Don't Leave a Voicemail

Ring
Ring
"Hi. You have almost reached Everet. Please leave your name and number after the tone and I will get back to you..." Beep!

"Everet this is (name your favorite salesperson) from Company X. I'm calling because I have a favor to ask. We have a great candidate for your position of _______. This candidate would be a great fit and I think would be a good person to have on your team. Please call me at 799-555-1212.

How many times have you left the message above or something similar and you leave the same message over and over. You may not always realize you are. Even if you change the words on every one of your messages you are probably not changing the tone of your voice or your inflection.

Ever get bored saying the same thing over and over again?
Wonder why a prospect or client doesn't return a call?

Remember that for every recruiter like yourself trying to reach a candidate or company, there are potentially hundreds of you from the same industry trying to contact the same person. What makes you stand out? In today's world there are many ways to reach someone.
If you answered  yes to either of the questions above, here is a simple system to recharge your batteries.

Don't leave a voicemail next time you call that person.

Odds are the person you are calling already knows you or your company and doesn't want to be bothered by what you have to say. IN that case it is easy to delete your voicemail. people might also tag you as some sort of salesperson right away and you never get to the last line of your carefully rehearsed script.
I propose not leaving a voicemail and just try calling the person at a different time of the day.
Get them live and you won't have to worry about being lost in the shuffle or deleted.
It is much harder to reject someone when you have them live as opposed to sending an email, voicemail, or text that can be easily deleted or ignored.

The next time you do a phone blitz calling potential customers, try not leaving a message  and see how much time and energy you save. More importantly how your sales will go up because you are catching people live.
There is more to update on voicemail but that is a future column.

Thanks!

Everet