Smart Calling, 3rd Edition

CHAPTER 7How to Be Smart with Voicemail

Would you like the secret to perfecting that one voicemail message guaranteed to get all of your calls returned?

Yeah, I would, too. Let me know if you find it.

Oh, there are messages that can get calls returned all the time. They are from the IRS claiming to have some important information. Or from the hospital lab department, which found something disturbing that was overlooked in past test results. I’ve even heard some desperate suggestions that salespeople pretend to be these types of callers just to get a callback.

First, let’s get real about voicemail and telephone prospecting: Lower your expectations. Do not expect your calls to be returned.

It’s a bit absurd to think that someone who does not know you—who is probably overworked and underpaid, who has 79 unread emails and 12 other voicemails from people he does know—is going to return your call. Unless the prospect has an immediate, urgent need and pain that your product or service can address at that very moment, it’s much more likely that he will not call you.

When I still lived in Omaha, after an overnight downpour, I went down to the lower level of my house for an early morning workout. At the last step, my foot squished into wet carpet. The sump pump had fried, and the lower level of my house was now flooded, with water still gurgling in. At that moment, I would have immediately returned a voicemail message from someone who did sump pump installation or water damage cleanup ...