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Voice mail has been around since 1980, while we may have a range of opinions on the matter, one thing is certain, it is not going away. As a result, we as sales professionals, have to not just get used to it, but become adept at leveraging voice mail to achieve our objective – to engage with more potential prospects and buyers. Welcome, you are clearly a sales professional who has decided to invest in your success by mastering voice mail. Having reached the conclusion that not leaving messages, is not a solid plan, and are seeking a viable way to increase your success by using voice mail to lead to engagement. If you are reading this, you got here in one of three ways:

1. You are completing the on-line Proactive Prospecting Program, and are in the voice mail section

2. You are test driving the free Voice Mail: Leaving Messages That Get Returned lessons from the Proactive Prospecting Program online, and this, along with the Voice Mail Worksheet, is part of your supplementary material

3. You downloaded this booklet in your quest to conquer Voice Mail, and enhancing your sales success and career

Regardless of the road, you have come to the right place. This booklet looks at voice mail as a practical tool for increasing and enhancing engagement with prospects who otherwise would not engage. Once you practice and master the core elements of the voice mail technique presented in the Voice Mail: Leaving Messages That Get Returned lessons, the pieces in this booklet will help you take your newly minted skills to higher levels. As with any worthwhile skill, it will take effort to learn, practice and master the steps required to change your success with voice mail. But the pay-offs and the rewards

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voice mail using the format described, called the prospect,

left a voicemail, 30 minutes later the prospect called me

back! Amazing!”

are there, I and many of the people who not just complete the Program, regularly achieve 40% - 50% of voice mail messages they leave for complete strangers, returned within 72 Hours! Yes, 4 messages returned for every 10 messages left; four new prospects to convert, who if not for the voice mail technique presented, you would not have ever spoken to, or much later, and with much greater effort. The purpose of this booklet is to help you implement your newly learned voice mail technique. It will also help you discover ways you can leverage voice mail and increase engagement. Some of the chapters in this booklet explore core elements of The Technique, others, like Lesson 9: Tactical Use Of Voice Mail To Increase Right Person Conversations and Appointments, are more advanced way to use voice mails. Remember, you don’t have to do it alone. You can always reach out to me: Tibor@TiborShanto.com. If you have not done so yet, enroll in the free e-course: Voice Mail: Leaving Messages That Get Returned. Lastly, I would definitely subscribe to our updates to stay on top of special events, offers, and ways to stay in touch with others, who like you, have decided to conquer voice mail and enhance their success. Sell Better,

Tibor Tibor@TiborShanto.com

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Table of Contents

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Sales people are strange when it comes to prospecting, specifically telephone prospecting. Many find all kinds of reasons (excuses) to rationalize (excuse) why they fail to make calls in an attempt to engage with prospects, and fill the gap in their pipelines. Some tell me they do not want to phone people because no one ever answers the phone these days. OK, do they have voice mail? Yes Great, so you left them a voice mail. No, I did not. Why not? I want to speak to them directly. Thud – (that’ the sound of me banging my heads against the wall) Well if you don’t leave them a voice mail, how will they know where to call you back so you can speak to them directly, they would pretty much need to be clairvoyant would they not? Seems to me, if you are not prepared to give up the phone as part of your prospecting routine, voice mail is your only path to success. Now I know that the “no cold calling crowd” and their “social cronies”, are saying, “duh, we know the phone does not work”. Well not exactly, there are many examples where one cannot master something, like say playing an instrument; that does not mean the instrument is not playable. It is true that few answer their phones these days, especially between 9 – 5, because they are working, and if they do answer, then you’re an interruption, their version of that call you get in the middle of dinner for duct cleaning. But, and this is a big but missed by many, that does not mean the phone is not an effective tool, one that will get you meetings with prospects you are targeting.

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People use their voice mail as a triage tool to ensure that they preserve their most important resource – time – for their most important objectives and related tasks. I do it, you do it; you get back from two or three meetings, and you listen to your messages, and do one of the Three D’s:

• Delete • Delay • Deal with

I have come to learn that phone now works in a different way, just as you want to qualify, so does the prospect. Voice mail, allows them to stack a bunch of calls together, and deal with things based on their merit. Problem for many in sales, the messages they leave, usually have little merit in the eye (ear) of the prospect. Voice mail is a different environment, a different mode of communication, and requires a different approach to getting results. The reason many messages don’t get returned, and get Deleted, is the message just misses the mark. Many of the people who gave up on voice mail did so because they left the wrong or wrong type of message. The message they leave is almost always the same intro and content they would use had the person answered the phone. This is usually designed to be part of a dialogue and to encourage further dialogue. But given the environment, the dynamics, and the goal of the message, your voice mail needs to be very different than your live conversations. Once I was taught The Technique, adopted it, and adapted it to change with the market, my success changed. I now regularly get 40 – 50 percent of messages I leave, returned within 72 hours, I now love voice mail, love talking to people who call back, and having them as customers. So, come join me on the dark side, leave voice mails, get appointments.

