How would you rate your telephone skills? Do you make a favorable telephone impression on your clients? Are you turning them off? Do you know?
    It’s amazing how many intelligent business people just don’t realize when they are offending clients with their boorish behavior on the telephone. It’s almost as if they have never heard of manners or consideration.
    Compared to a face to face situation, you have very limited feedback of how the client is reacting to you on the other end of the line. On this basis alone, you need to be on your very best, most polite behavior, so what you say and do is not misinterpreted.
    To improve your telephone etiquette, know and avoid these 48 deadly mistakes that are unfortunately made on the telephone every business day.

• Answering without identifying yourself
• Searching for a pen and paper when taking notes
• Mumbling with low voice volume
• Talking too fast
• Talking to someone in the background
• Talking to someone on another phone
• Cell phone cut-outs
• Being unprepared
• Putting clients on hold too long
• Flat, low energy voice
• Saying wait a minute and then hearing a social conversation
• Saying can you hold for a minute, and then making them wait for 3 minutes
• Talking “over the customer” (at the same time they are speaking)
• Putting them on hold to take another incoming call
• Coughing into the phone
• Eating during the call
• Rustling papers into the ear piece
• Dropping the phone on the desk or floor
• Not listening, acting distracted
• Asking the client to hold multiple times
• Not having vital information at your fingertips
• Not knowing what the return call is in reference to
• Returning a phone call without leaving your phone number, and the reason for the call
• Message greeting that is incomplete
• Hurrying the client
• Sounding disinterested
• Answering in a gruff, annoyed voice, as if you’ve been disturbed by the call
• Minimizing what the client says
• Finishing the client’s sentences
• Not knowing how to operate the various buttons/functions on the phone
• Turning away from the phone as you speak to get something, thereby losing voice volume
• Cutting the client off mid-sentence
• Trailing off your volume at the ends of sentences
• Endless transfers that never get the caller to a live human being
• Yelling or speaking to someone in the background
• Not covering the phone when there is excess noise
• Allowing too may rings before answering
• Transferring calls into limbo
• Chewing gum or making noises
• Talking at an even pace, and then ending so fast as to be unintelligible
• Continuing another conversation in the room as you pick up the phone to answer
• Mispronouncing the client’s name, title or company name
• Transferring calls to the wrong people
• Not returning calls promptly, or as promised
• Talking too much, listening too little
• Using the person’s first name without permission
• Being unfocused and jumping from topic to topic
• Making a business call sound like a personal call
• Transferring the caller abruptly, without explanation or warning

    Avoid these telephone etiquette pitfalls. Make an intentional, positive telephone impression. Guard against accidentally creating the unseen, often naturally negative assumptions your clients can make, if you give them the chance. Instead, be sensitive to your client’s entire telephone experience. Mind your telephone manners and I bet your clients will certainly not mind helping you grow your business.