The Overlap: Business English and Communication Skills

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I have benefited greatly from learning about communication skills.  Personally, I feel I am a good communicator, but I could/should be better.  But over the years, I have become convinced that separating Business English and communication skills is like a cheeseburger without fries... doable, but nearly unthinkable.

I have also had the chance to work with some communication skills trainers to see the types of things they cover and how they train.  So what is the difference between communication skills training and Business English training?  We have the advantage that we can break the skill down to sentence and phrase level.  While the presentation skills trainer says, "You should start with an organized introduction," we start with, "You should start with an organized introduction, and here are the phrases to do it."

Also, we have the advantage that we know how language affects the situation.  We can understand the basics of semantics and pragmatics.  Most communication skills training I see may refer to it, but can't define exactly how to alter the language.  For example, I have been writing a short course for salespeople based on sales training materials.  The training includes things like "be a good listener" and "use positive words".  But the material cannot say exactly what that means linguistically.