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They always say it is good to borrow perspectives from different fields as a means of perhaps learning something unanticipated about your day-to-day work. With that in mind, I’d like to use a perspective I learned some time back from someone in finance. This individual had an interesting view of financial statements: “Financial statements are like bikinis, what they reveal is interesting, but what hide or don’t show is even more compelling.” And that’s a great perspective to bring to voice mail. There is no middle ground with voice mail, you either have those who leave no message, and at the other end are people who don’t just leave a message, but proceed to dump their brains out when leaving a voice mail. Not leaving a message is just silly, why invest the time and effort in making the call, then listening to the target’s out going message (and most listen), only to hang up without a mark. Those who do leave a big fat message, tell me “well if I leave a compelling enough message, the prospect is bound to call me back”. Ya, because the world is such a rational place, let me guess, they probably call with a check-book in hand asking: “where do I sign?” Right. If you listen to 90% of outgoing voice mail messages, they ask you to “please leave a detailed message”. And most sellers, wanting be liked and looking to form a relationship, comply. If you thought sales people can “spray and pray” live, they take it to an entirely different art form when it comes to voice mail messages they leave. Why do these prospects want “a detailed message”? Because they want to protect their most precious resource, time. They want to know exactly why NOT to call you back. The more your message conforms to their request for detail, the more they know why they don’t need to call you back, and they can use that time and energy to deal with one of the other many things they are trying to cram in to their day.

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Which is why you want your voice mail to be like a bikini, seductive yet not completely revealing. Seductive enough for you to say “OK, this interesting, show me more”. Your goal or objective for voice mail is to get a call back and nothing else; a crucial point many miss. This is why we often get the Tolstoy equivalent of voice mail, rambling messages that provide every detail about the caller and the reason for the call. Detail leads to no call back. A lack of detail, where crucial elements are not revealed, think bikini, leads to more call backs, and more of the only measure of success with voice mail, a return call. The human mind hates a mystery, and will take steps to resolve them, all relative to the context. Ever been talking about a movie with a group of people, and none of you can remember the name of the lead actor. It gnaws away until someone remembers the name, and there is a collective sense of relief.

The best voice mail are ones that create that same feel, a mix of compelling facts, and insufficient data. Info that is compelling enough, but insufficient enough to draw a conclusion. This will leave the recipient with the choice of putting the whole message out of their mind, or pick up the phone, dial the number left, in the hope of completing the picture.

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I often point to the fact that voice mail is just one of a number of ways to reach out and touch prospective buyers. There is e-mail, SMS or text message, all forms of social media, traditional snail mail in the form of a letter or card, or other more creative means of reaching out and touching a prospect. Why is this important, because with all the things buyers have to deal with these days, it takes many more touch points to just get on someone’s radar, or have them react to our approach. Back around 1999, I read a book that suggested that it takes anywhere from 5 to 7 touch points for the reaction to potentially happen. Since then, technology has evolved, mobile is pervasive, people are expected to do more with less, more than ever people need to pack 16 hours’ worth of work into a 10-hour day, which makes getting their attention even more challenging. Because of that, and this is confirmed by some of the things I am reading today, it may take 9 to 12 touch points for that initial reaction to occur. So, if nothing else, say you diminished expectations to no call backs at all, zero, there is still a value to leaving voice mail, it is a touch point, and touch points are compounding. This is why I don’t worry about the depth of the content of the voice mail message, because it will lead to one of two outcomes:

1. You’ll get a call back, and speak with the prospect 2. You will achieve a touch point which when executed in context of the overall

approach is a plus. Yet in a recent unscientific poll, only 52.5% of respondents answered ‘yes’ when asked: “When you are prospecting by phone, do you leave a voice mail message on the very first call?” What a wasted opportunity. First off, they could be getting calls back from 30% – 50% of people they leave messages for, leading to engagement and sales. Second, no touch point, no start, and what you don’t start you can’t finish.

