Plan ahead for an efficient and effective meeting. In the conference invitation, inform participants of the purpose, agenda and time limit for your meeting.

During the meeting, encourage participants to stick to your agenda and time limit!

Forward the Audience Invitation to each individual invited to attend. This will provide them all the information they need to quickly and easily enter you're audio and web conferences.

Distribute any documents ahead of time, or better yet, plan a web conference for sharing documents and applications.

Dial in to your conference 5 to 10 minutes before the start of your meeting to prepare yourself and to prevent your guests from waiting for you on hold.

If a speakerphone is used, high quality equipment contributes to the audio quality and the success of the conference.

Position the speakerphone so that all participants sharing the room can be heard.

If a headset is used, ensure the mouthpiece is adjusted correctly.

Start the conference with a roll call to confirm attendance and inform all participants of who is on the conference.

Advise participants who are not actively speaking to mute their phones in order to eliminate background noise.

Operator assistance is always available by pressing *0 on your touch-tone phone.

Ask participants to identify themselves when speaking. When asking questions, address individuals by name to avoid confusion.

Host and participants should avoid placing the conference call on hold if their phone system plays music on hold - the music will be played across the conference call. Use the mute key instead.

Try to avoid extraneous noise (side discussions, paper shuffling) that may interfere with participant's ability to hear during the conference.