Never leave someone a message just to leave them a message. Your goal should be to get them to call you back.



In the twenty first century, there are very few telephones that are not being directed to a voice mail service. In fact, many people prefer that you leave a message, so they can get back to you at their own convenience. Lets face it. We all screen our calls from time to time.

This is why it is so important to have the necessary skills to leave a perfect message. A message that will make your prospective customer want to call you back.

Imagine if you were reading this article, and every other word was ?umm? or ?ahh,? most likely you would not continue reading it. Well, the same applies when you leave a message on someones answering machine, except in this case they hit delete.

Leaving a message on someones answering machine is probably the only time when you will want to leave out all of those sales terms we love to use, such as, ?exciting? and ?act now.? It gives the customer the impression that you are a solicitor and they will delete the message almost immediately.

Less is definitely more when it comes to leaving a professional message.

When leaving a message, get right to the point, state your mane, the company you are with, and why you are calling. End the message by leaving your name again, along with a contact phone number, asking them to call you back at a time convenient for them. You also might consider a tag line such as ?I look forward to hearing from you soon.?

When you make the call, smile the entire time you are talking, the customer will hear an up beat inflection in your tone of voice. Just don't be cheerful to the point of being cheezy.

Put together a script before making your calls, go over it several times until it becomes a rhythm and rolls off the tip of your tongue. This will enable you to weed out all of the ?ums,? ?ahs? and breaks in sentences, giving your voice a tone of confidence.

Once you have gone over your script, and have become comfortable with it, practice by leaving messages on your own answering machine. When you go home, you can listen to them to get an idea of how you sound, you can then critique yourself and make the changes accordingly.

This really is as simple as it sounds, give it a shot, and I guarantee you will see an increase in returned phone calls.