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Today's "rant" - voice mail

Guest post by: Margie Albert

Article Overview: How often do you call a client and get their voice mail? 80-90% of the time, yes? So why do we keep delivering voice mails that ramble on letting everyone know how unprepared you were to leave a voice mail?! Here are some really simple things you can do to increase callbacks and decrease “message skipped/deleted”

Today's "rant" - voice mail

How often do you call a client and get their voice mail? 80-90% of the time, yes? So why do we keep delivering voice mails that ramble on letting everyone know how unprepared you were to leave a voice mail?!

Here are some really simple things you can do to increase callbacks and decrease “message skipped/deleted”:

1. Be prepared to leave a voice mail on every call
2. Talk slow so they can understand you – especially when leaving your callback number
3. Keep it short and to the point – please don’t deliver your sales pitch in an vmail
4. Say something that makes them want to call you back – Focus on Customer Success
5. Leave a message about them, not you (hard to accept but they don’t care about you, they care about themselves!)
6. Leave your callback number at the beginning and end of your message – speak clearly both times
7. Smile when leaving the message – your tone will automatically be friendlier
8. If unprepared don’t “wing it.” If you go to vmail hang up before your recording would have started, get prepared and callback.

Voice mails are similar to emails – easy to delete, take up too much of our time and good ones are responded to. They also are left/sent and the recipient has complete control over what they do with them. Therefore, make them compelling and of interest to the recipient because you only have seconds to gain their approval and get a response.

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Article Tags: callbacks, focus on customer success, margie albert, voice mail
Referred by: http://dannybrown.me/



Related Forum Posts
Re: Those Annoying Telemarketers - Use caller id to your advantage. Sometimes telemarketers have useful business tools for you to use, so it doesn't always pay to be rude or hang-up on them. You might consider setting up a separate "vendor" voice mail box. On the welcome message, state that you are really busy and that you receive many cold calls a day, but might be interested in the service they have to offer. State that you review the "vendor" voice mail box about every other week, and that you do actually listen to their pitches. Invite them to leave a message to be reviewed, an let them know that if you are interested in their product, you will return their call. I think this is a fair balance between saving you time, not being interrupted by telemarketers but at the same time lettering those telemarketers try to get their message through to you. --matt
Promote your products with voice - If you have a great speaking voice you could actively promote your best selling product, like you could say "Looking for xyz? You can buy it now for 10% off" and as soon as they hear the product in voice it will capture their attention... where as they could possibly ignore promotional text on a webpage in comparison. The only reservation I have against using voice is that it may feel a bit intrusive to visitors having someone talk to them. In fact everytime I visit a website and hear a voice start talking I just turn my volume down or off completely.
Cell phone plans - Hi Andy, I use a cell phone too, but as a result, did you find you were tempted into buying a plan with more daytime minutes and voice mail, perks, etc? Does anyone know of a good cell phone plan?
Re: Subject line Etiquette - [quote="jvprosperity":b50c4a20]Another email rant: Is there some place on the internet that outlines proper "Subject line" headings? There mus be a system out there that people use to be more efficient email senders. Not everything that comes into my mail box requires my immediate attention. I would love to educate myself and the people who send me emails on proper subject lines. Maybe something like: "Urgent Review: <<Title of document>>" "Decision Required: "<<Subject matter>>" just something for me to quickly scan the subject lines and decide which ones need my immediate attention. Anyone know of such email standards that exist out there?[/quote:b50c4a20] The only messages I get that say Urgent or Decision Required etc are spam. I tell people to put something relevant to their business with me in the subject line - this is especially important for the people who fall into my junk mail. Chris
What i hate... - What i hate the most is the no e-mail reply. I know it happens all the time and it's a common issue but i hate it. I expect that when i sent an e-mail with a partnership request, or any other inquiry to receive an answer even if it's a negative one. If it's so difficult to write a 2 line e-mail than should be create an automatic responder : "thank you..... we will contact you shortly....". How do you manage this situation?


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