How to Leave Better Sales Voicemails - 4 Part Voicemail Script

#voicemails #coldcalling #sales training

Learn to leave better sales voicemails. There is a lot of debate about whether or not to leave them. I recommend you learn to leave great voicemails.

Benefits of Leaving Voicemails
I promised not to spend too much time debating this sales religious war, but I think it is important for you to understand why I’m a fan of voicemails.

1. We’re trying to build a relationship with new prospects and unknown inbound calls with no introduction (i.e., voicemail) just seem rude in my opinion and each new anonymous missed call in phone degrades the opportunity to build that new relationship.

2. Training your sales voice and pitch is essential. Voicemails are a great training ground for honing this part of your sales craft. This format forces you to be concise and challenges you to be effective where the prospect is in total control.

3. Voicemail is one of the easiest places to ensure that your message gets delivered. Emails are often filtered, blocked, or just ignored. A voicemail is definitely going to be read. You read that right, with voice-to-text most people are reading voicemails, which in my opinion makes it even more important to leave voicemails.

That’s my top three reasons to leave more voicemails. Now let’s discuss how to leave voicemails that get callbacks.

How to Leave a Voicemail
The first step in upping your voicemail game is actually learning how to leave a good voicemail.

Chances are that you don’t leave a lot of voicemails these days. Your friends and family all know your number and it’s pretty common etiquette these days to just hang up without leaving a voicemail. This, of course, only works if they have your name and number is on their phone and you’re pretty sure that a missed call will get a response - call or text.

All that is to say, you’ve probably a little rusty on leaving voicemails. So, here are some mechanics you need to keep in mind.

1. Wait for the beep
Give yourself a little dead air so that you can be certain that your opening line is clear and crisp. You’ve heard the voicemails where the over anxious salesperson’s message cuts in garbled and midway through their name.

You also want to make sure this opening is clean so that you get a good voice-to-text translation of your introduction on their phone.

2. Keep it to 15 seconds
Don’t try to close the deal on the voicemail. You’re not pitching or closing in this message. Your goal is to pique interest for a follow-up.

This is where a concise benefit statement is going to be critical.

The worst thing you can do is leave a long message, which leaves the prospect annoyed and confident they have heard your best sales pitch.

3. Speak clearly and enunciate
I can emphasize this enough, especially in the era of voice-to-text. No one listens to voicemail anymore. Make sure to give Apple or Google a clear, well-enunciated audio file to translate. This is your best shot at getting your message to the prospect.

This is easy to practice using the voice-to-text feature on your own phone. Start using voice-to-text exclusively for your text messages to friends and family. Perfect your voice delivery to reliably create accurate and coherent voice-to-text transcripts.

4. End with a specific question
Don’t end your voicemails with the common plea for a callback. Instead, do what you might do with a friend - leave a question. You call for a reason, which is probably to qualify the lead. So, why not just ask one of those qualifying questions?

If you ask the prospect a question, it begs a response. Even no response at that point becomes active feedback.

Effective Voicemail Script

Here is the voicemail script that I generally use.

[Prospect Name], this is [Your Name] from [Company].

I’m reaching out to you [because | in response to] [insert reason for the call]. I’d love to talk to you about [insert benefit to calling you back].

My number is [insert phone number]. You can also text me at this number. I’ll follow up with a quick email with a few more details and all of my contact information.

Take a look and then we can discuss if there’s a fit.

Have a great day!

It’s short and simple. But, in this framework, there is a lot of nuances that make it work consistently. Let’s break it down.