Ever leave a voicemail that wasn’t returned? I know, silly question. If you’re a sales professional in the business to business world, then reaching out to new and existing clients is a day to day necessity. In the old days it was easy.
First off, there were only two mediums available; the phone, or snail mail.
Forget faxes, they became commercially available around the mid 80’s. Email, try the early 90’s but that was when the technology became commercially available; it wasn’t until the mid to late 90’s that email became universally ubiquitous such that it was a reliable means for communication.
Remember, in the old days, clients came in in the morning, or back from lunch, and the first place they stopped was at the reception desk, looking for pink message slips in the mouse hole. Next stop, looking for mail or internal memos on, you guessed it, paper.
Now, important executives are bombarded with myriad “requests to connect”.
This is really important to consider. Why, because anyone’s interest or desire to engage, whether it be a phone call or answering an email, is as much a product of available bandwidth and the mere ability to comply with every request to engage, communicate or participate at some level.
Think about it. In today’s world, executives are drowning in emails, cc emails, bcc emails, conference calls, voice mails, reading or responding to blogs, tweets etcetera. Where does that leave the voicemail message? I’ll tell you, dead last
If it’s important, make that really important and I mean important to the voicemail recipient, you’ll get a call back. If it’s not, it will likely take days to get returned, if at all.
It’s simple, in today’s environment, leaving a message for someone is actually making more work for them.
You’ve also set-up a potentially uncomfortable dynamic for both you and the person you left the message for. What if they didn’t call you back, you’re going to call back again and maybe another time. That’s called stalking and it can be awkward.
Leaving a message always runs the risk of the message being returned by someone else, someone who you probably didn’t really want to talk to.
If the message left some type of request, you’ve now armed the client with time to think about different ways to say no. You’ve lost the benefit of spontaneity.
So, what is one to do?
In my business, I very rarely leave a message or send an email unless I am as sure as possible that I will get a reply. This only includes instances where I know a client is expecting a response, or has a pressing business issue that depends on interacting with me to get resolved.
Again, we’re talking about the B2B vertical and the need for one on one communication.
If I get voicemail, I call back another time. It’s usually early in the morning or late in the day preferably, when gate keepers have yet to arrive or gone home.
I don’t ever send an email that begins with “I would like to meet you; I have something you might be interested in”, etc. Why, because after decades in the B2B world and exposure to countless executives, I know they don’t get read.
My business requires forward motion like any other organization and that motion depends on my ability to reach people, get an answer and move on.
Because it’s my own business, i.e. the buck stops at my door, the old, “I’ve left a message” or “she hasn’t returned my email”, just doesn’t cut it.
It is because of the incredible advancement in communication technology that a live phone call is so much more effective.
You think getting people live will take more time than leaving a voicemail or sending an email, that depends on your metrics. If actually speaking with the target individual is your goal, I guarantee the whole message/email thing won’t be productive.
Remember, judging productivity isn’t a measure of how many people respond to voicemail or email; it’s how many don’t…