Stop Leaving Messages

If you have never met the person, and they do not know you, don’t leave a voice mail message. So here’s a question for you. You have a message on your voicemail system. You listen for 5 seconds, you don’t recognize the person but you do recognize what they are doing, namely, selling … trying to get you interested enough to call them back. What do you do? Listen to the full two-minute message and copy down their number so you can get right back to them? I doubt it! You hit delete and move on. So what makes you think anyone is going to listen to your message? Hang up and try again later. Hit “o” and get to a real person. Find a gatekeeper somewhere and find out when your prospect will be back. Ask if there is a better number to call her on. Do anything but leave a message. Lots of young people don’t even check voicemail. Their phone captures the number and if they recognize the number, they hit the call button. Sometimes they do that even if they don’t recognize the number … it might be important! … or interesting?!