As a productivity consultant, my job is to help you learn to change your work systems to allow you to be more productive in less time. Because of that, my articles are short, to the point and devoid of frills. Your time is valuable and you don't want to waste it reading a bunch of excess fluff...you just need to know what to do to get produce more in less time. If you do not fully understand, or need more information, you go to my web site and fill out the contact form and ask your question in the comments section.

The telephone can be a tremendous time saver as well as a time waster. The important point is to make it your servant, not your master....you must take control, or suffer the loss of wasteful consequences.

A good idea is to schedule time to deal efficiently with all phone calls as a group, not take them individually, at unexpected times. First, you should avoid the knowledge of an incoming call. Choose a method that suits your personality and your work situation.

1. Get your secretary to hold all your calls. Ask for a report or paper message slips at a time of your scheduling, once or twice each day. Allow yourself enough time to return those which are important, or to give instructions for your secretary to handle responses.

If possible, your secretary should be located at a distance from you that you never hear the phone ring, or hear him/her talking on the phone.

Use voicemail/answering machine. Should be located where you cannot hear it and phones should be silenced. Create a courteous voicemail message that simply explains that in order to work effectively and serve each person with undivided attention, you return phone calls between (for example) 10:00 and 11:00 A.M. And 3:00 to 4:00 P.M. You will also find it is wise to encourage the caller to contact you via email, instead. Of course, you check email no more often than twice daily, just before or after you handle your phone calls.

Of course it is important that customer service and order taking phones should be very responsive. You can farm this task out to a company which charges per minute and specializes in these areas, such as:

1. Jim Buck at Direct Connect at 402-758-1200. Just follow the voice mail instructions to speak to Jim

2. Live Ops www.liveops.com utilizes home based reps for lower cost

3.West Teleservices these folks can be found at www.west.com

4. InPulse at www.inpulseresponse.com Offers all services necessary to put together a complete direct marketing campaign and handle responses.

Establish a second phone number (I use a pre-paid cell phone) that you share with certain special people...those you can trust to call only for important business, who will not call just to "see what you are doing", or for personal reasons. This allows the few truly important calls to get through to you directly. Most of my friends, associates and customers do not know the number for my cell phone. For those important calls that do get through at times other than your scheduled phone time, be courteous, efficient and businesslike.

Avoid answering in a social manner like "Hi, John, how are you?" Get right to the point: "Hi, John, it's good to hear from you; what can I do for you?

If John gets chatty you might say: "John, it's a really busy day and I have an appointment/meeting/phone call to make in three/five minutes. How can I help you?"

If John is really, really chatty, you might say: "John, it was great to hear from you, but I am late for a meeting/appointment/phone call, I've really got to go."

Summary:

1. Keep plenty of space between yourself and the phone. Turn the ringer off.

2. Delegate: give your secretary specific instructions and leave the phone to him or her. Then get a report at your scheduled phone time

3.Establish a special "urgent" line. Give this number to a few select people you can trust to respect your time.

4. When you cannot avoid the phone, or if a call slips through your defensive perimeter, be businesslike, and to the point. Be familiar with the purpose and scope of a call before you answer or return a call, then stick to the program, take care of business and move to your next scheduled event.

5. Encourage callers to use email instead. This will allow you to better prepare responses to questions, etc. and allows more effective use of your communication time.