Is a publishing professional with more than twenty years of

WhaT’S WrOng WiTh “BUZZ OFF”?
It  won’t  win  you  many  friends—or  customers,  of  course.  But 
beyond that, it may be inappropriate. You may want and need to 
have the conversation being offered you.
You have the right to decide.
That’s the key to effective time management in a sentence. You 
have the right to decide how you spend your time, which is to say 
that you have the right to decide what you’ll do this minute.
To make an intelligent decision, you need two critical pieces 
of information:
  1.  What does the caller want to talk about?
  2.  How much time does the caller want to talk about it?
When you have this information, you can decide if and, if so, 
how long to talk.
You have the right to ask.
In fact, you’re not very smart if you don’t.
There are lots of nice ways to do it. “How may I help you?” is a 
good one, since it focuses on the needs of the caller while eliciting 
the information you need. You can no doubt come up with several 
more to fit various situations. If you need to, write them down on 
a 6 
×
 9 card and keep them by the phone as a reminder and a cue 
card until you feel natural asking.

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