In this day and age the conference call is a fact of life. It may no longer be on the telephone - Skype, VOIP and iChat have seen to that - but a group of geographically disparate people trying to speak without any visual contact is an increasingly common way of doing business. And it has to be said that nothing beats face-to-face contact for getting your point across and getting things done.
Given that, how can you ensure that your conference calls aren’t a massive waste of time?
- Always treat your call as a meeting
- Publish an agenda
- Shut down your email client
- Shut down your IM client
- Switch off your phone
- Start early
Treat the call as a meeting - cos that’s what it is. Yeah, you can’t see their faces and they can’t see you flicking the Vs at the phone but it is a meeting and, if you don’t want it to be a waste of your time, treat it as such.
Publish an agenda - like any meeting you don’t want it to drag on or go off at a tangent. So publish an agenda, circulate it beforehand and, if you can, stick a time limit on each item.
No Email, No IM - they can’t see you and you can see the “unread count” going up and up. It won’t do any harm will it? Well it will. You’re not paying attention and it’s rude. One trick with IM - if you know your attendees addresses you can see their status. Are they online or offline? If they are online are they “available” or “busy”?
Switch off your mobile - Much the same as above - you’re in a meeting, so it’s rude to allow interruptions.
Start Early - I admit it. I’m crap at turning up on time; but most conference calls are in my office (a handy one minute walk from my bed). So even I have no excuse for turning up late. Instead get started a couple of minutes early. Everyone always takes a while shuffling their papers, reading the agenda (you did circulate it didn’t you?) and making smalltalk. So get that out of the way so you can start at 10 on the dot. And get the whole shebang over and done with.
Conference calls will never come close to the effectiveness of a real meeting. But, given that yesterday I spent 7 hours travelling 100 miles (thank you Network Rail), if you can make them work, they are essential to running your business.
Oh, and lastly, if you have the option, choose iChat over Skype. For whatever reason the sound quality is vastly superior.