Teleseminar Management: Keep a Rein on Runaway Participants
As a teleseminar leader, it’s important to maintain control over the call from beginning to end. How well you lead will greatly affect how your participants perceive you. And this can mean the difference between them becoming your client or steering clear of all future involvement with you.
It’s important to set the proper expectations when you first market the seminar, and then clearly communicate and demonstrate your plans throughout the actual event. You need to deliver on your objectives while meeting the expectations of your participants.
One thing that can cause much stress for teleseminar leaders and irritation for attendees is what I call the “runaway participant.” This is someone who demonstrates a behavior which is disruptive to others, selfish, or otherwise inappropriate. Some of the typical behaviors might include:
- Not putting the phone on mute even when it’s mentioned before and during the call. Their noisy background disrupts the ability of others to hear the call content.
- Calling in using VOIP technology even though it was clearly stated before and during the call to not use it because it causes interference with functioning of the bridge system.
- Monopolizes the conversation with long-winded stories or anecdotes, or with content that is clearly self-promoting and/or off topic.
- Tries to demean, degrade, or undermine the authority of the teleseminar facilitator.
Criticizes, demeans or otherwise disrespects other participants.
These are just some of the rude behaviors I’ve witnessed on calls over the years. But, as a teleseminar leader, it’s important to have strategies to mitigate the effects of such participants. Here are three tips to create a better teleseminar:
- Publish your “rules of engagement” when it comes to participating on your teleseminars. State the obvious in your emails that you send out beforehand: Use a land-based line to call in, no VOIP phones (Skype, Vonage), call in from a quiet location, use your mute button or use these key controls (specify them) to mute your phone, respect the comments of others, and other similar “rules.” While many people are familiar with teleseminar etiquette, there are still new people being introduced to this technology all the time. Make sure to educate them about how to make the most of their experience.
- Make sure you know how to mute all participants using the various telephone or onscreen control keys that are available with your teleseminar management system. This can usually get rid of all disruption. This, of course, doesn’t work well when you’re looking for class participation. In that case, you can provide instructions so individuals can unmute their phones, one at a time, to make comments. While it’s more time consuming to do this, it can work. If you’re doing more of a presentation-style teleseminar, simply put everyone on mute for the duration.
- At the beginning of your call, repeat your teleseminar rules of etiquette. If you are planning to invite participants to share during the call, make sure that you tell them to keep their comments short and that you will need to stop their conversation if things go too long or get off topic. Mention that you’re doing this for time management purposes and then invite them to email you later to share the rest of their thoughts.
Taking these three simple actions will help you create a better experience for everyone. I’ll cover more tips in a future posting.
About Tara Kachaturoff
Tara Kachaturoff provides coaching, consulting and implementation services related to teleseminar design, development and delivery. A professional speaker, writer, and television producer and host, she enjoys helping her clients to express themselves at their very best through using teleseminars and related technology.