Overcoming Voice Mail Barriers

Here’s a frightening quote I picked up just now; “statistically, about 87% of sales reps give up after a single half-hearted attempt, about 95% give up after a second message.”

People that hide behind their voicemail are becoming ever more prevalent.  How do you get around it?  It’s pretty obvious that if you’re cold-calling, with no prior relationship, then the chances of your cold-call voicemail getting replied to is slim-to-zero, how ever well crafted it is!

Persistence is certainly a key, especially given the quote above, yet if you call every day for weeks on end, the call-back you get will probably be from the police, rather than intrigued prospect.

I worked briefly with a fairly switched on, yet shallow fella called Jamie once a couple of years back who ran a telesales team selling web-hosting type stuff in London, having previously sold dental cosmetics in America.  He reckoned if you put in half-a-dozen or so messages and got no reply, the prospect was not interested, so you simply had to do something different.

It is the creativity around that something different that separates the winners from losers….