Do Your Voice Mails Sound Like This? Tsk. Tsk.
How a poorly planned voice mail message can turn a warm lead, cold.
Yesterday I received a voice mail from an inside sales rep who was apparently following up on a web lead form that I filled out the previous day.
Have a listen and then I’ll go over a major flaw in this sales persons approach in order to help make sure you aren’t making the same opportunity-killing mistakes.
Ready? Ok. First things first… your goal of a voice mail message is to get a call back AND advance the sales call (you can learn more about that here). It isn’t to “sell” or build a false sense of urgency with things like “we are currently running a promotion” etc…
Now since this sales person never left their return number… maybe he doesn’t want a call back. My guess is they haven't had a lot of success selling by phone so now they are going a more “softer” route and just “informing” prospects while relying heavily on “drip-marketing” and expecting to close sales that way.
Drip marketing can and is effective however the problem with this sales persons particular approach is that the “solution” they came up with (soft sell / inform) doesn’t address the real problem of why they may of had to shift to this type of sales approach to begin with.
Here’s what I mean…
Even in their soft pitch, they still don’t know how to leave a message that piques my interest. Apparently they think that mentioning a “promotion” that will help me pay $1,000 on my SalesForce account is enough to pique my interest. It’s not.
Here’s why… Their promotion, doesn’t address a “pain”. Prospects aren’t stupid… they know things come with a catch… I have no desire to call back and find out “what the catch” is because I don’t even know what “pain” I have that this sales persons product / service solves… and I originally contacted them! And now I feel they just want to "sell" me their product instead of helping me "solve" my pain.
Every successful company exists because they solve a pain or a problem for their targeted audience.
So if the message was more like this I may of had more interest in discussing how they could help my business:
“John, this is Michael Pedone with XYZ company and based on your inquiry the other day there’s a possibility we might be able to help you (avoid/eliminate) (common pain) while at the same time (gain/achieve/improve) (common benefit) while possibly saving you an additional $1,000 on your sales force account but to be sure I just need to ask you a few quick questions first. I can be reached at….”
This is only one of many options that a more prepared sales person could have used in order to have a higher rate of success. Instead, this sales persons call ended in "failure".
If you have any question or if I can be of any further help, please feel free to contact me directly.
Sincerely,
Michael Pedone
President/CEO
SalesBuzz.com
(888) 264-0562
About the Author:
Michael Pedone is the founder and CEO of SalesBuzz.com, an online sales training company. As a world-class phone sales coach and mentor, Michael developed an original phone sales training method that has helped companies and individual sellers increase conversions dramatically. Get a free sales lesson here.