TRAINING SESSIONS
If you follow the examples I’ve shared with you – making them your own – and make the right number of daily calls, you’ll have more conversations with prospective buyers each day.
Beat the Post-Summer Prospecting Blues… by Leaving Better Voicemail Messages
DAVE MATTSON
I’m sometimes asked to suggest a single, simple thing salespeople can do to beat the “post-sum- mer slump” syndrome. You know that syndrome – the one where your development funnel is low, you find yourself needing to make up lost ground following the “everyone’s on vacation” summer months, and you’re wondering what you can do to quickly increase the number of quality conversa- tions you have each working day.
The simplest and easiest response to this situation may be improving the qual- ity of the voicemail messages you leave. Usually, salespeople either leave no voicemail message at all or leave a voicemail message that sounds like this: Hi, Maria, this is Walt West calling from XYZ Widget Company. I’m just calling to check in and see whether you’ve got any needs in the widget
area that we might be able to discuss. If you do, would you please give me a call at 555/555-5555? Maria, I really do hope you’re having a great day, and I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you very much. Again, it’s Walt West, and the number is 555/555-5555. This is what we would call a “worst practice” voicemail message. It typically generates a zero-percent or single-dig-
it-percentage response rate. With such terrible numbers, it’s no surprise that a lot of salespeople give up on voicemail altogether. The trouble is, that’s a worst practice, too. We need to leave some kind of message because, most of the time, we don’t reach the people we’re calling! The question is: what should we say to leave a message with impact? As Sandler trainer John Rosso has pointed out in his book Prospect the Sandler Way, there are really two main varieties of voicemail messages sales- people need to leave: • Voicemail messages for people you have not yet talked to, but want to.
• Voicemail messages for people you already have talked to at least once and had a good conversation with – but can’t seem to get on the phone again. Each requires a much tighter, more focused message than the “worst practice” example you read above. In the first category are people who
are on our list to call for the very first time. Here are two variations that show
SELLING POWER SEPTEMBER 2016 | 15 © 2016 SELLING POWER. CALL 1-800-752-7355 FOR REPRINT PERMISSION.
WAVEBREAKMEDIA /
SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40