7 tips to manage our phone calls more effectively.

1. I don’t know about you, but when somebody calls me and they want to give me information, then they put me on hold while they try and go find it, it’s a bit discourteous in my mind.  I tend to call them time robbers.  Have all the information at your finger tips prior to making the call.
2. Establish relevancy quickly. Relevancy means paying attention to the matter at hand.
3. Put a time limit on the front of your call. So if you were to call me I would say, “John, I am glad you called, I have about 3 minutes.  Could we wrap it up in that amount of time, or maybe I could call you back?
4. It’s a good idea to have clock or a watch by the telephone so that you are aware of how much time is actually ticking away during each call.
5. Screen your calls whenever possible, of course in a polite way.
6. Keep a talk file. If I communicate with you on an ongoing basis I keep a little paper file, or memo file electronically about things I want to talk to you about. Rather than call you every time something comes to mind, I just put it in the file and then when we finally do talk I might have six or eight items that I want to review with you and I have only made one call rather than six calls.
7. Very often we are called but nobody tells us the best time to call them back.  They give us the telephone number so fast that we have to keep playing the message over and over to get it down. I’m sure that’s happened to you many times. So when you wrap up the call give “precise” detailed information and restate your phone number twice.

Take the next few minutes and think about your biggest telephone challenges and write a statement in your Day-Timer how you will change that habit starting today.  We form habits by daily repetition, so practice this daily.

More time saving tips