How to Leave a Professional Voicemail

BY Jessica Helinski
Featured image for “How to Leave a Professional Voicemail”

Your sales call script is ready, and your confidence is high. The only problem? You reach your prospect's voicemail instead of them first-​hand. You call back… you get sent to voicemail again. Instead of throwing up your hands in frustration and stammering out a message, you should focus on salvaging your outreach attempts. Sales professional Marc Wayshak has some great sales voicemail tips for how to leave a professional voicemail that will get you a call back from your prospective customers. If you have never given much thought to the messages you have been leaving your prospects, you might want to check out his sales voicemail tips.

How to Leave a Professional Voicemail

Keep it mellow. When it comes to how to leave the best voicemail message for sales, you need to start with the basics. Your tone of voice can have a significant impact on whether or not a prospect wants to return your phone call. Being overly enthusiastic right off the bat can make you sound like the stereotypical disingenuous salesperson. No one wants to work with a phony, so try not to overreact, especially not in your tone of voice. Instead, you must focus on using a mellow, kind tone of voice. By doing this, you will paint yourself as a real person who is interested in helping the prospect. No one wants to work with someone who forces themselves to appear overly cheerful all the time, especially when there is potentially bad news to be communicated. Who wants to receive bad news in a cheery tone of voice?

Get to the point. Cut out the generic small-​talk that so many reps use to open a call if you want to leave the best voicemail message for sales. You can easily stand out from the rest of the competition in your industry by immediately stating your name and the reason for your call in your voicemail. Not only will this conciseness set you apart from other sales reps, it will also show that you value the prospect’s time enough not to waste it with idle chit chat in your messages.

Show your knowledge. “When you do your prospecting, show that you’ve done some homework and have a purpose for your call,” writes Wayshak. “Don’t just check in. Don’t call just to pick their brain.” Use this opportunity to present value to the prospect. How to leave a professional voicemail that communicates value? One method is sharing an interesting industry fact that pertains to his or her business. Or, you can briefly present one way your product or service could help tackle a pain point felt by the prospect. 

Check out Wayshak’s full article for his other sales voicemail tips on how to leave a professional voicemail. Then, when it is time for your next prospecting call, prep beforehand for the possibility that you might have to leave a voicemail. By changing how you approach leaving sales voicemails, you can increase the rate at which your call attempts are returned and how many sales you land.


Share: