Business can move at a very fast rate and you have to be quick to keep up. When a situation arises where you need to get a group of people together quickly in a conference call, the last thing you want to do is waste time getting the call going. If your conference call service provider has reservationless conference calls, you are good to go.

A conference call with reservations is not a "doubtful call." It's a conference call that you have to contact someone to setup or reserve the lines you need… all before you and your participants can get on the line. Reservationless conference calls are ones where you have the numbers and the codes, and can call in whenever you like. Depending on your provider, the difference between reservationless and not could be as little as ten minutes or even ten hours.

Some larger calls - such as those with fifty participants or more - require you to give a head's up to your provider beforehand. This isn't to inconvenience you; it's to make sure that there are enough telecommunications resources available so that you have a quality call. But if you are having that many people on the call to begin with, you'll know it in advance and can add a large conference call notification to your preparations.

With conference calls, sound quality is extremely important because basically, sound is all you've got.  On a business call, or any call for that matter, you need to be able to clearly hear the tones and inflections of your participants.  Anything that detracts from good quality sound needs to go.

The first thing to do to ensure good sound quality happens before you even get on a call.  Make sure your conference call provider does not use VOIP to transfer audio.  VOIP or "Voice Over Internet Protocol" has come a long way, but it still has a ways to go.  VOIP can have decent sound quality sometimes, but regardless of performance, the difference between VOIP and a landline is distinct.

A more proactive way to have conference calls with good audio is for you and your participants to get acquainted with the mute button.  People breathe, cough, sneeze; kids and dogs run into the room; co-workers stop by to say hi.  These things happen and while one instance won't derail your conference call, ten lines with ten things happening at the same time can be a deafening roar.  Even if you are occasionally speaking, mute yourself when you are not.  If you encourage everyone else to do the same, the current speaker will be heard clearly with no interruptions.  If you plan on having only one speaker and a rapt audience, consider using lecture mode.  This puts everyone but the speakers and moderators on a mute that they can't reverse.  If they have a question, they can hit a star command to let you know.  Then you can choose when you want them to be heard.

Another feature you should look out for to have great sounding conference calls is DTMF clamping.  When you accidentally hit a number while talking with someone on your phone you hear a loud beep.  In a conference call, a lot of commands are used by pressing telephone keypad numbers and you would think the endless beeping would be too much.  Well it is, and that is why you need to have DTMF clamping.  You won't hear the tones, or the beeps and your conference calls -- and their recordings -- will be uninterrupted.

No matter what a special event is for, you want it to be perfect. To ensure perfection, most of your work will be thinking of and handling small details. And for a big event, there will be a lot of details. Your smartest move – and the first one -- will be to get some professional assistance.

If you have a good conference call provider, you will be able to talk to someone on staff and have them help you create and manage a special event. Event planners are there from beginning to end making sure that everything runs smoothly. To help them help you, contact them as soon as you know you are going to have a meeting – even before you tell anyone else. The sooner you get the assistant on the job, the better they can help you.
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Here's where they can help you. Before the call, they can help you pinpoint exactly what kind of meeting to have, then get it setup for you. They can send out invitations or create the registration page for you. They even have access to professional graphic artists that can match your company's look and feel when creating presentation media for your meeting. Conference call assistants will send out email reminders to your participants. They can get a conference call operator for introductions and Q&A, and ensure they know what you want them to say.

Their work doesn't end with the call either. Conference call assistants will help you get recordings and transcriptions of the call and help you use them effectively. They can get reports and other statistical data about the call as well. They will also make the call available to participants who missed the original meeting.

There is a lot that goes into a good conference call meeting. Since you want the best for your participants, get an expert to help your goals become accomplishments.

There is a bad side to the goodness that is a large conference call.  It's good to get a large group of people together to bond or collaborate, but it can be very difficult sometimes to get that large group of people together.  Good organization and planning helps a lot in these situations.  Researching and picking the perfect date for the most amount of attendees goes a long way.  No matter what you do though, some people won't make it.  More often than not, it is because of something small; like they couldn't find the number.

There is a feature of conference calls that is quite impressive, especially if you have ever tried to get a hundred people on the phone before.  Blast dial is a "one-button" process that automatically dials all of the participants on a list at the same time.  It tells them why it is calling and prompts them to push a button to join.  If no one answers, the system calls again after a few minutes.

One of the best uses of conference calls in an office setting is the "instant" meeting.  This is the one where a quick conference is needed and instead of tracking down and rounding up everyone, you get them on a conference call.  The one flaw is that you have to let the necessary participants know there is an impromptu and instant meeting in the works.  With blast dial, all you do is start the call, select the appropriate blast dial list, and push the go button.  Within a minute, people all over your office – and not in your office – are picking up the phone and joining your instant meeting.

This is but one use of blast dial.  The point is, with this feature, you can take the conference call to the people – the many, many people if you choose -- instead of making them come to you.

Think for a moment; how do you get the word out about your conference calls? How do you fill them up with participants? If you don't already use registration pages, it may be a good time to do so. If you do use them, are you realizing their full potential?

Registration pages are an excellent, yet underused feature of webinars. A registration page is a web page with an online form that people can fill out with their contact information, business information, or whatever else you want to ask. People fill out this form, because after they hit “submit,” they get the time, date, conference codes, and dial-in number of a conference call.

There are many uses for registration pages other than simply collecting information. You can use them to get billing information if you are selling the conference call. If you aren't selling the call, you can put the word out and get a list of people who are interested in your products or what you have to say.

You should know that conference calls can be forever. Instead of doing your presentation over and over, you can record and make them available for playback. You spent enough time preparing your presentations; it should be comforting to know that they won't be wasted. Recorded conference calls can be accessed anytime by the people you choose.

