How to leave effective voicemails that get a response

So voicemails, should you leave them?

If so, how long should they be?

What should you say on them?

And what chance have you got someone calling you back?

In this week's episode, I'm going to cover all the things you need to know about voicemails and whether it's worth leaving and what can you can do that can increase your chances by 9% of getting someone to call you back.

Welcome to the Diary of a Sales Expert Podcast.

My name's James White and I'm on a mission to help business owners and sales professionals all over the world get incredible sales results.

So thanks for listening and let's get started.

Welcome back to this week's podcast.

So this week we're going to do a little short, sharp podcast for you.

It's going to help you, I think, in a number of areas.

And one of the questions I've had from salespeople relates to the big subject around voicemails.

So we're going to talk this week just about voicemails and how to, you know, someone's asked me the question, how can I leave an effective voicemail that that gets a response.

So I'm going to talk about voicemails.

I'm going to talk about should you leave a voicemail, what not to say, what to say, how many times to leave your number and some ideas to get them to call you back.

And we'll talk through these elements, give you some insights that you can use in your sales day to day activity.

So here's the thing.

The reality is if you're in a cold, if you're in a prospecting role where you've got to phone people on an outbound basis regularly, you know that you're going to get voicemails.

And those voicemails may be at someone's desk or it may well be that they are voicemails to leave on a mobile phone.

And sometimes I'm always asked the question should I or should I not leave a voicemail?

And the honest answer to that, in my opinion is 100% yes, you should.

Now, I'm a bit maybe different as a business owner, but I will listen to all of my voicemails and if someone rings me up and I talk to lots of business owners in the same way and most of them will say the same thing, that they will always listen to their voicemails.

And I think when you're a salesperson, your job is to try and make yourself visible and your RAM visible to the person that you're trying to engage with.

And sales Takes time.

And so I always want to ensure that my brand or my name is in their mindset or they'll have here or when they meet me in the future they might think, oh, that was that person that left me a voicemail.

So do I always leave a voicemail?

Yes, I do.

One of the things that people also then say to me is what should I say in the voicemail and what should we include?

And I'm going to talk through some things that you can say and what not to say.

But just going back to the point around voicemail, someone said to me what happens if I'm going to make 80 dials a day or I've got a call center?

I mean I run a call center business so I know exactly what's involved in making lots of dials and engagements.

And someone says, oh, it's not worth, I'm just going to try and ring numbers and get hold of people.

That's a mentality and a mindset.

If you really want to go for that trying to engage with lots of people, then you can approach that way.

But my particular approach to selling and the way we do things in my team at growth resourcing is we identify a target audience and then prospect that audience specifically rather than just spray and pray.

And so for me, if I know that there's a particular personal target client that I want to engage with, then leaving a voicemail to them and operating a multi channel campaign with that person is really important.

So yes, so I think you should leave a voicemail and here's what not to say.

Here's an example of a voicemail I hear all the time that is a waste of time.

Oh, good afternoon James.

My name's so and so and I'm culling from such and such a company.

The reason for my call today is we would like to understand a bit more about you and what you do and to get to know you and your business.

We do this, this, this and it goes on and on and on and on.

Okay.

And that voicemail is literally it probably I've listened, I think my timing.

So I once timed it and it was like a minute and 45 that someone listened to the voicemail.

And the only reason I listened to the end of it was to time it just to.

To do things like this and to do content to show that it doesn't work.

And the person droned on and on and on.

In the end I was, I forgot even who actually called me and what it was about.

It was that boring.

So what I encourage you to do is not to be in a position where you leave very long, long convoluted voicemails that are very boring, for want of a better phrase, and that make the other person, the other side, detract away from the value that you can bring.

So don't leave long convoluted voicemails, but do leave a voicemail and I think a voicemail, if you can time it and read out what you're going to say.

And you should always prepare what you like with anything that we're going to say in sales, we should practice and prepare things.

I think if you can have a voicemail that lasts no more than 30 to 40 seconds, maybe at the lower end of that 35 seconds, that is going to be a really ideal voicemail message to share.

And what I would encourage you to do within that voicemail is to speak really clearly and slowly and specifically about who you are and what you do and try not to rush it.

A number of people also leave a voicemail and go, hi so and so.

And it's like you can't understand them.

So here's an example of how I would leave a voicemail message.

Good afternoon Darren.

I'm calling in regard to X, Y and Z.

Thanks.

And I would put the phone down.

