Allbusiness.com brings us this article – Eight Tips on Crafting Effective Voice Mail Messages. We live in a world of voicemail which has changed telephone prospecting in a profound way. Throw caller ID on top of a robust voicemail system and under-skilled salespeople are dead in the water.
The author states that voicemail messages should be approximately 15 to 40 seconds in length because:
If your message is longer than one minute, you’ll lose their attention. Putting a time limitation on your voice mail messages prevents rambling. As such, it forces you to laser in on the most compelling language to achieve your secondary objective, which is a return call.
Amen to that. Here is another suggestion that I have seen broken many times:
3. Don’t Give Away the Farm. If you tell them in the voice mail everything you’d want to tell them when you finally have the chance to speak or meet with them, then what’s their incentive to call you back?
I have to confess I have missed that suggestion on a few occassions. Usually breaking this 3rd rule leads to breaking the first one also (that I mentioned above).
There is one item that caught my attention. The author states there are 12 ways to contact a prospect. They are:
- office voice mail
- cell phone
- internal company advocates
- snail mail (letter or direct mail)
- in person
- fax
- networking/social function
- another vendor/salesperson
- trade shows/industry functions
- references
- concierge
Are you thinking the same thing? Concierge? That screams stalker to me. Maybe I am over-analyzing it, but I’m not sure how a concierge counts as a contact. Nonetheless, a good list for any salesperson to be aware of potential prospecting channels.