Have you ever had the need to set up a conference call?  And have you ever been stymied by how to do it on the office phone or your cell phone?  Do you know if your home phone can do conference calling?  I may have the answer to these questions for you in today’s post.  It’s called rondee, and yes, it’s absolutely free!

With rondee you can set up scheduled conference calls or you can create on the spot conference calls.  You can have up to 100 callers on the call and you can record the call.  You can email invitations and you can track the invitations so that you know who has accepted (and who hasn’t!).

There are no downloads, there is nothing to install.  You log on to rondee and set up a free account.  Thereafter, you login to setup the date and time for your call. You are then prompted to add the details of the call and to enter the email addresses of the people that you want to invite. (Or you are given a pin number to distribute to your invitees via text messages or even by calling them yourself and giving them the log in info).  They simply dial in at the appointed time, enter the pin number and they are connected to the call.

Here is what the email looks like that your invitee receives.

Not much too it and notice the lack of advertising for anything but rondee itself. If they click on the link in the email, they come to a web page where they can accept or decline.  If they accept, they can add comments and even invite other people as well.  It’s all pretty easy to follow, and you get notified of everything they decide to do.

To get started, just go to rondee.com and create an account.  You don’t have to do it this way, but if you do create an account, you get to register your phones.  A benefit of registering your phones is that ever time you use the phone to call rondee, it recognizes your phone so that you don’t have to use a pin number to get to the call.  Another benefit of registering is that you can create an address book of frequently used email addresses.  This will save you time when setting up a rondee. Once you have done that, you go the web site and follow the steps as illustrated here.  Pick a date, pick a time, invite attendees, choose a topic and you are done.  You can even download the details into your Outlook or iCal calendars!

I see several uses for this for real estate agents.  The first and obvious use is if you have clients who are at different locations and you need to talk to them both.  One might be at work and the other at home.  Just setup an on demand rondee and you are good to go.  You can add in the lenders, title, inspectors and so on.  And, don’t forget that the call can be recorded.  If you do decide to record the call, all parties to the call are notified that the call is being recorded and all parties can later download the finished call.  (You will need a free 3rd party converter to convert the call from the GSM format to WAV or MP3, but that is all explained on the rondee website, complete with links to the converter software)

Another use is in prospecting.  Have you ever wanted to set up a First Time Homebuyer seminar, or a short sale seminar, or an investor seminar but were concerned about the cost?  In today’s world of high gas prices, doesn’t it make sense to do a teleseminar?  You could use rondee to do just that.  They have a two tier pin system where some invitees get one pin that allows them to talk (you and your presenters for instance) and another pin that you would give to attendees who could only listen.

Given that you can record the calls, you could create your teleseminar with just you and your other presenters.  Do a seminar, record it, download it and convert it to MP3 and then put it on your blog or web site.  The possibilities to use this to promote yourself are almost endless.

Remember, it’s free.  All you need to enter into a call is a telephone.  Cell phones work just fine, too.  Please don’t whine about the fact that you have to call a San Diego number.  If that is a huge problem for you, you can pay rondee for the use of an 800 number!

Tell me how you would use this tool to enhance your business by leaving a comment so that we all can benefit!