Five Steps to Getting the Most out of your Phone Call or Zoom Session
An abridged version of this appeared in Business Insider
How can you get the most out of a phone call / zoom?
You’ve moved from sitting in adjacent offices or trading desks to calls and video meetings.
Your natural workflow has been seismically upended
Here’s what I’ve learned from running my business over the phone for the past five years:
1. Get clear on your role
Who is the Client and who is the Service Provider. For a banker, it’s obvious you’re serving management. In PE, sometimes you’re helping the CEO, and other times you’re tasking the CFO.
Play your part on each call:
a) If you’re the client, focus on getting what you want. It’s your duty to avoid a wandering discussion
b) If you’re the salesman, take charge and shape the conversation up from by saying
“by the end of this call/meeting, what would you have liked to learn”
2. Stick to the hour
Do not run over. If more time is needed, find a time the following day. When both parties psychologically understand the time period, like in any sport - people show up to play hard each minute.
With an unending clock, discipline is lost and both sides grow weary like an Isner Wimbledon match
3. Stop looking at your email/texts
People can sense when you disappear momentarily.
When you glance away from the conversation, it disrupts the rhythm of the connection between you.
4. Use this as an opportunity to hear the other person
Our finance culture puts a premium on meeting in person, so the natural thing is to think zoom is great.
An incredible thing happens when you remove the visual distraction of other people. You’ll notice your brain is so used to visual stimulation that you’ll try to find something to look at. Again, no looking at texts and emails.
Instead, try listening carefully to the words and intonation (tone and speaking rhythm) of the person on the other end of the line. As you listen to the words and tonal clues, blur your eyes a bit, and attempt to visualize what the other person looks like:
How might they be sitting?
Are they stressed or relaxed? Urgent or calm?
Are they at ease with you or not sure how to interact with you?
As you practice blurring your vision from a fixed point, you’ll start to create an image in your head and get the look and feel of who’s on the other end
5. Assertively “check-in” to make sure the call is on track
At the beginning of the call, you can say
“In the next 30 minutes, what would you like to cover?”
Towards the end,
“just wanted to check, in our last 5-10 minutes today, is there anything else you wanted to cover” “
Did we cover everything you need to know for today”
“What didn’t we cover that’s critical to moving forward”