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How to Take Good Notes

Written by: Ron La Vine

Article Overview: When a conversation is moving fast over the phone it becomes critical that you are able to take good notes. This means the name, title (get it exact), extension, email, fax, assistant, backups, peers and subordinates for anyone that has an influence on your sales cycle.

How to Take Good Notes

When a conversation is moving fast over the phone it becomes critical that you are able to take good notes. This means the name, title (get it exact), extension, email, fax, assistant, backups, peers and subordinates for anyone that has an influence on your sales cycle.

Many of us write one line directly underneath another. The problem with this is that you cannot go back in and fill in a piece of information that you learn later on which applies to a subject above.

One method I have found useful for doing this is to put a line down the center of your paper. Take notes on one side and leave the other side open for filling in notes that refer to items above.

Use arrows down to keep track of who refers you to whom and use arrows up to keep track of who reports to whom. When you reach someone who is particularly helpful, put a star by their name so you can call them back to ask for more information.

Practice truncating or shortening the words so you can write as faster. You would not write out Database Management System. You would write DBMS instead. For application development, you want to use app dev. After the call, you can go back and write out your abbreviations. Being able to take notes quickly will also make it easier when it comes time to summarize and confirm what was said during the call.

Assistants go in parentheses and hard to pronounce names go in brackets i.e. [pro-noun-suh]. If you spell out difficult to pronounce names phonetically (like how they sound rather than the way they are written) you will not mispronounce them in the future when speaking with that person.

In summary, the ability to take good notes will have a direct effect on your being able to recall what took place during a call. The ability to keep track of small details will separate you from other sales reps and will result in more sales.

© 2005 by Accelerated Sales Training, Inc.

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Article Tags: abbreviations, application development, arrows, backups, brackets, database management system, hard to pronounce names, information practice, parentheses, peers, pro noun, sales reps, subordinates, suh



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