Thanks to a really nasty little virus, face-to-face interaction with people — colleagues, clients, partners, anyone — has suddenly become a lot harder. You can’t have meetings. You can’t present. You can’t attend conferences, or go out to lunch, or meet for coffee. What can you do? You can email people. You can share content. And you can talk on the phone.

But as is the case with driving, sex, laundry and a lot of other daily human activities, most people aren’t actually very good on the phone. I make my living as a copywriter for law firms: I have all the time in the world to arrange the words I use just so. But the phone is a real-time, improvised performance, and you have to select and deliver your words on the spot. The bad news is that this isn’t easy. The good news? It’s not hard to get a lot better. Here’s how: