Annoyance of the day - long, boring, voice mails

Attention 3PL sales reps: You are not going to get a customer’s business by leaving lengthy, rambling, repetitive sounding voice mails cold calling a brand new customer who just didn’t happen to be at their desk. And you really aren’t going to get anywhere if you start the voice mail with either “I’m not sure whose voice mail this is, but…..” or “I can’t remember who I’m calling, but……” If you are chasing new business and start your voice mail off like that, you’d be better off not leaving any kind of voice mail at all.

I just checked my voice mail after a rather long and boring meeting only to be greeted by an equally long and boring voice mail that droned on and on repeating the same basic message over and over for close to 10 minutes. And yes, the long, drawn out voice mail began with “I can’t remember who I’m calling…”

I know this is common sense when seeking new business, but just a refresher:
1) Know who you are calling and why.
2) If leaving a voice mail, be short, professional, positive, and to the point. Don’t try to cram your entire 50-page PowerPoint sales presentation into 1 voice mail.
3) Avoid repeating the same point over and over again: If you are a pick up and delivery agent servicing the Chicago area, you don’t need to repeat that fact 10 times in the voice mail.

Another annoyance is people who try to be sneaky and just leave their phone number and name as if they know me. Example: Voice Mail “Hey, this is Bob, can you call me back at 888-123-45678 about that project we were talking about?”

This must work or sales reps wouldn’t try it. And if one’s memory isn’t so sharp and you do call back, once you wise up you are just going to be annoyed that someone is giving you a sales pitch and used such a sneaky way to trick you into calling them back.

Alright, enough venting, back to work.