I often receive questions from other nurses, informaticists, entrepreneurs and students about things on their mind and what they should do or how should they do something. If one person is having the question, there are likely others as well. So last month I decided to use Facebook live as a method of addressing these questions on a weekly basis on my page: Tiffany Kelley PhD RN
In many of my videos I mention that there were some core business skills that I had to learn when I left bedside nursing and transitioned into a more business oriented nursing role (e.g., specifically informatics and IT).These business skills included appropriate use of email, excel, powerpoint, and many others to start.
Another skill is how to have an effective phone meeting with someone.
I wanted to offer some tips on how to structure a phone call so that you can effectively utilize the time you have with that person. This can be applied to any situation!
Many people will offer you 15 or 30 minutes to start which is NOT a lot of time so you want to make sure you can use the time effectively and also make sure that person felt his/her time was well spent too!
So…if you are going to reach out and request to speak with someone, the best way to get the conversation going once on the call is to:
1. Set the stage for the call by telling the person why you are calling.
2. Briefly introduce yourself and/or company.
3. Ask the person to tell you a little about themselves to fill in any gaps that you might have from your prep research before the call (ps…you should be prepared for the call) .
4. After this, you can move on to the true purpose of the call – why you wanted to have the phone meeting.
5. It is also best to end the call with what to expect next and who is responsible for those next steps.
PS…If you need to for the first few calls, put this outline together and fill in the blanks to keep track of where you are so that time does not run out on you.
?It is a simple outline to follow that really does work well! ?
I hope this helps some of you who might be starting to get going with a new venture, adventure, etc. – whatever it might be!
Have a great day and let me know what you think!
Best,
Tiffany
