Planning for Winning Conference Calls

• 00:04 A great way to connect with team members who live and
• 00:07 work in different cities,different countries, or
• 00:10 clients spread out around the world is a conference call.
• 00:13 Here's some tips on how to make the most out of your conference calls.
• 00:17 Now, we've already covered,
• 00:18 please don't use a speakerphone, you're going to get tired of me saying that.
• 00:22 Some of you will write in the reviews, he talked about not using speakerphones and
• 00:27 yet people still do what?
• 00:28 I want to give you some other tips.
• 00:30 Realize a conference call is a business meeting.
• 00:34 And it deserves the same amount of planning and respect of any other meeting.
• 00:39 Too often people are just, let's just hop on a conference call and chew it out.
• 00:43 Yet they wouldn't ask people to drive across town and
• 00:47 spend an hour meeting with no agenda.
• 00:50 So, the first item on your checklist should be have an agenda.
• 00:55 Know exactly what you want to come across with,
• 00:58 what you want to accomplish in any conference call.
• 01:01 Have some structure to it, it'll come across much more effective.
• 01:06 Also realize if other people are talking to you in other cities they likely
• 01:10 are going to be on a speakerphone because we can't control them.
• 01:15 If there are multiple people in the same room because of that,
• 01:19 it's going to be harder for you to hear.
• 01:22 Sometimes two people will talk at once there'll be crosstalk,
• 01:25 it'll be much harder.
• 01:26 So you've got to actively listen and on one hand, you don't want to interrupt.
• 01:32 But you do want to interrupt quickly if you did not hear something,
• 01:36 if you didn't understand something.
• 01:39 So what I would recommend is relatively loudly saying,
• 01:42 excuse me, I couldn't hear the last 20 seconds, the audio dropped out.
• 01:47 Or I couldn't hear because of the crosstalk, could you please repeat?
• 01:52 You do it like that it's not going to seem like rude interrupting.
• 01:55 And people will actually appreciate the fact that you're trying to get
• 02:00 the ideas conveyed.
• 02:02 And that you're trying to really understand them.
• 02:05 Now, sometimes conference calls can get long and
• 02:08 before you know it you're checking email.
• 02:10 I've done it before on my cell.
• 02:12 You're checking Facebook, don't do it.
• 02:16 Really focus, listen carefully, be thinking,
• 02:20 visualizing what the person is talking about.
• 02:26 Ask questions when there's a pause, when there's a time.
• 02:29 You don't want to be interrupting people on the phone whether it's a conference
• 02:34 call or any other call.
• 02:35 But when they've said something and you're thinking about it.
• 02:38 It is appropriate to summarize, to paraphrase, to make sure you're getting
• 02:43 it, show them you're listening, show them that you're understanding.
• 02:48 So you do periodically want to paraphrase, summarize.
• 02:53 I also highly recommend taking detailed notes.
• 02:57 We talked about that in the previous lecture.
• 02:59 Take notes of any important phone call for business,
• 03:02 whether it's a conference call or anything else.
• 03:05 But here's something most people don't do but
• 03:08 will make your conference calls much more effective.
• 03:11 Not only take your notes but
• 03:13 then summarize the meeting from your perspective.
• 03:17 Summarize what you think everyone is supposed to do after that and
• 03:22 email it to all the participants.
• 03:24 Whether that's your official job, whether anyone asked you to do that or not,
• 03:29 everyone will be impressed.
• 03:30 Bosses, colleagues, customers, clients, you know who else this helps?
• 03:37 You. We're all human beings,
• 03:39 we all forget things.
• 03:41 So the sheer act of writing it down and then typing it, proofing it,
• 03:46 and then hitting send email will make all the key ideas from that
• 03:51 conference call really sink in to you much more firmly.
• 03:56 This will help.
• 03:57 It's a little extra work but not much.
• 04:00 So please give it a try.

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