You have the agenda, the date and time for the conference call is set and your notes are ready. It appears that you are ready to go, but are you confident in your ability to relay your message to your audience? Are your communication skills up to snuff?
Without having the ability to use body language to assist you in conveying your message to your listeners, you must rely on your ability to use your words effectively. This begins with having something interesting to say. Your conference call should be of benefit and interest to the people that will be attending. The worst thing for your staff to endure is a meeting that is boring about a dry topic or a topic with which they are very familiar. Who wants to sit and listen to a monotonous presentation about a topic that doesn’t excite them or won’t help them with their job? Not many people at all. With the right skills any topic can be made interesting. Find out interesting tidbits about your topic and sprinkle them in during your presentation. Use humor if you can, just to grab their attention from time to time.
Make your voice sound interesting. Nothing will put people to sleep quicker than a dull monotone. Use inflection and creative words. Note the speed of your speech. If you speak too quickly your participants will have a hard time keeping up and important aspects of your message may be lost. If you speak too slowly, you risk losing the attention of your audience. There is no point in having a conference call if you are not able to grab and keep your audience’s attention.
Be an active listener. You cannot hear what your staff has to say if you are the one doing all of the talking. Take the conference call question and answer part of your presentation seriously. Through actively listening, you will be able to know if your staff understands your message, if they understand what was presented to them and if there is any confusion. This will allow you to make adjustments to future calls and address any concerns that you can immediately rather than waiting for a crisis to arrive.
If you are having a call with a group of people, you might consider an anonymous online survey at the end of the call to see how people rate the quality of the call, the presenter and the information presented. This will give you a baseline for any future calls that you may have, and allow you to make improvements where necessary. While this is not always an option for on the fly conference calls, you could implement this now so that when you do have to conduct an unscheduled call, you will be prepared and know what works and does not work.
