Those of you who utilize teleseminars or teleclasses in your business have no doubt encountered a fair number of glitches and technical problems with the medium.

I have to tell you, these continual technical glitches drove me crazy. And not just because I’m a “do it right or don’t do it” kind of person. No, they particularly bugged me because I used to own a telecommunications company. We specialized in ethnic (Chinese and Indian) dating. This was back when everyone was using 1-900 numbers – remember that? This was before the internet and you’d pay $1.99/minute to listen or respond to personal ads, or chat with others.

My point is: We would often have 200 people or more on the line at the same time…. and guess what? No glitches, no echos, no one got dumped off the line, no one had trouble dialing in. So if we could do all that nearly 15 years ago, why can’t teleconference bureaus today provide glitch-free service?

Well, I’m thankful to report that I’ve made good headway in solving this problem and I’m happy to share my tips and tricks with you. Whether you’re a newbie to teleseminars, or just incredibly frustrated the way I was, the following should go a long way to helping you capitalize on this technology.

And of course, feel free to share any gems of wisdom you’ve discovered in the Comments section below.

Troubleshooting For Teleseminars

• Make sure your phone service is the traditional fibre optic land line. Do not use cable or internet telephone service providers – they will not provide the line quality needed and glitches are guaranteed. I had thought I was okay using a cable phone service, but no, after discussions with VoicText I switched to my local, landline phone company and presto, no more echos, cut outs, or suddenly getting dumped off the call.
• Make sure you instruct your guest(s) to call in only from a land line. Cell phones have too many echoes, delayed transmission, background noise, etc.
• Only one moderator/host needs to operate the controls to put you in and out of ‘lecture mode’. This may seem obvious, but for some reason I thought that both my guest and I had to push *5 to put us both into lecture mode (where the other participants are muted, and only we can be heard). But no, if you both push *5, then what happens is one of you has put you into lecture mode, and the other one has taken you out! So, only ONE host/moderator should be pushing buttons during the call.
• If you’ve done all the above and you still get an echo during the call, remind your participants to press *6 to mute their line. If this doesn’t work, ask them if anyone is simultaneously listening to the webcast (which is 15 seconds delayed – like a radio show – so sounds just like an echo) and ask them to either turn it off, or press *6 to mute their line.
• Use an old-fashioned corded phone (with or without headset, your choice) for your teleseminars. This is because cordless phones emit as much radiation as a cell phone! Personally, we do not have any cordless phones in the house as any direct radiation is too much, in my opinion. Also, I don’t want my kids irradiating their growing brains, which are particularly susceptible. For more info on this:
  http://www.listen2yourgut.com/blog/gut/officials-warn-against-cell-phone-use/
• Set up a back-up communication system with your teleseminar guest so that you can communicate with each other in case something goes wrong. The easiest way to do this is to exchange cell phone numbers and have the agreement that if anything goes wrong, you call each other on the cell (since your regular phone line will be engaged in the teleseminar). This was invaluable to me when I interviewed an MD and he was 20 minutes late! When I called his cell to find out what was happening, he informed me he’d had a medical emergency at the hospital, so was just driving home now. Once I told my listeners what was going on, they were all content to wait for him and we just chatted to pass the time.
• If you use VoiceText as your teleconferencing bureau, they (and many other paid bureaus) have an operator help feature – so be sure and let all your callers know at the beginning of the call that they can press *0 for help at any time during the call.
• Have your line set up to play music until the moderator/host dials in. If people call in a few minutes early and hear nothing, they’re likely to hang up. Music lets them know that they have connected successfully and that something will be happening soon.

Well, there you have it, the benefit of my experience doing teleseminars to date! Hopefully this will help you to avoid the excruciating downtime that dead air and technical glitches can result in – not to mention the stress!

Don’t forget that if you’re a newbie to teleseminars, or if you want to find out how to maximize your revenue, or streamline your marketing funnel using teleseminars, then this is the course that I recommend. It’s solid information without the hype that a lot of internet marketers include and very reasonably priced.

soar higher,
Jini

If you haven’t started hosting teleseminars yet, you’ve no doubt heard the buzz about how they can be great tools for your business to help you accomplish the following:

• Position yourself as a leader or expert in your field.




