So I just noticed a post at selling2business.com about leaving good voicemails and its not the sort of thing that can pass me without a comment. Overall, good points of what to say in the message but I’d like to add two things:
1- Track your voicemails to see what’s working the best. To do that you need to be able to tell what message you left and who you left it to. This can be a real challenge when you’re leaving one-off messages all day long and it will be further complicated by the simple fact that consistent delivery of both the content and the tone is unlikely.
Voicemail campaigns are about the only way I can think of to be able to track and measure the effectiveness of different message/target combinations. Given the almost obsessive need in marketing and sales to measure just about anything else, I’m wondering how long it will be before the truly leading edge sales and marketing organizations get a handle on measuring the comparative impact of different messages.
2- Somewhere between the pure vanilla one-size-fits-all voicemail that sales reps used to be able to get away with and the Give-me-two-hours-between-calls-so-I-can-leave-the-perfect-message variation is the ideal message that will deliver the maximum value for the time spent. Once you figure it out and match it up to the right contact lists, you can ramp up your outbound volume to guarantee predictable metrics by using a service like Boxpilot to deliver more messages better, faster and cheaper than one-off calls.
By applying a balance of common sense and automation to calling, it too will become something you can accurately measure and manage.