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One important take away from this beyond the fact that you have to leave a message, is that you have to map out a touch point campaign whenever you target or pursue a potential buyer. Not only do you have to make the commitment to touch them enough times in a given period to facilitate contact, but plan and write it out, and the of course execute. My minimum goal is seven touch points in two business weeks. You can leave a voice mail on Monday morning, follow up with a brief, not Tolstoy style, e-mail after 5:00 pm that day. Another voice mail Wednesday; the e-mail that follows Wednesday’s voice mail will have one additional element, you will tell them that you will call them again say Thursday at 9:30 am. I am not naïve, I don’t expect them to be chained to their desk at that time, but, if they were mildly interested in your message but were busy running around this could provide the focus they need. But more likely they will not be at their desk, and you’ll leave another message. The BIG BUT and GAIN, is that you will have demonstrated that you follow up on your word, something many sales people are falsely accused of not doing. Talk about laying a pebble of trust. So here we are five touch points by Thursday morning, and I don’t think we are near an injunction order. Repeat the following week, you’ll have more conversations, but it starts with commitment and execution. Sadly, the same survey showed that most sales people give up after three or so tries, priming the pump for those of us who are willing to go the distance.

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Every so often, I do a little thing I think of as fun with Voice Mail on LinkedIn, it’s a blast, with people taking different reactions to a voice mail technique that gets me a 50% rate of returned calls. In response to comments on an LinkedIn group, I posted on Friday about a specific dynamic that makes The Technique in question successful. The piece resulted in more comments, so I wanted to take another view that may help some understand what’s behind it, why it resembles something almost every critic of The Technique already does without feel they are unethical, misleading and so on. This storm reminded me of a similar reaction three or four years ago when I suggested that sales people should use text (SMS) as a prospecting tool. People saw the suggestion as being unethical, underhanded, and just not professional. This despite the fact that an executive, a prospect, was the one that suggested that I would have connected with him a lot sooner had I not limited my use of his cell number on his card to strictly voice. But the overwhelming reaction at the time was that text to prospect was déclassé. But now four years later it is a mainstream technique acceptable to all. Maybe time does not heal all wounds, but it does seem to wipe memory. Now I would suggest that when something seems uncomfortable you have two choices, try it and see, or pass an uninformed opinion. So, lets take a different look at The Technique in question and see if we can get you to try. The Technique, is very much like a mini resume. Much the same way we use resumes to create the opportunity to entice a potential employer to call us back and invite us in for an interview that we hope will lead to employment and a mutually profitable relationship. Let’s look at resumes, they exist to communicate in a concise way your capabilities vis-à-vis the position, anchored in our history in similar positions with similar company. If you have been an A/R manager with one distributor, and a position

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opens up with another company you want to work for, you submit your resume featuring your experience with their competitor. The potential employer, like most, will begin to begin to sort the hundreds of resumes they receive based on who they think will fit their requirement; and one of the most common means of selecting those that make the consideration list is their experience with similar companies. As we all have been told, it is important to keep resumes short, using highlights, and then expanding once in the interview. Depending on the source, some will tell you to keep it to two pages or less, a small amount of space to include past experience as well as other attributes we may have that would make us a suitable candidate. It is also often a topic of discussion, that many resumes are the stuff of fiction and or embellishment. Very different than The Technique in question, which repeatedly emphasizes the need for honesty and ethical use of past experience. It seems interesting that in the age where people are actively participating in micro-blogging, they would find problems with micro messaging when it comes to engaging with prospect. I suspect the reality is one that is all too familiar in sales; sales people complaining that clients hang onto the Status Quo irrationally, while they do that very same things when it comes to embracing new or alternate – non-middle of the road – sales approaches. Almost ironic as the group professes to be the home of fresh sales ideas. Oddly, one very vocal opponent, using words like misleading, deceiving, and so on, has held IT sales related positions with four or more different companies in the last 10 years, I bet if we looked at his resume, we would see all the previous companies he worked for, his related capabilities, and his accomplishments prominently listed in his resume. Where is the difference? Why is it OK to dangle past companies in one form, but not another? We know the answer.

