Let’s not kid ourselves. The vast majority of phone calls go to voicemail.
Because of this reality, if you intend to use the telephone to develop sales prospects, then you have to be able to use voicemail effectively.
The biggest mistake people make when leaving a voicemail message as part of their prospecting strategy is they leave a message that has zero value to the person receiving it. The prospect doesn’t want to know how wonderful you are and a bunch of other blather about what you and your company do.
Think about this for a moment.
Did the prospect wake up thinking about how great it would be if you were to call them? No, the prospect has things to do, and that right there is the silver bullet you need to have.
Your message can become the silver bullet when it contains a value statement that benefits the prospect. This means you need to be able to summarize in a single sentence one key piece of information they will find of value.
Here are a couple of examples:
If I sell insurance, I might leave a value statement that says something about how I have some new information from an employee survey showing how employee attitudes toward insurance have changed.
Another example might be if I’m selling computer services to businesses, I could say something with regard to a new study showing how companies are spending less on computer hardware due to changes in how they use what they have.
The idea with the value statement you leave with the prospect is to not detail what it is you do and how great your company is. The objective is to share one sentence that lets them know you have something of value that could help them.
- The total length of the message should be no more than about 15 seconds.
- You leave the value statement, your name and company, plus your phone number, and that’s it.
Will the customer return your call when you leave a message like this? Sorry, but the answer is “not likely.” But what they will do is hopefully begin to see you as somebody who is different from the vast majority of other salespeople.
Use the message you leave as just one part of the process of helping to show the prospect you can be seen as a valuable asset to helping solve their problems.
Copyright 2012, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.
