Posts Tagged ‘Success’

A Business Conference Call can make all the Difference

Friday, January 14th, 2011

A business conference call can make all the difference in the success of your business.  Yet, today it is estimated that the market for conference calls has only been penetrated 58% which means that 42% of the businesses that should be doing business conference calls are not.  That is a pretty amazing statistic when you think of it.  And I bet many of you are thinking that there is no way people don’t know about using a business conference call to get people together on issues for their business.  But I can tell you from experience that a lot of businesses still are not using a business conference call yet.  I can tell through the conversation I have with potential customers that there are still a lot of people out there who are not using a business conference call for their business.  And it is hard to believe.  Especially in this economy and the number of new businesses being started up.  A business conference call offers so many benefits to your business without a large expenditure.  Large businesses are big users of business conference calls because they have long understood the benefits they get from conducting regular conference calls with their staff and customers.  Here are some of the benefits you can expect from incorporating a business conference call into your regular business processes.

  • A Business Conference Call Saves Time- When you are a small or medium business or better yet, a brand new business, the one thing you will never have enough of is time.  By utilizing a business conference call when you can you will find yourself saving valuable time that otherwise would have been spent travelling to an in person meeting.  Travel time is very unproductive even with all of today’s gadgets that help keep you informed and allow you to do work away from the office.  You can hardly be working on a document when you are walking through an airport or driving your car.  The more time you can find yourself at your desk the better you will be in the long run.  A business conference call can be used for the initial contact with the customer especially if you need to pull multiple people from your company into the discussion or if the customer has several contacts that need to hear your pitch.  And during the implementation process a business conference call can keep your project on time and make sure that everyone gets the same message all the time. 
  • A Business Conference Call Saves Money – The other thing you can’t get enough of is money.  Especially if you are starting out your capital is a precious commodity.  A business conference call is much less expensive than any in person meeting you can have with your staff or customers.  Many small businesses have staff scattered throughout the country or the world and the expense to travel to visit these people on a consistent basis is just too much.  A business conference call allows you to stay in touch with everyone for a fraction of the cost of travelling to them in person.  And the cost of the travel is one thing.  What about the cost of the hotel, meals, rental car and everything else that goes along with it?  A business conference call can save you thousands of dollars on one trip.
  • A Business Conference Call Increases Productivity – And usually if you own a small business or are just starting a new on you will never have as many people on the job as you would like.  So you need every person as productive as they can be in order to get the job done.  A business conference call allows you to stay at your desk for the meeting and return to work immediately following the conference call.  Aside from the time saving productivity you gain with a business conference call you also benefit by working together to accomplish the task and keep all informed along the way.  A business conference call can prevent a lot of back and forth communication between you and the other parties.

The bottom line is a business conference call can make all the difference in the world for your business.

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A Conference Call for a Company Announcement

Monday, October 18th, 2010

A customer recently called and needed to speak to all of their employees quickly in order to make an announcement about the acquisition of the company.  They are not a regular conference call user but thought that it may suit their needs.  Well, needless to say, this company was so impressed by the capabilities of our service they have since become a regular user of conference calls for more applications within their business.  Why are conference calls so well suited to making a company announcement?

Many times a company announcement is necessary to quickly get the word out to employees about an important milestone in your company’s history. A conference call is best suited for these types of announcements because it would otherwise be impossible in most cases to get the employees together quickly. Many times the employees are scattered around the country or around the world and just can’t physically get together that easily. Then there is the cost of getting everyone together. Even if you have the time to pull everyone together the cost of getting a group of employees together can be exorbitant. A conference call allows you to get the employees together quickly and easily for a relatively small amount of money.

Depending on the size of the group you may want to customize your conference call with some features that will make the call a success. With Zip Conferencing you can do this yourself by selecting the conference options you want on the conference call through your own interface. A couple of options I would recommend would be the Music on Hold option and silence entry and exit. Music on Hold makes it so your participants will listen to music until the moderator joins the conference call. Otherwise a large group of participants will be making noise and your audience will wonder when the conference call will begin. Entry and exit tones silenced for the conference call will also reduce distracting noises for the participants and the moderator alike. Another conference call option you may want use is muting all participants. As moderator of the call you have the ability to mute all participants on the conference call. That way your audience will not hear any distracting noises while you make your announcement. After you have made your announcement you can then open up the lines for questions or comments.

With Zip Conferencing you can host up to 300 participants on a conference call and do a company announcement without having to pull all of the employees together.

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Conference Calls for Non-Profits

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

Working in the conference call service business as long as I have has exposed me to many businesses and industries.  And all of the businesses I have encountered and used my conference call services have benefited by saving time and money.  One of the areas which really benefits using conference calls to save both is a non-profit company.

Sure, there are non-profit organizations out there that have a lot of money and their CEOs make more money than most of us, but that is not the norm.  Most non-profit orgranizations have a very limited budget and need to squeeze every last penny from their budget in order to make ends meet.  But they also need to have meetings, solicit donations and so forth.  That is where the conference calls come in handy.  In fact, in some cases the non-profit organization doesn’t even have an office to hold an in person meeting if they wanted to.  A conference call is the only way to get their employees or volunteers together.  And it does so less expensively than any other method.

