Voice mail. We love it because it lets us ignore calls we don’t want to take, or prepare for calls we’d rather not take right now. We hate it because it also lets our prospects do the exact same thing – including ignoring calls from us! Like all business tools, voice mail can be a double-edged sword. If you know how to manage it, you’ll never again have to blame voice mail for not closing enough business
1. Never leave a voicemail message for someone who doesn’t know you. To the prospect, you’re an anonymous caller. The chances of this stranger ever returning your call are, at best, about one or two percent! The only time you should ever leave a voicemail for a prospect is when you have been referred to them.
2. Voicemail should only be used as a last resort. Too often, we give up as soon as the voicemail kicks in on a call, either leaving a message (bad idea) or simply hang up (better, but not great).
3. When in doubt, hit zero. You owe it to yourself to try everything you can to either locate them, or at least find out something about them. One way to do this is to hit zero when a voicemail message kicks in. You
I think in situations like this, you are right, persistence is key. I once worked for a company that manufactured novelty snow globes and very often I would find myself calling potential stores and distributers only to be banished to voicemail jail, as it were, without passing go or collecting my 200 clams. With that kind of approach it basically just badgering the right people until they call you back. I can’t tell you how many times I would talk to an owner’s assistant and they would say “we’re not interested,” but then I’d talk to the actual owner and he or she would love the product. To win you definitely have to go to the top.
One other thing that I’ll say is that I think it’s up to you to not “return the favor” as it were and to have a decent system for addressing inquiries. After dealing with so many lousy voicemail systems from buyers we decided, at the company, to invest in a virtual PBX voicemail solution — we went with gotvmail at the time because they were the best value. After I returned a phone call from one receptionist, she actually gave me the comment that she was glad our phone system wasn’t like theirs! That kind of service is essential, and makes it so that your customers have to deal with as few issues as possible.