• Use teleseminars as a sales tool by giving away lots of free information on a topic and then presenting a special offer to a product that will give them either more important info, or step-by-step instructions, or do-it-for-them tools, etc.




• Build a library of top quality information that can later be packaged into a course (eg. 5 CD Set on Time Management – consists simply of you interviewing 5 different time management experts on past teleseminars) or offered as premium product/service on your monthly membership site.




• Share cutting-edge or crucial information with your list or clients – increases your reputation, their trust in you and your integrity.

Obviously, a whole article could be written about each of these points (and maybe I’ll get to that in the future!) But for now, if you want a referral to a good teleseminar course that will expand on each of the point above and lots more (how to use them, how to set them up, how to maximize sales, etc.), this one is very detailed and can get you hosting your first teleseminar within a week.

Setting Up Your Teleseminars

There are plenty of free teleconferencing services available. Just do a Google search on “free teleconference” to pull up a whole list of them. If you are really broke, or, you do not charge for your teleseminars, then this may be a good way to go.

However, if your reputation for excellence is important to you, or if you are charging participants, then you definitely should NOT use a free teleconferencing service. These free bureaus often use internet-based lines and the quality can be really poor. You are almost guaranteed to have glitches on these calls at some point – hey, they’re free, what do you expect?

So, if you want to provide consistent, good quality calls, then use a good quality teleconferencing bureau that, yes, you have to pay for. However, as I found out, just because you pay for the service doesn’t mean they will provide good glitch-free service either! Since I’ve been in business online for the past 9 years, I have contacts with a number of the “big players” in internet marketing. So I tried a bureau that well-known guru Dan Kennedy / Bill Glazer uses for their calls – and I know they have hundreds of people on a call, so I figured the bureau would be a good one, right? Wrong. Not only did I have some bad calls using them, but when I talked to the boss of the company after a particularly bad one (a total of 20 minutes of glitches and I have the recording to prove it!) His only solution was to not charge me for the call! This is not a good sign. I don’t want free teleconferencing, I want GOOD, reliable, consistent service.

Anyway, without going into all the different ones I tried, VoiceText Communications is the bureau that I’m happy with and still use:

Now, not being sexist or anything, but this company is woman-owned and perhaps that’s why they’re so diligent….

When I had some glitches on calls with VoiceText, they worked with me to help me figure out what was going wrong and what we could do about it, to ensure they did not recur.

Next, I strongly suggest you use this teleseminar web host in conjunction with your teleconferencing bureau so that you can provide your customers with the following benefits:

1. People can listen in via webcast, rather than having to dial in and pay long distance charges, if they prefer.

2. Participants (or whoever you give the link to) can access a replay of the call immediately following it and download the mp3 file if they wish. Note: Recording each teleseminar is automatically included, so you don’t have to pay the teleconferencing bureau extra to do this for you.

3. Participants can submit questions via the “Question Box” online, before or during the call – so you can get lots of feedback and interaction with your listeners. People are often too shy to speak up during a teleseminar and they much prefer being able to ask questions this way.

4. You can send all your customers (or list) to an “Event Page” that gives them all the info they need for each teleseminar. The great thing is, this is a template page that is pre-formatted, so you just enter your specific info for each call. No need to get your web programmer to design a special web page for each event! You can customize the look and feel of the page though, to reflect your style or colors.

Where can you get all this? It’s provided by this company Instant Teleseminars, which offers a free trial and very cheap monthly rate. Here’s a video that shows you exactly how it works (I really recommend you watch the video as it’s the fastest way to understand exactly why and how this will benefit you):

http://InstantTeleseminar.com/VideoDemo.asp?x=1801174

Or, if you prefer, here’s the written info on how it works and how you can use it in your business:

http://xiosoft.com/instantTeleseminar/specialinfo.asp?x=1801174

Okay, now you’ve got everything set up to deliver great quality teleseminars to your clients, that are easy for you to set-up and administrate!

In my next article, I’ll get into some of the common glitches that can happen on a teleseminar, why they happen, and what you can do to prevent it.

live strong,
Jini