Speakerphone Cons

Avoid using a speaker phone if you can when you are speaking over a web conference. I've heard many presenters claim that they must use their speaker phone so they can keep their hands free to run their computer in the web conference...please read my previsous blog on using a headset.

If you must use a speaker phone, you will have to be very careful as ambient room noise can be picked up by a speaker phone and magnified for your listeners 10-fold. Do a sound level check with your body location in relation to the speaker phone and then don't move the phone. If you slide the phone, or even bump it, your listeners will get a rude noise. Turn your cell phone off. I was recently on a conference where the speaker turned his cell phone to vibrate and then sat it on the table next to his speaker phone. You guessed it, the cell phone went off and although the speaker only heard his normal vibrate noise, we thought we were being buzzed into a high rise apartment building.

There are as many old speaker phones in use today as there are contestants who don't make it to Hollywood at the American Idol auditions. If it ain't broken, don't have to buy a new one, right? Not true in this case. Speaker phone technology gets better every year and old technology gets older every year. Small single microphones that don't pick up audio evenly from all directions which transmit low fidelity sound can dull what was otherwise a shining presentation.

Are your presentation notes sitting right in front of you with a nice staple in the upper left corner and as you go from slide to slide, you are going to flip the top page over to the back? Be careful. That particular action is frequently picked up by the speaker phone. Here’s how you avoid this: First, don't staple your stack of papers. Then slide the top sheet noiselessly off to the left. If you’ve read my previous blogs you’ll know that I also want you to sit with good posture in your chair, holding your head upright and speak in a relaxed professional but conversational manner which mean you shouldn’t be reading a script right off your notes anyway but if you absolutely have to have notes, use the above method of moving through your papers.