Voicemails and Cleavage: What should they have in common?

Answer: They both should arouse curiosity if they are done properly.

Crude analogy? Perhaps!

Is the desired end result the same? I say yes!

When you are cold calling, prospecting, or making sales calls (Use whatever term you feel appropriate!), chances are you don’t talk to that many people. We track campaign stats here at Connect 5000. What I’ve found consistently is that you will get voicemail approximately 90% of the time. For every 100 calls that my reps make, about 90% of them get voicemail. You hope to talk to 10 people and the goal is to convert 3 to 5 of those live people into appointments, further discussions, meeting, demo, webinar, etc. In essence, you have a 95% failure ratio. This is consistent across various verticals, company revenue size, employee size, and geography.

Unless your marketing team is causing your phone to ring off the hook, you must supplement your pipeline with outbound sales calls.

There’s endless debate on whether you should leave a voicemail or not. I say yes. If you don’t, you have a 0% chance of the prospect returning your call. If you do leave a message, your chances go up to 1%.

If you’re going through the trouble of calling someone, you might as well leave a message. I’d send an introductory email first. Then follow up with a call.

3 short guidelines to leaving a voicemail that gets a call back or returned call.

1. Short

2. Sweet

3. To the point

Executives get bombarded with sales calls every day. Keep it brief and say something to get their attention and arouse curiosity.

For example: Hi John, this is Ray Ruecker with Connect 5000. I’m following up on the email I sent recently. I noticed your LinkedIn profile and thought it might make sense to talk. Please call me back at 913-481-8941. Repeat number.

Get the prospect to start thinking and mind going. Who is Ray? Who is Connect 5000? What email is he referring to? Was the email important? I wonder how we’re connected on LinkedIn.

Even if they don’t return your call, you want to drive them to go to their email box and look for your email. Some people to prefer to communicate by email. Others by telephone. Either way, touch them both ways and you’ll get responses.