Voice Mail Suggestions for Sales Appointments

In my sales training classes I always ask my class how many sales people always leave a voice mail message when they find themselves in the prospect’s voice mail system. You might be surprised (because I know I was), to learn that over half of my classes report that they DO NOT leave a message! They don’t want to leave a message but instead will try again to get through to their prospect at another time. The problem is that if they are in voice mail today, they will be again tomorrow!

Years ago I had a lady in Human Resources for a large national company who was referred to me by the President of another company. He told her that he was going to have me call her, so when I got into her voice mail, I thought nothing of it and left a message referencing my conversation with the President. She never called me back. I left a second message a few days later, then a third and after many repeated attempts, I left a sixth message, each one referring to why the President asked me to call her. I was very frustrated. I had even called the President back to see if he did in fact talk with her – which he had.

Immediately after my sixth message I had hung up the phone and shortly thereafter, my phone rang. When I answered it, I was shocked to hear the HR lady on the other end. What she told me shocked me again, but I have always remembered the conversation to this day. She said, “If I don’t I don’t personally know the person calling I do not call them back until after they have left me six voice mail messages. I feel that if they aren’t that interested in speaking to me, why should I be interested in speaking to them?”

This is a bit of an extreme, but it does tell a useful story. We do need to leave messages for our prospects giving them a reason to call us back. Tom Freese in his book “Question Based Selling” talks about the Charlie Brown Syndrome. No one ever saw Charlie Brown’s teacher, but we all know what she sounded like, “Waa, waa, waa.” He says that is exactly what most voice mail messages sound like when left by sales people. They all sound alike. Instead, he says that we need to pique the interest of our prospect by leaving questions in our voice mail messages instead of making statements. Questions will cause our prospect to want to know more information.

Suppose that you sell lighting products (fixtures, bulbs, etc). And suppose further that by re-lamping a facility a customer could save a lot of money based on the types of bulbs and fixtures that they use. One way to leave a voice mail message about this idea is to make statements such as:

“We are the largest supplier of electrical fixtures in the Upstate.
We carry a wide variety of lighting products from GE to Sylvania.
We can provide you with the latest in lighting technology that can save you money.”

This approach will probably not get a prospect to call because it’s similar to what they hear all the time, every day. But instead, what if we left a voice mail message like this:
“The reason for my call today is to answer any questions that you might be asking yourself such as:

How much of my monthly electrical bill is directed toward the lighting in my plant?
Is there a way that I can change my current lighting program in order to increase the overall lighting affect in my plant, while decreasing my monthly electrical bill at the same time?
What would my ROI be if I totally re-lamped my entire building?

If you have been thinking about any of these questions, then you and I need to meet because my company and I can help!”

As you can see, this is a totally different approach – moving the focus away from us and our company and products, and shifting it over to the customer and their problems. We need to think of the various problems that our product or service can solve and then create some questions for a voice mail message that get prospects thinking about their own situation. This shift in focus may cause the prospect to want to learn more and therefore increase the chance that they will call us back.

Next time we’ll focus on using email to obtain sales appointments. In the meantime, you can contact me at john@mccannmotivations.com or by phone at 864-968-0262. Until our next meeting, I wish you good selling!