A Quick Hit For Extending Your Brand

Every marketing leader is looking for low hanging fruit right now, and there’s a ripe business development opportunity at their fingertips. One that allows them to clearly communicate their brand, their solution and their potential impact to a prospect’s business. Everyone can use it, with a low degree of difficulty and cost. It’s the voice mail message.

Don’t dismiss its potential yet. As simple as it may sound, most organizations routinely overlook or mishandle this resource while prospecting and nurturing leads. They could be delivering powerful marketing messages that are uniquely designed to appeal to targeted contacts, but most salespeople don’t leave messages. Or if they do, they don’t effectively promote your brand or engage a prospect into your sales pipeline.

For every 100 calls made by most inside sales reps, 66 will become more effective by refining this single step in the prospecting process. This is because 60% of prospecting calls go to voicemail (Source: XANT), but 74% of salespeople don’t leave voicemails (Source: Spotio). Does your inside sales team have a good strategy for handling this, or are they just “winging it”? What are they saying? Does anyone call you back or answer your next call?

This is a manageable opportunity that can be implemented quickly to produce better results. Here are five steps for delivering a well-crafted voice mail message that can extend your market reach, differentiate your brand from the competition and reinforce your position as a trusted solution provider.

Develop a strategy. Too many salespeople give little or no thought to the voice mail message they leave behind. Voice mail gives you a unique opportunity to craft a “mini commercial” that is customized for that specific target contact. Know what you want to say and why you want to say it. And then write it down, so you can be sure your message is delivered properly.

Know your audience. To develop a customized message, you first need to do a little research. Your message should convey that you know their business and are familiar with their issues. Everyone who listens to a message is saying to themselves (at least subconsciously), “So what. Why should I care?” Give them a reason to care.

Get to the point. Don’t ramble on and on. The optimal length is between 8 to 14 seconds. Your scripted strategy will help with efficiency. Everyone is busy and has short attention spans. Don’t give them a reason to hit the delete button before they’ve heard your entire message.

Speak to the person. Not the machine. Remember, just because a machine is taking the message doesn’t mean that a machine is listening to the message. Speak in a professional and clear tone. Don’t speak too quickly. Emphasize the key words or phrases. Practice your message and leave it for yourself first to see how it sounds.

Define the next step. You not only want to give your target contact a reason to respond, it’s also important to make it as easy and comfortable for them as possible. Provide a clear call-back number, an email address and/or a website. Share what will happen next if they respond.

Applying these tips to any marketing and sales effort will take your results to the next level. We are experts in all aspects of outbound calling and inside sales capabilities. Let’s work together to implement successful voice mail message campaigns that enable your business to generate a consistent flow of leads and grow revenue.