Ask Yourself--"What specific action do I want to take place as the result of this conference call?" Design your the structure of your meeting and agenda around this goal. Ask Your Callers--to review the agenda so that they will be prepared to address the issues you will be discussing.

Speakerphones and cell phones can interfere with the quality of the call or cause breaks in the conversation that cannot be transcribed. Also, speakerphones pick up background noises such as shuffling papers, scraping chairs, coughing, etc., which can drown out speakers' comments.

Invite a special guest or high-ranking member of your organization to the meeting. Ask your guest to say a few words or field a few questions as an opener before you get down to regular business. This strategy will provide a great jump-start to the discussion that follows. Make sure to tell all your invitees about this special opportunity to speak with your guest so they won't miss it!

Open up your meeting with a roll call. This gets your participants talking from the very beginning, and helps them to learn each other's voices. A good strategy is to ask a question before you begin calling the roll, and ask each person to respond with their answer when their name is called. This can be something relevant to the topic (such as this week's progress towards a goal), or something to relax everyone and create a more personable atmosphere (such as what everyone did over the weekend).

If participants in a conference call do not follow a few simple rules of conference call etiquette, the call can quickly degenerate into a confusing experience with very little actually accomplished during the call. Below are some key tips that will help you to make all of your conference calls successful.

Regardless of what's happening with new technologies in the conference call sector, because of its reliability and the almost universal installation of telephones in most parts of the developed world, the industry workhorse remains "vanilla" conference calls, where different people on different phones in different rooms hold a group discussion.

One of the many things that drove me nuts about my old job was the number of conference calls I had to be on each day. It seemed like on most projects, we would wrap up the requirements phase and be ready for design when somebody would request a new feature, thus dragging requirements on for several more weeks. This meant daily conference calls to update documents and pore over the importance of each and every word for hours.

Conference calls provide investors a wealth of timely information that simply can't be found in press releases, 10Ks, 10Qs or annual reports. Back in 1999, most discussion about conference calls focused on how individual investors were being excluded. Today, nearly all calls are open to the public. This guide provides a simple checklist to help investors gain the most benefit from their conference call attendance

When entrepreneurs choose to make conference calls, or teleseminars, to sell their products and services to a large audience, they need to spend some time considering whom they will rent their conference call bridge lines from. A conference call bridge is an electronic routing device that allows the person leading the teleseminar to reach 25, 50 or 100 people and some conference call providers even offer bridges that can accommodate 1,000 people. In addition, the conference call providers offer multiple features that enhance the call's productivity. The following are some conference call tips to help you, as the teleseminar leader, make the most of out of your sales calls.

With increasing frequency, we are asked to be involved in teams where the members are from different geographic locations. While we would like to always be able to meet in person, that is usually not possible and we need to use teleconferencing and videoconferencing to stay in touch. When we use these technologies, we need to make the most of the time we are electronically connected. Here are some tips to help make these electronic meetings go smoothly.