Rules that Make Conference Calls Effective

The business world is now dealing with a mobile workforce, with more and more employees working outside offices or offsite; managing them could become an increasingly difficult task. Thankfully, technologies are now available to solve such problems.

Before businessmen and employees had to travel to attend meetings and conferences, nowadays conference calls and video calls enable people to gather around and discuss important business matters even if they are not physically there.

The Bad Thing

Conference calls or video calls are great alternatives for multinational firms who have clients or employees that work in another country or location. This reduces travel, which in turn reduces resources and saves time as well.

But the thing with video conference calls is that they have the tendency to be boring, and ironically time consuming. The latter, of course is not good for businesses as it may affect effectiveness and efficiency. Here are rules that we can follow for an effective and efficient business conference call.

1. Short Statements, Frequent Feedback

When holding a teleconference, hosts really do not know what is happening on the next line. Often people’s minds tend to wander when they are not in a face to face contact. What you can do as a facilitator is to keep your statements short. Short statements are easier to understand, also ask for frequent feedback.

Feedback will tell you if they fully understand what is being discussed. Asking direct and specific questions is also helpful, example, instead of asking “Do you have any questions?” you can ask:”What do you think about this phase, do you think we are under budget?”

2. Avoid Slides as Much As Possible

Slides that are laden with text would bore an audience to death. There is also a tendency that people would just be looking at how many slides they have to endure rather than listening to the discussion or what you have to say. This deviates their attention from important matters, and the meeting would just end up unproductive.

3. Don’t Send Slides Ahead of Time

Another no-no for video calls or conference calls is sending business presentation slides ahead of time. This would just blow off all your plans. There is a big chance that the audience have already reviewed the slides before you present them, and getting them to attend the conference call would be an added burden.

If you are to use slides make sure they are not fully laden with texts and make sure the slides are well prepared to capture your audience’s attention. Remember that slides are not a tool for the unprepared.
Instead of using slides, what you can do is to show primary source of data.

For sales calls, for example, you can show product demos, for project meetings project graphs would be appropriate. In cases where the participants ask for slides, send one that summarizes the call and send it after the call. This can be a meeting protocol.

4. Have an Agenda and Make Sure to Stick to It

Conference calls, whether it would be a status meeting, a sales call, support call or a feedback meeting, having an agenda, sending it ahead and sticking to it is very important. Everyone must know the purpose of the call, how long the conference would take and what is expected before the call. An agenda guides the participants and reduces their anxiety as well.

5. Engage participants

When we do mere phone calls, participants can easily mute their devices and tune the facilitator out. We can prevent this by engaging them, having video calls which provides visual cues is one effective way.

  Marc Evans

About the Guest Author:

This is an article written by Marc Evans, an expert on business and entreprenuership and a writer of numerous articles on the same topic as well. Marc Evans have particular interest on vital processes affecting business such as conducting free conference calls and business etiquette.