In the previous part of our two-part series, we began, with the help of The Daily Muse website, to create a guide for the management of your conferences and individual business calls. The first 13 rules we already have behind us; in today's article, devoted more to conference calls, we will finish this guide with several other tips ...
14. If you connect to a conference call, immediately introduce yourself. Then the others will not be surprised that you have already been listening to the conversation for three minutes, while the existing participants had no idea of your presence.
15. If someone joins the conversation late, do not try to inform him/her of what s/he has missed. A latecomer can always ask someone at the end of the meeting to clarify other details.
16. Inform all parties about who you are and why you are calling during the first 120 seconds and then focus on the remaining programme. The others will thus know exactly what is expected of them.
17. In the first few minutes, organise time so that everyone knows how long s/he will talk. This way you will avoid time pressure and allocate space to everyone.
18. If you have more than three people on the phone, quickly summarise who is there at the beginning and introduce them.
19. Omit individual introductions of every participant involved in the call if it is not essential to your agenda. This will save you lots of time.
20. If the call should focus on sharing your knowledge, 70% of the time should be enough for you. If there are many participants in the negotiation, your designated time should drop to 25%.
21. Speak in simple sentences and leave pauses between individual ideas. This will allow participants to ask questions or add more information during the call.
22. If you are the organiser of the call, it is your responsibility to convene the parties if they do not call first or someone else does not take over organisation of the teleconference.
23. Use the mute button strategically. If you have a call on mute for 90% of the time, you show others that you are not paying attention to them.
24. Do not be the person who reads emails during calls and needs to have every question repeated. If this happens, there are probably too many participants, the call is too long, or you do not need to be there at all.
25. Five minutes before the end of the call, be aware that you are approaching the end of the stipulated time and ask if there are any questions. Overlapping the set time is disrespectful to all participants.
26. Keep track of follow-up steps after completion of the call and inform the other participants in the call via email.
Did we omit some advice? Did you not find it even in the previous part? Then share it with us.
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