This is a Guest Post from Peter O’Donoghue of  Sales DNA.

One of the long standing debates in telesales is the question:

“Should I leave a voicemail?”

It is a question I hear over and over again in my sales training. My answer is a definite yes as long as you implement the magic voicemail that I am about to share with you.

Before I give you this golden nugget that will change your telephone prospect forever, let me tell you why, I think you should leave this voicemail.

Reasons:

•   It is proven to get results. A recent training attendee left 4 voicemail messages and received 4 call backs, which resulted in 2 new appointments. That’s a 100% success rate. What’s your call back success rate?

•    People calling back are allocating you time. I hate to break this to you but no matter how good you are, how valuable your service is and how prepared you are, when you ring someone, you are an interruption. They do not sit by the phone waiting for you to call. You are always going to be interrupting something they are doing. The beauty of getting a returned call from a voicemail ID is that they have allocated you some precious time in their schedule. For 1 or 2 minutes, you have their undivided attention.

•    It arouses curiosity: The single biggest reason why voicemails fail is because you give the entire purpose for wanting to speak to the other person. You provide all of the information so they don’t need to call you back. Make sense? Think about your voicemails and how much information you give. Why would they call you back? What you have to do is peak the human driver of curiousity to get the other person calling you back.

OK, so here is a simple and drastically effective voicemail that will get you over 50% call backs:

“Hi John, it’s Joe Bloggs from ACME INC., I was in a meeting this morning and your name came up. I have a couple of quick questions that only you can answer. Can you give me a call back on 0000000000?”

That’s it! Guaranteed to get you over 50% call backs if you deliver it with confidence and a solid voice.

The reasons why it works:

1)   It appeals to the curiosity of the person. Why were they talking about me in a meeting? What were they saying? I really must know.

2)    The psychological emphasis on – “Only you can answer my questions. ” This is specifically raising the level of importance of the person and showing that it is them specifically you want to talk to.

So what do you say when they call you? Firstly – develop an answer that is professional and has real meaning.

Have a think about what you could say in your business. Once you have had some time to think about it, I will share some ideas that are proven to work in my next blog post.

Make sure you look out for my posts to complete the story!

Peter O’Donoghue is the Director of Sales DNA who help Business To Business Sales Professionals increase sales profitability with Sales Training and Telesales Training.  Sales DNA work with clients in Europe and Worldwide through their Online Sales Training.  Visit his blog at  www.salesdnaltd.com/blog.