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Jonathan's Top 5 Reasons Why you should use conference calling And how using conference calling services can save you money, as well as links to the cheapest/most affordable conference call companies |
Lots of people have yet to catch on that using a conference calling service for their company (and family in many cases) can be cheap and save a lot of money and hassle. So I've established this page, to offer you the top 5 reasons and situations in which you should use a conference call service for your company or family. If you're looking for ways to save money making affordable calls from your computer to a phone, otherwise known as VOIP, click here. |
Some people
who have visited this page have told me that they didn't want to have to
search through the whole page to find the cheapest conference
calling services, and ways to make cheap conference calls, so I have provided links to the cheapest conference call providers I
know of at the top of the page in addition to lower on the page. If
you know of cheaper conference call services, please
email me
so I can share
those affordable services with the other visitors to this page. |
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1. Improved communication
through conference calling
"What we got here, is a
failure to communicate!" Conference calling can drastically improve communication within a company (or family). What this can mean for you is improved productivity, increased profitability, and fewer mistakes and misunderstandings. Why? By providing your staff (or family) with a way to get everyone on the same page with regard to what's going on, conference calling offers you a way to approach a topic with a shared vision, and simply communicate the goings on of the day, week, or month. |
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2. Save time using
conference calling Using a conference call can save you time and money. Let's say you want 16 people to get some information that is going to take you ten minutes to tell them. I've outlined the time and money of using regular calling on the left, and conference calling on the right. |
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Traditional calling 16 phone calls 160 minutes
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Conference calling 1 phone call (with 16 people) 10 minutes $1.49 * 16 legs $23.84 |
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Perhaps you've noticed that in this example, it's more expensive in the numbers you see to use conference calling. That's only true if you look at the exact numbers here, but I'll show you why it's not true. I'll go on to show how conference calling saves money, but let's just look at the time factor here. In traditional calling, you've been on the phone for 160 minutes. That's 150 minutes more than you were on the phone using a conference call. With conference calling, instead of making 16 different phone calls for a total of 160 minutes, you have made one phone call, conferenced, for a total of 10 minutes. Think of what you could have done with that extra two and a half hours!!! If you figure your time at $10/hour, the traditional calling just cost you $33 ((2 & 1/2 hours * $10/hr.) + $8) , while conference calling cost you $23.84. What this means is that you have saved yourself 2 1/2 hours on the phone. You have also saved your employees 2 1/2 hours on the phone. What could you do in 2 & 1/2 hours? (Just for comparison, the time you save using conference calling, in this situation, is about the time it takes to fly from Denver to L.A.) | ||
3. Save money using
flat rate conference calling Let's go back to the above example so that you can see how conference calling saves money. |
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Traditional calling 160 minutes Let's say that after your 10 minutes, half of the people you've been on the phone with have questions. Let's say that 8 of your people now have questions for you, and 8 of your conversations take 10 minutes more (80 minutes). 80 minutes At this point, you've spent 240 minutes (4 hours) on the phone.
Let's say also that within your people you called, 8 of them have questions for each other. They call each other and each of them spends an additional 20 minutes on the phone. (8 * 20 = 160 minutes) 160 minutes
Let's say four of those eight decide to carry on conversations, for quite a while, on your phone bill, about unrelated work items: the weather, the sports scores, recent political and news events, etc. (Think it doesn't happen? Listen in your office for a week. You'll hear at least 3 of these conversations that will go on for 45 minutes or more, particularly in larger corporations.) Let's say that each of these conversations lasts 60 minutes. (4 * 60 = 240 minutes) 240 minutes $8 At this point, (including the time they've spent talking with you,) your employees have spent 1040 minutes on the phone, and you've spent an additional 240 minutes on the phone. 1040 + 240 = 1280 1280 minutes = over 21 hours 21 hours of person time at $10/hr. = $210 Total cost of call = $210 + $36 = $246 |
Conference calling 10 minutes $1.49 * 16 legs $23.84 Let's say again that after your 10 minutes, half of the people you've been on the phone with have questions. Let's say that 8 of your people now have questions for you. One of the 8 asks a question, and it's the same question 2 others had. They hear your answer, so you don't have to spend the time to answer their question. Let's say you spend an additional 5 minutes answering questions. 14.9 CPM * 16 * 5 minutes $11.92 Let's say that now, within your people you called, 8 of them have questions for each other. They each spend 30 seconds to 1 minute resolving issues on this same call. Let's say that takes another 5 minutes. $11.92 No one carries on extra conversations about the weather or latest sports scores, because you are there on the conference call to help keep the conference call moving forward. The conversation is over after 20 minutes, issues are resolved, and everyone is on the same page.
-------------------------------------------------------- $23.84
At this point, everyone on the conference call has spent only 20 minutes on the phone. 20 * 16 = 320. 320 minutes = 6 hours 20 minutes 6 hours 20 minutes of person time at $10/hr = $63.34
Total cost of call = $63.34 + $47.68 = $111.02 | |
As you can see, if you factor in the actual time saved by conference calling, using conference calling services can save you an incredible amount of time, which translates into profit in the long run. This does not even mention the headaches you avoid by using conference calling and stopping the giant game of telephone tag, which leads to miscommunication and misunderstandings. This is often what goes on when you don't use conference calling and conference services. This telephone tag can lead to more phone calls equaling more phone bills, more lost time, and more lost productivity, all of which lead to an even bigger increase in the actual cost of traditional 1 to 1 calling. So, if that doesn't make the case for why you should use cheap conference calling, I'm not sure what will. | ||
4. Communicating with family There are lots of reasons to use conference calling for families too. Perhaps your family is spread all over the country, but you like to organize get-togethers and touch base a few times per year. Wouldn't it be great if you could all get together on the phone and organize at the same time, rather than having each person make a separate phone call just to communicate the same information and stories? Cheap conference calls can gather together family and friends for holidays, special events or just a chat – no matter where they are in the world! You can use cheap conference calling to bring together all of the people you care about in one conversation, and you can set up this conference call for anytime you want. |
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5. Conference calling helps you to be prepared Conference calling can help you to be prepared for next month's sales presentation, can get you ready to meet people in many different locations, and can improve communication. All of these things will help your company or family to be well informed and prepared for what is coming up. This often allows you to be more helpful towards one another. One thing to remember is that nobody likes it when a conference call is poorly set up, so you can click here for a checklist of what you should do to be prepared for your next conference call. |
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