I am an observer of people. The other day, I was in a restaurant for a meeting. I watched people come into the room and sit down together, but they didn’t look at each other, speak to each other, or even act like the other person was present. What were they doing? Interacting on their phones! It baffles me where we are as a society. People go out to eat and stare at their phones the entire time! Has interpersonal communication that has been around since the dawn of time been replaced by a Smart Phone?

You may find that is annoying, but big deal: it doesn’t really impact your business. I would disagree with you. Here is what I mean. When people depend totally on technology to communicate, especially when they are sitting just feet apart, the fine skills of communication are lost - like reading body language, conveying confidence in your words by looking someone in the eye when you are telling them the truth (and glancing away when you are not), or giving a simple inflection in your voice to express emotion. Face-to-face communication transmits a lot of information that technology cannot replicate. Losing these skills means that business transactions based on trust are a thing of the past. What does that leave us with? Business interactions that are misunderstood, mistrusted, confused and twisted from their original intent.

Good communication is a key ingredient in marketing. If you cannot communicate effectively in your marketing efforts, you are going to have a hard time selling your products and services. That includes going face-to-face with people. This cannot be avoided. If you want to be effective in marketing, you have to learn how to talk to people. They may be total strangers or they may be long time clients, but as soon as your communication fails to convey trust, your marketing balloon will begin to lose its air. Why is this? Because we are human beings! We were designed for communication. We have five senses and at least three of those senses (sight, hearing and touch) are all part of interpersonal communications that can cause us to respond positively or recoil in disgust.

If you are in charge of marketing and sales at your company – especially if you have a department full of young, tech savvy employees, you have a daunting task. Against a society that only wants to communicate in likes and selfies, you are given the job of helping people relearn to communicate verbally. Here is what I would suggest you do. Require all of them to take an elderly person to lunch with no phones, no air pods, no Apple Watches or any other device. Make them talk to someone who knows how to communicate without the technology. Tell them to stay engaged in the conversation for the entire meal. What will they learn? That you really can connect with people on a human level over a short amount of time – and it is really satisfying because we are hard coded for human interaction that comes from speaking to each other. And if they get it, you have a chance of making them really good at marketing.

Of course this goes beyond marketing. It is part of effective living. So save your marketing and, in the process, you may make the world a more livable place.