Of course one way to choose those people is with a registration page. Include a registration page on your website and when customers are browsing your products and want to learn more, then they can sign up and get access to your recorded conference call. They get instant informational gratification and you get their contact information. Using a registration page in this way gives you a 24/7 lead generator. Even just casual browsers can be followed-up on by your sales staff.

Conference calls are simple to use, even with all of their features. Sometimes though, you just can't beat having a professional right there with you during a call. For example, if you have a big, important conference call, you want to make sure everything is perfect. You have to take care of your speakers, watch the schedule, handle questions, and moderate. An operator can help you stay on top of everything.

For a typical call with an operator, they will join you in pre-conference to go over any last minute details and answer any questions you may have. An operator can start the call for you, make sure recording and lecture mode is on, and even greet your participants and introduce you. Their helpfulness doesn't stop there; they will sit in the background and monitor your call. They look for lines with background noise and mute them, as well as assess the general sound quality of the call.

When you get towards the end of your call, an operator can really come in handy during the question and answer portion of the conference. All you have to do is announce it is time for Q&A. The operator will give your participants instructions for joining the queue, then mute and unmute each questioner in turn.

A major, intangible benefit to using an operator is the flexibility they can give you. While you can control a conference call using telephone keypad commands, you miss out on many options only available when you are sitting in front of your computer. An operator can do all of that for you, leaving you free to conduct your calls from wherever you like.

Back in the day, controlling conference calls was done by an array of telephone keypad combinations. And yet, despite everything you could do, it really didn't seem like it was enough. There's a lot to be said for those early controls, well, they were good enough that they are still around today to be used in a pinch. However, you can't beat seeing what's going on.

Given the chance, you should always use the dynamic live-call screen to control your conference calls. Not only do you have buttons for all the features, you are able to see -- in real-time -- who is on the call, how long they have been on, who is talking, who has background noise, or even what number they are calling from. All of that information in itself makes it worth it to use the live-call screen.

Combine this bevy of information you can glean, with the features you can control, and it becomes a much greater thing. For example, at meeting start time, you can see that not only are there half of your participants on the call, but an important one hasn't called in yet. You could take the call out of pre-conference, announce that there will be a delay, and go back to pre-conference, leaving again when your participants are all in attendance.

Or while the call is on, if you are doing a Q&A in lecture mode, you could spot a person with a question that you know you don't want to handle on this particular call. You can bypass them and take all the other questions. Try doing that with just keypad controls.

Desktop controls do require a computer, but are more than worth it for the control and professionalism that you receive in return.

The standard use of conference calls is to get a bunch of people on the phone at the same time.  Conference calls have been used in this manner for business meetings, vendor conferences, training seminars, and such.  Another great use is to use conference calls for marketing and advertising.  Normally this requires you to get the word out whether it is via your existing advertising or specialty emails, letters, or flyers.  Then when you hold the call, you have your customers plus many potential customers listening in.

Here’s a different way to look at networking your conference calls that was found in an article by Scott Ginsberg. The idea is to partner your conference calls with a local organization.  This form of networking is beneficial for your company twice over, as well as a group of your choice.  Potential organizations that would fit this idea are your local Rotary Club, Chamber of Commerce, or trade association.

A conference call for any of these groups could be done in several ways.  You could simply hold a call for them as a sponsor with the understanding that your company is mentioned at the beginning and end.  You could have your own conference call and invite their members to join it.  A mix of these two options is to have a call for both you and them, splitting time between the two.  This way you get all of your people and theirs at the same time.

The benefits of these kinds of conference calls include a larger potential customer group in their organization and the people they invite.  It also endears you to the organization and they will give you good word of mouth.

If you have never used a conference call to have a meeting, you need to think about what benefits you can gain. They are less expensive than a face-to-face meeting and waste less time, especially if the participants are not all in the same building. Whether it's your first conference call, or your hundredth, these following tips will help you have a great call.

• Get each caller to say hello and introduce themselves. It can help shy people get involved and generally break the ice.
• Ask questions by first saying the name of the recipient of the question followed by a short pause. This way, no one will be caught off guard or have to ask for the question to be repeated.
• Ask questions to the whole group in a way that will narrow down who will respond. For example, don't ask if everyone understands; ask if anyone doesn't understand.
• If you are using a speakerphone and especially if you've never met the person on the other end, tape their picture to the phone. It may seem strange, but it helps to bring the person into the room.
• Make sure to have a definitive ending to the conference. Close with a conclusion then thank everyone for attending. They will know when they can hang up and will appreciate your consideration.
• On a final note, consider the disadvantages of using a leather chair for your conference call. If, when you shift your seat, your particular chair makes a noise that can be misunderstood; you might want to consider a cloth covered chair.

A major part of any conference call is participant participation. You ask them to call in, enter in codes, give up personal information for identification purposes, and have them listen or speak as needed. It doesn’t always have to be this way. Well, your participants will always need to listen or speak, but you can take care of everything else.

Outdialing is a simple, impressive, and underused feature of conference calling. Basically, while you are in a conference, you can hit *1 to open a separate line for just you, leaving everyone else in your original call. From there, you dial the number of who you want to talk to. When you get them on the line, all you have to do is press *2 and both of you are put back into the conference call. Thinking ahead, there is a provision for if you get a wrong number, a machine, or simply don’t like the person. To return to the conference call by yourself, simply press *3.

Other than simply bringing someone into the conference, outdialing has a special role. It can help you help people easily join the conversation - especially those who are new to conference calls. You can save some money by outdialing to participants in other countries. Best of all, it can be quite dramatic when you say, "Well, let's pause for a second while I bring in an expert to give us some insight."