When I was laid off once before, I remember spending hours and hours on the telephone at the career center cold-calling everyone I knew, company after company. You know? It was a grand waste of time. I learned that the hard way.

Our job consultant told us that networking was the best thing to do and to call everyone on our contact list. Well, I did just that, and it was a huge waste of my valuable time. Telephoning for the sake of telephoning is not very productive.

Instead, find those individuals who can provide you with good leads, advice, and help. They are the ones with whom you want to spend your time on the phone. Do strategic phoning, not telemarketing. People hate telemarketing and telemarketers.

Make your phone calls work for you. You have more important things to do than just "shoot the bull" with friends and relatives across the country. Do you realize that some people actually do that? Because they can use the career center phones for free, they call all of their friends and relatives throughout the country just to chitchat. What a waste of time ... not to mention taxpayers' money!

Make Your Calls Count

Every person is predominantly either a talker or a writer. If orally oriented, you would probably prefer to network face-to-face in person or by phone instead of by e-mail. Making phone calls is good, but just making phone calls for the sake of making phone calls is not good. Cold-calling is a waste of time. We must focus on making calls to the right people in the right places at the right time.

In a CareerJournal article, Perri Capell said, "Perhaps it's not just lack of time that's holding you back, but lack of confidence. It's unnerving to make calls when you doubt the person you're about to contact wants to hear from you. However, when that nice e-mail comes back, the anxiety melts away. Take some time and try it."

David Hale, Ph.D., PCC, a Corporate Performance Consultant, University Professor and Professional Certified Coach, is an internationally recognized speaker, author, and seminar leader. He is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of the DHI-Communication. For more than 20 years, Dr. Hale has trained professional coaches, ministers, clinicians, executives, teachers, government agents and private individuals using the coaching methods and skills that he has designed.

David is the author of The High Performance Entrepreneur: 12 Essential Strategies to Supercharge Your Startup Business published by iUniverse in 2008. His newest book, Straight Talk From Corporate America's 10 Most Requested Speakers and Trainers, is written with the intent to make his personal and business success skills and principles widely available. David's work and books have been featured on national television, radio, and print media.

Dave has twenty-three years' experience in design and delivery of training programs for public, private, government and non-profit centers. He also has twenty years' experience in coaching and training individuals and groups in state and federal agencies, and profit and non-profit corporate settings as well as coaching and counseling individuals on a private, fee-for-service, basis. After twenty years of developing and leading coach training programs David founded DHI-Communication, an international coaching and training consultancy, specializing in communication principles. Dave is widely regarded as one of the top business coaches for Web 2.0 Entrepreneurs. He can be contacted at http://www.HiPerEntrepreneur.com or DrDave@HiperEntrepreneur.com

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