Now if we look back at that voicemail I've just left and try and sort of dissect it a bit more.

What you'll notice is that I tried to make the first thing, the tonality quite clear and quite strong in how I was leaving the message and I said my name and my company.

I certainly said my name really, really clearly because I want them to remember it's James White that's left the message.

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Now back to the podcast.

What I've also then done is I've also left my number three times during the course of that call or that voicemail.

And I've probably done that.

If I timed it, I can even time it on the podcast.

My timing would imagine be 30 seconds.

Because in the unlikely event that someone is going to want to call me back and the reality is people will talk about this issue in a moment.

People generally don't call back on voicemails.

It's not their job to call you.

If you're in sales, then one of the biggest frustrations is when people leave don't leave a number or you haven't remember or re listen to the voicemail to try and remember what the number is.

So you'll notice I left the number twice and then I left it one more time at the end.

What you'll also notice is what I did is I was ringing in relation to X, Y and Z.

And that X, Y and Z should be a short, sharp message.

It might well be.

I was ringing in relation to giving you the ability to close more sales deals.

I was ringing you with regard to the sales plan for your business.

I was ringing you in regard to podcasting for your business.

Whatever it is that you're offering, it needs to be two or three words that, that you can use.

Cause the whole idea is if you're doing this on a cold basis, you want the other person.

You don't wanna trick them, but you want the other person to think, oh, what's that relating to?

Then what's that relating to?

So if you tell someone that you're trying to sell them something on the voicemail, I think the chances of them picking up the phone and ringing you back are Next, unless your voicemail happens to land on their desk at the right time, I think it's less than 1 to 2%.

But if you leave a voicemail that talks about a particular problem that you know they've got in their business, it can leave them a bit of intrigue, thinking, oh, who is this?

What's this relating to?

So one of the things I encourage you to do is to be very, as I say, my name is James White, I'm ringing in relation to helping you drive a sales growth plan for the business.

And what that does is it enables you to be really clear and indicate to the other person what it is you're ringing for, but also leaves them with a curiosity and intrigue as to what this is about.

So do I think you should leave your number more than one time?

Yes, you should.

People say to me, what's the purpose?

What's the point?

I've also got, you know, people say to me, I've had, oh, my mobile phone will automatically send a message to someone of the number to call.

It will.

But people, you know, I don't know about you, but I've had probably 10, 15 text messages today.

People get text messages all the time, but what they do is they might keep their voicemails, then you can keep voicemails for a week or for a month and they might be listening to them again.

And so if they don't press delete, they might think, oh, who is that person?

I might have a chance to have a look at that person's company again.

Who are the sales growth academy?

They'll search online if they get a chance, whereas if it's a text message, the chance size can be forgotten in their phone and they're not going to see it.

Or missed calls, for example, people already get lots of missed calls per day.

So these are some simple ways in which to try and encourage or to hopefully get people to phone you back.

But like I said a moment ago, and just to reinforce, the chances of you getting a voicemail back are much lower.

But there is a way of increasing this and that's to combine the voicemail alongside an email and a social message at the same time.

And one of the things that I encourage or work with my clients on is to implement multi channel campaigns that don't just involve a call, but involve an email, a video, a social message, a series of different message engagements.

Over a period of, say 20 days.

That covers multiple elements.

And the reason this is important is that again, some stats showed that I think you have your chance of getting a voicemail returned increase by 9% if you send an email within six days of your first call.

So let's say you leave it.

What does that mean?

Say you leave a voicemail for someone to say what I've just said and then follow up with an email with them three days later.

Or the other way around.

You send them an email first, then follow up with a call because they've seen your message, it go into their inbox from your name and your company and then they see the voice and then they see the social message.

They are more inclined, if it's something they're intrigued by, to then call you back than if you just do the voicemail on its own.

So we've got to remember in sales, you know, sheep dipping one off, things don't work.

It takes people time.

It takes.

Google showed across zero moments of truth that it takes over 7 hours of content across 11 interactions across 4 media for people to trust you enough to want to work with you.

And it's the same when we're prospecting and trying to engage to find new clients.

We've got to continue to knock on the door in order to basically find someone the other side.

So I really encourage you to if you want to get a response on your voicemail, voicemails on their own, your chance of reply backs are limited.

People just get them all the time.

They're thinking of being sold to.

And by the way, it's not your customer's job to phone you back.

It's your job as a salesperson to think, no, they're on my target list.

