10 must-know voicemail tips for boosting conversions

Making outbound calls doesn’t always involve direct conversations with your prospect.

Many times you’ll be faced with leaving a voicemail in the hope that the prospect will be driven to take action and return your call.

But what makes a great voicemail? When it comes to telemarketing, leaving voice messages that resonate with prospects is key.

Your goal with this should be two-fold:

1. Develop a consistently great voicemail ‘pitch’ that you can deliver with energy and feeling every time
2. Get your message across in as little time as possible – around 20 seconds is ideal

So how do you increase your chances of getting those all-important callbacks?

Here are 10 voicemail tips that every telemarketer should have front-of-mind when leaving voicemails.

1. Make it relevant and familiar to the prospect

Right from the first moment of your voicemail, you need your prospect to feel a connection with what they’re hearing. Begin with some context as to why you’re calling – perhaps the prospect has recently signed up for something – and use this to make the initial connection. It’s your icebreaker; your way to break through the ‘cold call’ barrier.

2. Be purposeful

You should always have a clear reason for calling a prospect, so be sure to make that intention obvious from the beginning of your message. As with marketing emails, always get to the point of your call before the prospect has the chance to lose interest.

3. Keep it short and sweet

It goes without saying a waffling voicemail won’t win any conversion rate awards. Aim to get your point across within 20 seconds if you can. But don’t cut out important information or speak too quickly. Be prepared and well-rehearsed and you’ll find you can get your message across succinctly in a fairly small amount of time.

4. Keep a professional and friendly tone

With any voicemail – but especially in the business-to-business (B2B) space – you want to strike a professional tone to create the right first impression, for you and for your business. But make it friendly too. Use the person’s name a few times in your message, for example. Give them plenty of reasons to like you and feel comfortable calling you back when they hopefully choose to do so.

5. Pace yourself

It’s so important to speak as naturally as possible when leaving a prospecting voicemail. People will be quick to tune out and delete your message if they detect any fake enthusiasm. You shouldn’t sound scripted or too well-rehearsed. If your message is well-thought-out and relevant to the prospect, they will connect with it without the need for over-zealous intonation.

6. Call at the best times

The worst time to make a call or leave a message is a Monday morning or a Friday afternoon. This is universally true across most industries for B2B, and for the consumer market, too. You’ll need to figure out when your prospects are most likely to listen and respond to your messages. Whenever that may be, save your highest priority calls for those times. The aim should be to call at times when your prospects are most likely to answer and engage in a conversation. That way, you’ll be leaving fewer voicemails and increasing your chances for higher returns.

7. Ask questions

One of the best ways to encourage a callback when you leave a telemarketing voicemail is to ask relevant and engaging questions as part of your message. If the prospect has recently downloaded an e-book, for example, asking if they have any questions about the content is a good way to engage with them over something in which you know they’re interested.

8. Leave a strong call to action

If you want people to do something after listening to your voicemail, make that clear in your message. For example, if you want them to call you back, leave your name and number at the beginning and the end of your message. This will leave the prospect in no doubt as to what you want them to do next. Don’t leave any superfluous information in your message, so you don’t overwhelm your prospect with too much detail.

9. Don’t use pushy closing lines

Avoid the usual closing lines such as “Please give me a call back on XXX”. It’s off-putting and pushy and won’t leave the prospect feeling encouraged to engage with you further. Instead, use your question tactic to encourage a response and push the next step in the direction you want it to go.

10. Use call tracking to help improve performance

With call tracking software, you can monitor and record calls to understand which of your voicemail tactics and strategies perform best. Speech analytics can be used to monitor incoming calls, to understand how prospects are responding to your voicemails and whether your messages are making a difference to lead generation and sales.

Leaving voicemails is a time-consuming part of any telemarketer’s role. With these tips, you’ll be well-versed to streamline your voicemail process, save time and increase the success rate of the messages you leave your prospects and customers.