What’s Up With Your Business’ Voice Mail Message and Does it Suck?
Don’t you know that your voice mail message or ‘experience’ can make or break your first impression? It can also deter potential prospects or scare away clients and great referral partners or worse yet….DO NOTHING TO HELP YOU GROW YOUR BUSINESS!
I’ve been picking up the phone lately calling all kinds of people for follow up, feedback and to build relationships even deeper. Frankly the phone call is the ONLY thing that’s working in my marketing these days other than face-to-face connecting or speaking.
The problem is that 99.9% of small business owner’s voice mail messages SUCK! I had to say it that way because there is no other way to describe what I’ve been listening to.
Seriously, many times I wanted to comment when the phone went ‘beep’ on your voice mail message on how you could fix it to really serve you instead of leaving the message I intended to leave. I figured though a few people would get mad at me critiquing them out of the blue and unsolicited like that (even though I make a habit of this in every day life); I thought I would refrain this time.
So, WHY is it so important to look at what you say in your voice mail message?
• This could be the FIRST experience a prospect has with you or your company.
• They may need more information about your services after finding you somewhere and could give up after listening if not professional.
• It’s a great marketing tool!
• It helps to automate your systems and processes to save you time.
Here are some of the MISTAKES I’ve seen just in the last month:
1. You don’t even say who you are or your company name.
2. Your number is a home number and you have ‘You’ve reached the home of Sue, Peter, David and Sally, etc.’
3. All you have is the phone number repeated saying ’555-555-5555 is not available’ so no one even knows if they got the right number?!
4. You try to sound sensual (yes, I said sensual) or sexy (possibly to attract a guy, maybe you’re single???); not the place to do that
5. You don’t tell them what you want them to do. (‘Go to your website at www.___________ and get your free __________’ for example would be a good one)
6. This one’s not about voice mail but using home phone numbers for business…don’t you think it’s odd when you call someone for business purposes and their young teenage son or daughter answers?? Stop using that number, what kind of positioning do you think that’s sending to folks?
7. You record your voice mail message from your car on your cell phone and it’s all broken up and we can barely make out what you’re saying – duh?!
8. Leaving out of town messages on too long (Ok, I’m guilty of this sometimes, but not often!)
In my next blog posting I will share tips on how to improve your voice mail message.
© Copyright 2009 K. Sawa Marketing International Inc.
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