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Sales people grapple a lot with voice mail, looking for a way to scale this giant barrier between them and their destination. Sometimes they ask for techniques or ways to “deal with it”, and what they are really asking is to find a way to make it go away. Sadly, it is here to stay, so the challenge becomes how to take advantage of it the way it is. Here are two ways, both taking advantage of voice mail’s “always there” nature, both are meant to be specifically used outside of normal business hours.

Generating Inbound Calls, in the past I have written about a The Voice Mail Technique I learned and used that generates 5 return calls for every 10 voice mail messages I leave within 48 hours, knowing that allows me to minimize my “cold calling”. Once you master The Technique, you can start a regular program of leaving message after hours, to generate inbound calls. You can get on the phone at say 7:00 pm, quickly leave 10 to 15 voice mails with identified leads, at about 30 seconds per message, this takes less than 10 minutes. Do it three times a week, say 40 messages, and you have just created 20 inbound calls. Understanding that not all of these will turn into something, even a 4 to 1 conversion rate will lead to 5 new sales conversations, some immediate prospects, some leads to be nurtured.

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Saving Time, being social creatures, at times we allow ourselves to be drawn into conversations that eat into productive time. One specific is when a sales person has to deliver a simple fact to a client or a prospect, a data point, a spec, a delivery date, anything that is factual in nature and that sales person committed to communicate or deliver by a specific time. Often what happens is that the rep will call, there will be some small talk, some business talk but not particularly crucial, but in the course of things they end up spending 5 minutes on the call. Multiple that by 6 or 7 times and you have half an hour; if this happens twice a week, an hour. Why not call early in the morning or after hours, deliver the fact or data: “Harry, it’s Jill here, the measurements of the component do fit within the specs you provided, and will be delivered Thursday between 3:00 and 4:00, please call me if you have any questions or comments, I will call you Friday to…, I am at 617 239-8840.” The rep gets bonus points for getting back promptly to the client/prospect, and does it in a way that over the course of a year frees up a lot of time. I realize these do not make up for all the aggravating part of voice mail, but you may as well make the best of it in simple ways.

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Voice mail is not going away, mostly because people will have to answer their phones rather than being able to screen calls and preserve their time and sanity for things other than bad prospecting calls. Leaving you to make one of two choices:

1. Not to telephone prospect, thereby avoiding the dreaded voicemail 2. Learn how to leave proper voice mails and prosper from the dreaded

voicemail

True to Pareto’s principle, the majority of sales people chose option one, and do not make calls; and based on stats, it seems do not make quota, am I the only one making the connection here? Here are three reasons your voice mails are failing, and how to change that and your prospecting results.

1. Intent Every action you take in sales has to have a purpose, and intended outcome that moves the opportunity forward. Most have the wrong intent when it comes to voice mail, if they have an articulated intent at all. There is one purpose for leaving a message, and that is to get a call back, that’s it, nothing else, one singular measure of success, a call back. But if you listen to most messages, sales people reach for (and miss) much more. They overload the prospect with a bunch of unnecessary information, which lead to everything but the prospect wanting to call you back. Your message should not be geared to getting an appointment or schedule a call, it should not be to introduce you, your company or product, certainly not to sell. Again, One Singular Purpose: get a call back!

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2. TMI

Too much information, yes, building on the above, ask yourself why someone would call you back if your message contains everything they need to make a decision. Think about it, 99% of outbound voice mail greetings contain a request for “detailed information”, and why do they want that information? So they know why not to call you back. So as you’re waxing poetic about how you’re calling from a Fortune 500 company, a leader in the area of Blah Blah, they are looking around thinking they already have a Blah Blah, they are not currently looking for more or a new Blah Blah, so they 76 your message. Leaving you to believe that voice mail does not work, when in fact the problem is the message you leave, while your words say you want to speak, the underlying “message” communicates, don’t bother.

3. Be Counter Intuitive

There are uncomfortable when they lack enough information to make up their mind, which is why point 2 above is key, information works against us. The human mind hates a mystery, a situation where they may not feel completely compelled to call you back, but are also left with the feeling that if they don’t they may be missing out on something. In that scenario, some will ignore the message, but almost as many will act to solve the mystery. My goal in voice mail is to leave just enough of a message to create a curiosity, and the only way to satisfy that curiosity, is to pick up the phone and find out. Focus your intent, provide only enough information to drive that intent, don’t worry about being different, and don’t pay attention to those who have not picked up a phone for years.

