In sales, communication is everything—and not just with customers. The way you interact with teammates, managers, and leaders can shape how you’re perceived, how quickly you grow, and how much trust you build across the org. Too often, though, we push through the fast pace of deals and meetings without ever stopping to reflect on how we come across. That’s where a personal communication audit can change the game.
A communication audit is simply a deliberate review of how you’re showing up in your emails, meetings, and conversations. The goal isn’t to nitpick—it’s to identify patterns, uncover blind spots, and build stronger connections through Carefrontation (showing you care personally while challenging directly). By doing this regularly, you’ll gain insights that fuel your growth and help you engage more effectively at every level.
Auditing Communication With Team Members
- Clarity: Do your emails and Slack messages get straight to the point, or do people often need to ask for clarification?
- Supportiveness: Are you contributing to a team culture of encouragement, or do your words sometimes come across as transactional?
- Feedback Exchange: How often are you giving and asking for feedback from peers? Example: Instead of “Nice job,” try “You handled that objection really well—how did you think of that response?”
Auditing Communication With Managers
- Proactivity: Are you waiting for your manager to ask for updates, or are you proactively sharing progress and blockers?
- Ownership: Do your messages reflect responsibility for results, or do they sound like you’re passing the buck?
- Clarity in 1:1s: Are your updates structured (wins, challenges, asks), or do you wing it and hope your manager steers the conversation?
Auditing Communication With Skip-Level Managers
- Conciseness: Are you able to deliver value in 2–3 sentences when you get face time with senior leaders?
- Strategic Framing: Do you connect your work to bigger business goals, or stick only to task-level detail?
- Presence: When you communicate up, are you showing confidence and thoughtfulness, or sounding rushed/unprepared?
Auditing Communication With Customers
- Value-Orientation: Do your outreach emails and calls consistently tie back to the customer’s goals and challenges—or are they product dumps?
- Tone: Is your communication professional but human, or overly stiff and jargon-heavy?
- Follow-Through: Are you circling back promptly on action items, or letting customers chase you for updates?
The power of a communication audit is that it puts you in the driver’s seat of growth. You don’t have to wait for feedback to realize where you can improve. A quick monthly check-in with yourself—maybe even using a scorecard for each audience—can keep you sharp and intentional.
Question for you: If you ran a communication audit on yourself this week, which area (team, manager, skip-level, or customer) would you focus on first, and why?
