It depends.
In today’s rush-rush, email-driven business world, voice-mail messages take longer to deal with than emails. That’s why people rarely return unsolicited calls—i.e. cold calls.
A voice-mail message takes more work than email: It has to be listened to, noted, and returned. Be honest, when you receive dozens of voice-mail messages in a few hours (on top of all the emails that you have to deal with) how many cold-call messages do YOU ever return?
You can do two things:
1. Leave more voice-mail messages until you finally get your contact live.
This could be very dangerous. By leaving repeated messages, you’ll wear out your welcome even before your contact gets to speak with you live…and before you get to tell him your whole story.
Our policy at York Consulting is to leave one—and only one—message. If the call isn’t returned, the contact’s name and number goes back into the calling cycle. So by the time we finally reach him/her live, s/he’s unlikely to remember that single message we left before.
2. Or make your voice-mail cold-call message more compelling.
A dull message will get a predictably lackluster response.
To entice our contacts to want to consider doing business with our clients (to set an appointment), York Consulting prepares its message scripts as carefully as our live scripts.
The format that gets the best results for us is borrowed from my favourite sales book, How to Become a Rainmaker by Jeffrey J. Fox, www.foxandcompany.com available from Amazon, Chapters/Indigo and others. In just five pages, Fox tells you how to create foolproof voice-mail message strategies and tactics.
Here’s York Consulting’s script outline:
Good afternoon Mr./Ms. ___________.
This message will take 40 seconds. My name is Jay Plesner from York Consulting. We’re in the business of lead generation and appointment setting for sales teams. Some of our clients include AAA, BBB, and CCC. (Chosen for the contact’s markets.)
Companies that hire us find they’re frustrated because they can’t get their salespeople to make enough cold calls, or; Their sales team or channel is wasting too much time on un qualified leads.
To see how we could help your company would take about 15 minutes. My number is area code 416-410-2222. Let me repeat that number: area code 416-410-2222. If you can’t reach me, I will follow up. Thank you very much.
Need some expert, one-on-one help with your message?
Phone me, Jay Plesner. If I’m not available, leave a message (unscripted)!
I promise to call you back.