I'm going to ring with them and I'm going to communicate with and engage with them.

And I'll be honest with you, if I had three or four voicemails from someone that was trying to speak to me that showed in their emails and in their social messages that they were being really thorough about understanding me and my challenges and what I'm doing and left me three or four voicemails, would I call them back?

No.

But I might save their number on the phone and think, oh, that's the person related to this.

Do you know what, I don't want another voicemail.

Let me take the call and just answer this and deal with this there and then.

So even though you may not get a voicemail back a call back, you may get the chance to speak to that person, if you've done it in a multichannel approach.

So these are simple things to consider when it comes to voicemails.

You should be able to leave voicemails, as I say, 30 seconds, 40 seconds max.

Someone says, oh, I do 100 calls a day, I can't afford to do that.

I disagree.

That's probably 20 minutes of voicemails.

Those voicemails, if you leave them in 100 people, you're leaving a message for.

You never know how many people then are thinking about you and your brand.

If they're searching your name and they're searching your company, what they're going to find.

So definitely leave voicemails, definitely make them short and sharp.

There are a couple of things you can do and I'm going to share these with you, but be very, very careful about doing these.

Just if.

Because I think if you're not careful, it can actually pee people off.

Please call me back rather urgently regarding X and then just give one word.

Or you might say, I need to speak to you urgently.

My telephone number is X, Y and Z.

So what that will do is if you don't even put your name and your number of the company, it can make people think, oh, what do you mean they need to speak too urgently?

What's this about?

Now they'll pick up the phone and say, I had a missed call from you, a voicemail from you.

And if you then go into sales mode, be careful that they then don't go, you tried to trick them, but that method can work.

The other thing I've also seen people do is they've leave.

So what it's done is it's basically meant that the person, or they might have even said the number.

That's.

And then they've cut off and they've ended the phone call then.

So all the other person has got is, hi, it's James on this number.

So they're thinking, oh, I don't know who that person is, let me call them back.

Those two methods can work.

But again, just be very Careful when you do that.

People can feel that you've cheated them or tricked them, which you want to avoid.

So look, getting voicemails sent back, leaving voicemails, I should say, is definitely something I encourage people to do.

Just have a think about doing it in the right way.

You don't want to do it in a way that annoys the other person.

But just remember that if you do increase the, if you do want to increase your chance of success, combine it with an email or combine it with a social message or multi challenging approach and I think you're going to be in a far better position to hopefully get someone to come back to you.

So I wanted to interrupt the podcast just because I want to ask one small favor.

If you really enjoy the podcast, could you do me a favor and just give us a review?

Just head on over to your podcast network and just basically put in a review and tell other people what you think to it.

Now back to the podcast.

Right.

So that's as I said, it was a short, sharp episode this week.

By the way, let me know what's your experience of leaving voicemails.

Have you ever had someone come back to you after leaving a voicemail that's made you think, hey, this was worthwhile?

I'd be interested to know for sure.

But what I want to do is to talk to, as I always do, about inspirational stories.

And my inspiration story today is a guy called Joe Rowlands.

And literally he.

Their kayak.

And Joe was in a position where he dragged him to say, dragged him to safety from the water and carried out cp, cpr, which saved his dad's life.

And I think when you think about someone like that, you know, at the age of 13, to do that and to have the peace of mind and, sorry, the presence of mind and the courage and the, and not be able to panic and to do that to save his dad's life, I think is an incredible inspirational story.

So Joe Rowlands is my inspirational story this week.

His dad's very happy he did what he did because he's alive still as a result of that.

But I think if you look at stories like that of someone that was able to obviously, after being given training, be calm enough to do what he did, it's an inspirational story.

Joe Rollins, you get my huge admiration for what you did.

And you've been inspiration to me.

When I saw that, I thought wow.

And hopefully it can be the same inspiration to lots of other people as well that they can, regardless of their age or what they do, stay calm and think laterally and think logically.

Then you can go overcome any situation that you have so that was it for this week's podcast.

Hope you've enjoyed all about Voicemails.

If you do like the podcast and think it's helpful for you, please share it with another colleague.

If you've got colleagues in the sales environments, you're thinking they'd love to hear a bit more insights on what to do around voicemails.

Leave the message with them as well.

Share the podcast episode with them so we can help them as well in the same way.

But that's it for this week and I hope you've enjoyed.

And if you have, I'll see you next week.

Take care.

Bye bye.

So thank you so much for listening to this episode.

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