There are many consumer products that we are allowed to try out before purchasing. We test drive cars, we try on clothing and footwear, and we can even taste small samples of food at the grocery store. So why not do the same for conference calling solutions?

Fortunately, most conference call services provide a free trial for their services. Many others provide demos. However, theres really no substitute for using a service as you would in an actual business setting.

One thing to be aware of is that many of the free trial conference calls require that you provide your credit card information when signing up for the free trial. They will not charge your card during the free conference call trial period. However, you then will need to cancel your subscription before the trial period expires or your card will be charged for the next billing cycle of the conference call service. This usually isnt a problem provided you remember to cancel the service if you dont wish to become a long-term subscriber.

Once subscribed to the free trial conference call service, you should take advantage of the opportunity. Put the conference calling service through its paces. Spend some time on the vendors Website learning about the features of the service. Then recruit some participants from your organization to help evaluate the service by taking part in a conference call.

It helps to have a checklist of the features you want to test out. If the service allows you to share applications over the Web, then make sure that the participants are set up for this. Make note of how intuitive the user interface and instructions for using the service are.

Also observe how responsive the data stream is, especially if using video as part of the conferencing service. Of course a great deal depends on the bandwidth of your connection to the Internet, but the load on the conferencing services servers will also influence responsiveness. Time of day and demand will also impact throughput.

In order to keep things manageable you should probably take on one free trial conference call evaluation at a time. It may prove helpful to setup several conference call sessions with each service to get used to the service and try out all of its features. Of course, if after the first session you realize that the service just wont work for you, then by all means, cancel your free trial and move on to the next free trial conference call evaluation.

As more businesses look to increase opportunities for collaboration with employees and partners and to better connect with prospects and customers, they will be turning to conferencing solutions. It pays to make the investment in time and effort to evaluate potential conferencing solutions. The service provider offers the free trial conference call, but its up to you to take advantage of it.