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Voice mail is just one of the challenges today’s B2B sellers are facing on a daily basis. Getting “In front of the right guy” is harder than it has ever been. While technology will help, let’s not forget that prospect have access to the same level of technology to filter what hits them, and who they engage with. But when all is said and done, technology gets you to the point where you are speaking directly with the prospect. What you say at that point will either lead to a new prospect or disappointment. As you know, the chapter you are working on now – Voice Mail – Leaving Messages That Get Returned, is part of the complete Proactive Prospecting Program Online. The Program is the on-line version of the Proactive Prospecting Program delivered to corporations all over the world. Over 45 videos designed to help you engage with more of the prospects you want to sell to. In addition to the videos covering:

1. Program Introduction 2. Proactive Prospecting Model 3. Maximize Prospecting Time 4. Communicating Value 5. On The Phone

6. Objection Handling 7. Voice mail, E-mail, Referrals, and

more 8. Execution 9. Bonus

The Proactive Prospecting program is also part of the Proactive Prospecting Club. In addition to the core program, you will have access to weekly updates, suggestions and way to deal with prospecting realities. Learn about tools that make you a more effective prospector and seller. You’ll also have access to regular Club events and resources, peer-to-peer interaction through a member only Facebook group. The club will also present guests regularly to round out all elements of prospecting. You will also have special offers allowing you to try tools and services specifically designed for the serious prospector. Visit The Proactive Prospecting Club here, and here is a special offer, because you already experienced the Voice Mail lessons, use code VMT001, and receive a 15% discount on your membership. Join the Proactive Prospecting Club today – Grow Your Pipeline Tomorrow!

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I started in B2B sales in the 1980’s, around the same time faxes were the height of communications. I started off on the phone, and have held almost every possible role in sales over the years. I work with companies of all sizes, helping them achieve and improve their revenue goals. People have called me “a brilliant sales tactician”, which is fine by me, as I truly believe that success in sales is all about Execution, everything else is just talk; and there is no shortage of talk in sales. This is why my work is focused on helping sales teams and organizations better execute their sales process. With a focus on metrics and process, I help clients improve critical aspects of their sales cycle, including, aligning to buyer process, remove redundancies to shorten their cycles, increase close ratios, and create double digit growth through translation of their strategy to tangible

success through tactical execution. The secret sauce is my approach to ensuring adoption, without which there is no change, just talk! I co-authored the award winning book: Shift!: Harness The Trigger Events That Turn Prospects Into Customers, principal presenter at the Sales Performance Summit. Other credits: columnist Globe and Mail Report on Small Business, Salesforce.com, Office Technology magazine, The Huffington Post, Today’s Trucking, has appeared on Business News Network, CHCH-TV, and others.

Awards and Recognition: Ranked 8th on the Top 30 Social Salespeople In The World – Forbes.com 2014 Top 50 Sales & Marketing Blogs 2015, 2016, 2017 – Top Sales World Top 50 Sales & Marketing Influencers for 2014, 2015, 2016 – Top Sales World Top 25 Sales Influencers for 2014– OpenView Labs 50 Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management in 2013

www.TiborShanto.com/Blog ca.linkedin.com/in/tiborshanto/ http://www.facebook.com/Renbor.Sellbetter www.youtube.com/sellbetter @TiborShanto

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Renbor works with global sales organization to help them translate their strategy into tangible success. Success in any development or training initiative, is built on two key building blocks:

1. A solid sales framework and proven sales methodology – Objective Based Selling

2. A field-tested training methodology designed to drive adoption that leads to sustained behavioral change and consistently improving results – 3D Development Model

Renbor, brings a proven track record in integrating these core building block to deliver a platform for B2B sales development and success. Objective Based Selling framework allows you to develop the skills needed to successfully execute critical steps in the sales cycle, from Proactive Prospecting, to successful and methodical Discovery; Territory and Opportunity Management and Process development and execution. Objective Based Coaching provides your front-line managers, with the tools, process and means to lead their teams to success, rather than manage from behind a desk. Objective Based Coaching enables managers to perpetuate the training and development, sustain improvements and improve execution and results.

Objective Based Selling

3D Development Model

Proactive Prospecting

Objective Based Discovery

Objective Based Coaching

Sales Process – Development & Implementation

“First of all, the entire team – unequivocally – thought that the

workshop was extremely helpful and provided great instruction to enhance

their ability to generate new leads. In particular, the team felt that your

delivery was authentic and energetic – grabbing their attention throughout

the day. Your tips have already yielded some early results.”