A friend of mine just got a phone call from an industry lead generation company.
The sales rep left a voice mail, going into detail about what he had to offer. He had a lot of really good leads in his industry and he was willing to give my friend those leads at half-price.
Now my friend is no longer in that industry. But suffice it to say, he wasn’t impressed with this approach. It smacked of desperation. It also sounded a bit on the shady side.
If the sales rep really wanted my friend to call him back, he should have said something that would have aroused curiosity and persuaded him to return the call.
Jill Konrath, author of SNAP Selling: Speed Up Sales and Win More Business with Today’s Frazzled Customers and Selling to Big Companies, says this about leaving voice messages:
To come up with an enticing voice mail, you need to put a good amount of thought into it. There’s no way around it. Provocative, alluring, and brilliant statements don’t just naturally flow out of your mouth when it’s time to leave a message.
You need to have a message that will compel your prospective buyer to want to find out more. And not enough sales professionals are honing their message so that it’s both informative and persuasive.
Just as some sales professionals leave too little information in their messages, some leave too much. Or, as in the case of my friend, the sales rep gave just enough incomplete information that caused him to be skeptical of his claims.
This is a big problem with most salespeople… and with marketing, too.
Because they can’t shut up. They talk too much.
And as a result, they talk their prospective buyers right out of the sale.
If you do any kind of sales calls, there’s a good chance your prospective buyer’s voice mail and email inbox is full of this type of marketing.
These types of messages are boring, lame, and too “salesy.”
Instead of being fun, interesting, captivating and profitable.
There are many ways to avoid ending up as a deleted voice mail or email message.
First, you need to understand that your buyer has ever-shrinking time-frames and resources. Companies have to do more with less… less staff members and less money. So you need to be very clear with your message yet not give away the store.
You need to woo them.
You’ll attract attention when you:
- Have a strong value proposition
- Use the right language
- Share relevant success stories
Your prospect doesn’t have much time to listen to self-serving marketing tactics. They’re fine with their current vendor unless you can do something to shake them up.
This takes some thought, which is why it’s a good idea to spend some time developing ideas on how you can help your prospect and then tweak those ideas until you arrive at a solid proposition.
A strong business proposition
As I’ve been sharing with my clients, the strongest three types of business drivers are:
- Increasing revenue
- Decreasing costs
- Making your customers happy
They are three, simple, and very compelling drivers for anyone to change how they’re doing things.
If you integrate one of those business drivers into your value proposition, you’re going to get attention.
Use the right language
This is where all your hard work keeping up with your industry pays off.
Where all the books, blogs, reports, trade magazines and news outlets you’ve read now come into play.
If you’ve been tracking the state of your industry and future trends, then you’ve acquired the language you need to speak to your prospective buyer.
Use that language appropriately in your request for a buyer’s time. It lets her know that you know what you’re talking about.
But don’t get so mired with business-speak that you sound robotic. Use enough industry lingo that lets your buyer know you’re in the game but balance it with sounding like a normal human being, not a business robot spitting out words.
Share relevant success stories
This is one of my favorite marketing tactics. There are plenty of success stories out there, whether they’re your own or from another source.
Using statistics is a sure-fire way to get noticed. And customer testimonials are like gold.
When you have a customer who shares hard data such as a significant increase in sales, a decreased client cost-per-acquisition, or a higher rate of customer retention, you’ve hit the mother lode.
Companies today are looking for more information than ever before they pull the lever. They need all the proof they can get that you deliver what you promise and that your solution delivers results.
If you can gather all of this information, put it into bite-sized pieces for both voice mail and email messages, you may find you’ll get your meeting with your prospect faster.
It certainly beats getting deleted.
