Skyping Your Way to Sales and Savings

Skyping Your Way To Sales and Savings

By Terry L. Brock

Skype is the way to communicate. It is a way to make phone calls over the Internet without a phone. It is the subject of much excitement among consumers and much fear with the traditional phone companies.

The service is so good that eBay--- who is no dummy when it comes to spotting a good buy--- purchased Skype recently for $2.6 billion. This is something that every serious marketer needs to pay attention to now.

If you don’t already know, Skype is a service that enables you to make phone calls to anyone on the planet. If they have a Skype connection also, the call is free. There is no charge to download and no charge to connect to another Skype user. So, where’s the money?, you might cynically ask. There is a lot of money in the add-on services and the potential for future services.

SkypeOut is one of those extra services. I use it regularly to make calls to regular phones around the world to clients in the USA, England, Ireland, Japan, Australia and other countries. The cost is about 2 cents/minute to a landline in the US, UK, Australia, Canada and other countries. On a mobile phone the cost jumps to 20 cents a minute so be careful. If you’re making a lot of calls from a hotel room, Skype is better than most cell phone plans in the US and should be used when you can get high speed access to the Net.

And that is a key to using Skype effectively---you have to have high speed access. The faster the better. Make sure you have strong connections on both sides of the call to get optimal performance.

SkypeIn is another service you can purchase. It provides the ability to have a presence in another country or city. With this number your colleagues can call a regular land-line number and it will ring through to your computer---wherever you are. This can give you an instant presence for business purposes in a given city. For instance, I do a lot of business in London, England so I have a Skype number based in London. That can make it easier for my British and UK clients to reach me. You could have a number in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago or elsewhere to immediately have a business presence there.

The quality of calls on Skype, when it works, is the best you’ve every heard. It is CD quality. The sound is usually spin-tingling when you hear it for the first time. Yes, it is that good. However, there are drawbacks as well. Depending on the traffic on the Net and your connection speed, you can get what the technicians call “latency.” That means that you have a few seconds between the time you talk and the other party hears you. This delay causes lots of interruptions and talking over each other. Other noises that come through sound like something out of a science fiction movie with your voice morphing and changing for a few seconds.

Skype is great for making calls to colleagues and those that know you’re using Skype. However, be aware that is it analogous to making calls on a cell phone when you have a bad connections at times. It won’t be perfect always. Sometimes it won’t work because of network problems. Again, think of using a cell phone when you had a bad connection.

Voice mail with Skype is one of the greatest tools for busy marketers that need to get their message out in a hurry. Most of us talk faster than we type. So, when you can leave a voice mail message, without bothering someone, it is a great way to communicate. Skype gives you the ability to leave a quick high-quality voice mail message to another person so that you don’t bother them at an inappropriate time. And, since Skype is still new and in that novel category, the chances of your message being received are much better. This alone, is a reason to use it.

A new service they just added is called Pamela. It provides extended services for an additional fee. For US$21.50 you can have the full version for recording calls, leaving customized voice mail messages and doing “Pamcasting” which is called podcasting elsewhere. This gives you the ability to create your own customized radio broadcast that can be made available to others. I’ve used Pamela and had good results although the latency factor is accentuated. Good audio editing software cleans that up and makes for high-quality recording.

Video is on the horizon. Think with me on this one…. Knowing that eBay just purchased Skype, you can see the applications. If you have a video of a person selling a widget and can see the actual widget, sales can increase. Therefore commissions to eBay can increase. The world of communication and video is about to change dramatically. Now is the time to investigate this technology and become familiar with it.

For the serious-minded marketer, Skype is something you should consider and implement. The reason is not just that you’re saving money. I often say that you should use Skype even if you have more money than Bill Gates. The quality of the calls (when it is working, which for me is about 95% of the time) is outstanding. To see a video I created about Skype, send an e-mail to Skype@terrybrock.com and you’ll get an autoresponder back with a link.

Check it out at www.skype.com and you can download your free software to get it running. I’ve heard the future and it is Skype.

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Terry Brock is a marketing coach who helps business owners market more effectively leveraging technology. He shows busy professionals how to squeeze more out of their busy days using the right rules and tools. He can be reached at 407-363-0505, by e-mail at terry@terrybrock.com or through his website at www.terrybrock.com.

Copyright © 2005, Terry Brock, All Rights Reserved Internationally. No portion may be reprinted or used in any way without prior written permission. Permission granted to Biz Journals to use in regular publication.