In this webinar, we look at the subject of what to do (and not do) with voicemail boxes when sales prospecting.

 

Getting a prospect’s voicemail box is the most likely outcome.
It is difficult to get a hold of prospects. You can call a prospect dozens of times and it would not be crazy for you to get his or her voicemail box on almost every call.

The reality is that prospects are just busy. If you are calling at a decision-maker level, they might not even be at their desk the majority of the day. So when you are calling and calling, you may think they are avoiding you but they are just rarely at their desk and their phone is just ringing away with no one there to answer it.

The prospect is not likely to return your voicemail message.
When thinking about what to do with the prospect’s voicemail box, it is important to be aware that it is not very likely for a prospect to return a call from a voicemail message that a salesperson leaves after a cold call.

This might sound negative but this is a safe assumption for a few reasons:

  • Prospects are extremely busy
  • Prospects get a lot of calls from salespeople
  • Prospects receive a lot of voicemail messages from salespeople
  • A voicemail message is a difficult place to build interest
  • A prospect may feel like it is the salesperson’s job to call back

Use a voicemail message to leave a commercial.
If you agree that the prospect is not likely to return your call from a voicemail message, you may factor in this assumption into what you say in your voicemail script.

For example, if it is a safe assumption that the prospect probably won’t call us back just from the voicemail that we leave, then we might not want to spend that valuable time to say something to the prospect asking them to call us back. We could then spend the 20 to 30 seconds more focused on educating the prospect on who we are and why the prospect should talk with us when we call him or her back.

Use some sort of logic for when to hang up and when to leave a message.
One key benefit to not leaving the prospect a voicemail message is that it allows enables us to call the prospect again much sooner than we can if we leave a voicemail. As a result, it is helpful to use some sort of call cadence that is a mix of calls without a voicemail message and then sporadically leaving voicemail messages at strategic times.