The non-profit organizations need to solicit money from donors and sometime they will hold a seminar for a number of potential donors at the same time.  They find that holding a conference call with multiple donors actually helps their overall success.  Getting their entire team of employees and volunteers on the same page is done more efficiently with a conference call.  And if they are a national organization, the ability to hold regular meetings with a widely dispersed team is easy to do and very cost effective using a conference call. 

The cost of the conference calls is very important to a non-profit organization as they can use the money for other means if they save money.  And being more productive by not travelling to a meeting and doing a conference call instead is also very helpful.  Just like any for profit company, a non-profit can take the money they save by doing conference calls and put it right on their bottom line.

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Web Conference Features

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

Ever since a web conference has been available there have been a few features that have always been available. 

Whiteboarding – One of them is the ability to white board with your participants.  The concept is that if you could do it in a physical meeting room you would want to do it in a web conference since it is meant to simulate that meeting environment.  The web conference version of whiteboarding allows participants and the host of the web conference to draw freestyle on the whiteboard in the meeting space and all participants are able to see the results of the drawing on the board and also to participate themselves.  This particular feature has some uses but this web conference capability has not seen wide adoption I think because people are not as used to drawing with their mouse and it is not as easy to do as walking up to a whiteboard, grabbing a marker and drawing.  Don’t get me wrong, I think it is pretty easy to use, but people are just not as apt to do it as they would be in a physical meeting room situation.

PowerPoint Sharing – The ability to share a PowerPoint slide show with your participants during a web conference is a key feature that has helped lead the way to web conferencing’s success.  People have quickly become comfortable with doing a remote presentation using a web conference and sharing a PowerPoint slide show.  I think that the sense of detachment is easier to comprehend for a host since in a presentation environment you are basically by yourself showing slide and sharing comments whether you are in a person to person meeting or not.

Application Sharing – When application sharing first came out the thought was that participants could truly collaborate on a web conference by sharing applications and letting others control the application to get tasks done on a web conference.  I am not sure this has really happened yet, but people do find that simply sharing their desktop or an application on a web conference is easy to use and understand for the host and participants alike.  All you have to do is click on the application and all the participants are seeing what is on your desktop.  Its that simple.

Now there are a few more features that have been introduced on some web conference platforms that really enhance the experience.  One of them is the ability to record the web conference.  With a push of a button you can record the web conference and the audio portion of the call.  This makes sharing the presentation with people who missed the live web conference simple.  Another cool feature that is gaining momentum is the ability to provide files for the participants to download from the web conference.  The equivalent of hand outs in a physical meeting, this web conference feature makes it easy to provide materials to your attendees as part of the meeting.  And another feature people seem to like is the ability to send a meeting thank you and survey following the meeting as an integrated part of the web conference.  This is especially liked by people who a re running seminars as they are trying to connect to a n audience that they are many times trying to sell something to. 

The web conference feature list continues to grow because the use in web conferencing is on the rise and people want to better emulate the person to person meeting.  Look for more web conference features in the future as more and more people continue to adopt this valuable service.

www.zipconferencing.com

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Conference Call Etiquette

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

We have all been on a conference call where someone does something to either disrupt the call, embarass themselves or both.  I am going to point out things that will help make the difference on your conference call between a success and a failure whether you are hosting the call or jsut a participant.

As the Host or Moderator of conference calls

  • Give participants plenty of notice about the scheduled time of the conference call.  Even if you are the boss and can make them attend at a moment’s notice, if the participants are harried or have to reschedule to make the call they will be distracted during the conference call.
  • Send out an agenda with the conference call meeting invitation.  I know that this is not done in many cases but having your audience prepared for the call allows particpants to be ready for the discussion.  Even if it is not a formal agenda a simple listing of topics to be discussed on the conference call really helps.
  • Start your conference calls on time.  Even if a participant is late if you become known as someone who starts on time your participants will learn to be oon time as well.
  • Take a roll call at the beginning of the conference call so that everyone knows who is in attendance.  This will get everyone participating right away and make people  more comfortable.
  • Even though everyone takes the technology for granted, try to not use a cell phone if you are hosting the conference call.  It is one thing for a participant to be on a cell phone, they can mute their line if they have to, but the Host needs to control the meeting and have a clear, consistent connection.
  • Put yourself in a quiet environment.  Background noise can be a real nuisance on a conference call.
  • Treat it like a meeting.  Take notes, assign tasks, etc.  Where most people struggle on a conference call is being aimless in the way the meeting is conducted.   

Good practices for Moderators and Participants

  • Introduce yourself when you speak every time.  Many times the participants have a hard time determining who is speaking.
  • Learn to use the mute button.  Especially if you have to join the confernece call via cell phone you should use the mute button whenever possible.  Any noise you produce or background noise will be on the entire conference call.
  • If you are using a speakerphone and own a PDA like a BlackBerry, make sure the PDA/BlackBerry is nowhere near the Speakerphone.  The transmission and reception of messagtes into the device will make noise across the conference call.
  • Don’t ever put your phone on hold while on a conference call.  Any hold music or messages will play across the entire conference call the entire time you have your phone on hold.
  • Just like an in person meeting take care of any bathroom needs prior and after the conference call.  No matter how familiar you are with your mute button, inevitably everyone will hear the flush.

Finally you are ready to close the conference call.  Thank your participants for their time.  Whether an in person meeting or a conference call, people’s time is valuable and should be recognized.  Participants will be more willing to give you their time again.

www.zipconferencing.com

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