Tweet

8 Strategies for Bypassing Voice Mail

Written by: Wendy Weiss

Article Overview: Tired of getting voicemail all the time. Here are some tips for bypassing voicemail.

8 Strategies for Bypassing Voice Mail

1. Ask the gatekeeper: "When is the best time to reach (prospect's name)?" Call back then.

2. Vary your calling times. If you are only reaching voice mail you have no way of ascertaining when your prospect will be available. If you always make your calls at the same time of day, vary your routine. Call at different times throughout the day and throughout the week

3. Ask for alternate phone numbers for your prospect. Ten years ago prospects generally only had one office line. Today there are a myriad of ways to reach prospects: cell phones, home office phones. Your prospect might have another office location and of course, there is always email.

4. If possible, block your phone number. Depending on the state in which you live and of course, your work situation, you may be able to block your phone number from showing up on a prospect's caller ID. If you can block your number this will allow you to call a prospect more frequently as your prospect will not know it is you calling. Do not over do this.

5. Call the extension with one number up or down from your prospect's number. The idea here is that you might reach someone who sits near or has an office near your prospect. Ask: "When is the best time to reach (prospect's name)?" "What time does (prospect's name) come in?" "What time does (prospect's name) take lunch?" "How late is (prospect's name) usually in?"

6. Dial 0 for help. Usually at the end of an outgoing message is a statement like, "If you need additional or immediate help dial..." or "To reach someone else in the company dial..." Take advantage of this. You might have to leave a message so that the system will let you move onto the next step. If you don't want to leave an actual message you can simply say, "OK" which will be recorded and then allow you to move on. As in #5, ask the person that you reach for help.

7. Send your prospect an e-mail and attach a "read receipt." Keep your e-mail open. When you receive the read receipt back, try calling your prospect.

8. As a last resort, if you absolutely must reach a particular prospect, ask if she can be paged.



© 2009 Wendy Weiss

Related Articles
  How To Leave The Right Kind of Voice Mail – Career Advice for Non-native English Speakers
  Voice Mail: Friend or Foe?
  Effective VoiceMail Messaging: Do's and Don'ts
  Voice Mail - Friend or Foe
  How Is Your Phone Being Answered?

Article Tags: alternate phone, best time, caller id, cell phones, different times, lunch, myriad, office location, outgoing message, phone number, phone numbers, prospects, time of day, voice mail, work situation



Related Forum Posts
Voice SMS! - Ashish, I enjoy sending txt messages and it seems faster to send a Voice one than txt. How do you plan on informing the user that there is a limitation to the amount of voice you can record in a Voice SMS? I believe txt has about 168 character limit.
Voice SMS - Ashish, Is this a Voice message that will be converted to Text and then sent via sms so that the recipient is reading text?
Re: FREE Toronto Referral Workshop - Kevin, I'll try to get a copy of the slides and summarize the 14 Strategies. Stay tuned!
Re: Is Bulk Mailing useful for promotion - We use Mail Chimp for our email campaigns (it's awesome and free for small lists), but we only email to subscribers. Have never tried buying a list and spamming people. I can't imagine it would be very beneficial, and will certainly create ill will from the people you spam.
Re: Books for Business Owners - Hi DougSchadle, Thanks for sharing your favorite business book with us! A good book I'm reading now is "Maximum Achievement: Strategies and Skills That Will Unlock Your Hidden Powers to Succeed" by Brian Tracy as it was a birthday gift from a friend. Tracy's book is helpful in identifying what's important in your life and then setting an action plan to achieve it.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

How To Be Happy at Work? Acknowledge Yourself

A Guide to Franchise Financing

Ready for a Fresh Image?

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.