Waiting for the call

In a follow up to the “what do you do if you have five minutes to kill” e-zine of a few days ago, I would like to speak to you today about one of those other time wasters we don’t realise we have. Phone calls.
 
Now there are two sides to this problem:
The first are those calls you need to make. Especially those phone calls that you know won’t go at all well. For example, trying to persuade a utility company they have made a mistake, and that you aren’t going to pay the money up front so they can “credit” the next two dozen or so bills. Or those sales calls you need to make. What happens is that you find all sorts of excuses not to pick up that telephone and make the call. You may even find yourself getting stuck into one of those major projects you’ve been putting off for a while, just so you can conveniently forget about it. And we all know you can’t possibly call between 12 and 2 because it’s lunchtime and they’re not likely to be at their desk. Or you do call between 12 and 2 and hope they are at lunch so you can pretend you are solving the problem.
 
So what can you do when you are faced with that kind of “problem”? Well there are two sides to that one too!!
 
The first is this – you have to determine what it is you really don’t like about the person/company that you need to speak to. If you have had bad dealings with them in the past, then chances are good you are going to feel apprehensive about speaking to them again. One of the things that I have noticed (and this goes for all conversations that you need to have, not just the ones on the telephone) is that if you are polite to the person on the other end, if you say to the person (especially if the person isn’t responsible for the problem) “look I know this isn’t your fault, but I was wondering if you can help me with a problem I’ve been having” – the person on the other end, having been screamed at all day by other irate customers will do more for you than if you had gone in all guns blazing.
 
Once you know why you don’t want to talk to them, pick up the phone and call them anyway. You’re going to have to do it at some point, so why waste time worrying over a conversation you haven’t had yet. Chances are good that it won’t be as bad as you had anticipated. And even if it is, at least it’s over and done with.
 
The other side to both parts of today’s e-zine questions are those phone calls you are waiting for!
 
Imagine that you have been waiting all day for the phone to ring, you applied for a job and you want to know if you’ve got it, or you’re waiting for a call from your partner. What happens when they don’t call you when they say they were going to call? If you are anything like me, you run a stream of conversations through your head, you “worry” about the problem, the issues, the last conversation that you had with them and you wonder if you could have done it better…
What happens really is that your productivity goes down the drain. You spend most of your time alternating between looking at the clock, and the telephone. You do don’t you?
 
So what can you do to rectify this kind of situation?
 
You could always instigate the telephone call!
“I was just wondering if there had been any progress with…”
“Hi hunny, was just thinking about you, and thought I’d give you a quick call…is it OK to speak now?….”
 
Then you can get back to doing what you should have been doing in the first place. Alternatively if you can’t (for whatever reason) pick up the phone, then accept that sometimes other things take priority…remember those phone calls you didn’t want to make this morning? Well they may be feeling the same way about other things that they have to do, and the phone call to you may not be high on their list of competing priorities.
 
It’s up to you of course how you handle the later conversations that you have, but one piece of advice that I have for you, from years of experience of telephone work is that you never start off a conversation with a bad attitude, because that just makes things worse.
 
So what else can you do whilst you are waiting for the phone to ring? Well you know those nice goals, plans and items on your “to do” list. Well get stuck into one. I find it very hard to worry and “do” at the same time.