poses ... a smart, articulate and persuasive writer is not necessarily and articulate speech maker or competent communicator. Prolonged and intense oral inactivity, often associated with chat addicts, comes with some strong disadvantages - notable is poor diction. Despite all my good exploits behind the chat engines, like a man behind a mask, I always found physically meetings and oral discussions very challenging. There became an urgent need to move away from Pinging to Communicating as more clients insist on meeting the "boss". 

The need to be look at my clients in the eye, marshal my intelligent presentations with the right diction, pronunciation and gesticulation; the need to put some real emotions and voice musicality behind the stimulating calculations and technical presentations I once preferred to ping at clients  ... these were a few of the challenges I had to resolve. I found them very daunting until I stumbled on Garden City Toastmasters Club. Subsequently, with every meeting, I have practice and learn how to relate very well beyond chats and pings, thus progressing towards achieving competency in real communication - moving from Pinging to Communication.