ManageSmarter.com offers some excellent suggestions for making your voicemails far more effective. Their 15 tips include a couple that I cannot stress enough:
11. If you can’t say it briefly, don€™t say it at all. Voicemail is not “story time.” Leaving a long message is an invitation to have the entire message skipped. The optimal voicemail message is between 8 and 14 seconds.
Few things in life are more tiresome than a rambling voicemail. My view is if the topic required a call to discuss, then mention the topic in one sentence, leave your contact info and hang up.
And this gem:
13. Leave a “P.S.” at the end of your message. A “P.S.” is a very quick, additional piece of information that will connect with the person.
This is an effective tip that I have heard, and used before (by the way, it works for emails and letters too). In written form, most people tend to read the P.S. before the entire body of the writing. Obviously, that makes the P.S. line quite impactful.
One tip I read recently that is not mentioned in this article is slow down when you say your phone number. State it twice is a good tip, but make sure you are not rushing through it. I have received the odd message where the person stated their phone number one time and I swear they accelerated their speaking pace when they got to the number. I couldn’t catch it and I did not return the call.