You share with every other executive of your store the responsibility of channeling information, policy, and motivation from top management to the people in your area of influence, and of feeding back response and reports.
As a fashion buyer, you are additionally a member of the vast team that channels fashion facts, news, and enthusiasm from the market to the selling floor and the customer, and that relays information about customer wants and reactions all the way back to the creators and producers of the merchandise.
As part of your store's management team, and as a member of the fashion business fraternity, you have every reason to be concerned with ways to improve your communication skills.
Projecting Yourself
You will have many occasions to project your information and enthusiasm about fashion to groups of people.
The most frequent occasion, of course, will be meetings with your salespeople. If your store has several branches, you may have to supplement personal appearance or contact with the use of conference telephone hook-ups, recording tape, film, or videotape on occasion.
Also, you may do a fashion show; you may speak to women's clubs and school groups; you may represent your store on a television or radio program.
Not to be overlooked: You may have to present or defend your views at buyers' meetings, sales promotional planning conferences, or similar occasions.
Develop stage presence. You may not need the electrifying stage presence of a great actor on such occasions, but you do have to be able to put yourself across as well as your message.
If you feel insecure with an audience, strengthen your platform personality by taking courses in public speaking, acting with a little theatre group, or jumping into discussions in social or business groups.
Practice!
Outwitting Stage Fright
The ability to radiate confidence, appear poised, and avoid stage fright comes with the knowledge that what you are about to say is important and well planned. Prepare carefully! The more conscientiously you prepare for your talk, the less likely you are to fumble or panic.
Prepare more than you need. Assemble more data than you expect to give in your talk. It is easier to cut or skip than to fill in with extemporaneous ramblings, or to find yourself unprepared for a probing question from the audience.
Speaking Effectively
Your voice, manner, and language will be more natural if you can avoid reading a script. Audiences respond to the person who looks at them (or right into the TV camera) while speaking.
If you must have notes, keep them on cards, make them brief. Then you can glance at a key word or phrase and cue yourself in seconds. Vary your tempo. Change of pace averts boredom and keeps your audience on the alert. If you notice fidgeting at the back of the room, raise your voice a notch, jump to the next topic, pause to sum up or even walk back and forth across the platform, to win back the audience's attention.
Use visual aids. Let people see as well as hear. The more senses you call into play, the more readily your audience absorbs your message. Show merchandise, demonstrate combinations, or use charts. If you are speaking to distant branches through the medium of the telephone or recording tape, arrange for duplicate visual material to be available at each location, so that someone else can show the merchandise or charts for you at the appropriate cue.
Sum up and wrap up. Each time you make a key point, state it clearly and repeat it. Occasionally, summarize the points you have made. In that way, you recapture any members of the audience who may have lost the thread of what you were saying.
If possible, provide summarizing leaflets, or charts, or booklets, for people to carry away from a meeting. To minimize distraction, pass these out at the end of your talk or at the end of the meeting -not while there are still presentations to be made.
Invite questions. Usually it is easiest to handle questions at the end of your prepared talk. Allow time for a questions period.
If the audience is large, people will hesitate at first to speak up from the floor. In such cases, "plant" a few associates in the audience to break the ice by asking prepared questions. When there are no further questions, sum up your message with a remark like, "Then we all understand that..."
Reaping the Benefits
Your work as a fashion buyer brings you into contact with people at almost every imaginable level -socially, financially, and intellectually. If your communication skills are well developed, you will be able to exchange ideas with anyone who has something to contribute. You will be able to infuse others with your love for fashion. You will be able to get your ideas across to all of your major audiences - customers, staff, the market, your bosses, your colleagues in the store.
