the surprising voicemail that gets prospects to call you back
I've made over 250k cold calls in my selling career. One thing that always comes up is voicemails. Are they worth leaving, do they work, what type of voicemail works best?
When I was an SDR, 20-30% of my quota came from callbacks. To emphasize this a bit more, the industry standard pickup rate for cold calls is 4-6%. That is answering the phone, not converting into a meeting. 20-30% is a massive number. I've found almost no other SDRs with this high of a % of quota attainment from voicemails until they learned this old trick.
The best voicemail to leave cold prospects is as follows.
"Hey Mr.Prospect, it's Carlos. Call me back"
Ironically, most people don't believe me and don't even bother trying it.
Every single person that has ever put this into play consistently has started receiving callbacks. They are almost always shocked at how many they get.
To elaborate on the psychology behind it, based on my experience, unless you have an overtly unusual name, most prospects know somebody with your name. They start to think that maybe that individual is reaching out, whether it's a friend, a colleague or in my case their landscaper (true story).
They call back just to figure out if it's that same Carlos or what is going on. A lot of times they actually just go right into the last conversation they had with that other person. I've actually had a few of these where I was listening to them for 10-20 seconds chatting about whatever that was and they still don't know that it's not the same Carlos. For example a prospect once called me & jumped into how they were so sorry and were meaning to get back to me on the deal they were about to close. I responded with "Man, I wish I were that same Carlos, but I'm actually cold calling you right now believe it or not!".
Once they took a second to collect themselves & actually realize I wasn't the same Carlos I asked them if it was alright for me to grab 20-30 seconds to see why I was calling (asking for permission to continue even though they have called you back is vital).
Either way, once they call back and give you a chance to speak, you go into your algorithmic cold calling script & say "Mr. Prospect, I'm sorry to say that this is actually Carlos from XYZ & I was originally cold calling you. I know you've now called back into a cold call but I'm wondering if I could have a few seconds to tell you why I initially called?" and then go into the rest of the algorithmic script.
The next time you get a voicemail with a prospect you're trying to reach, do the following:
When I was an SDR, 20-30% of my quota came from callbacks. To emphasize this a bit more, the industry standard pickup rate for cold calls is 4-6%. That is answering the phone, not converting into a meeting. 20-30% is a massive number. I've found almost no other SDRs with this high of a % of quota attainment from voicemails until they learned this old trick.
The best voicemail to leave cold prospects is as follows.
"Hey Mr.Prospect, it's Carlos. Call me back"
Ironically, most people don't believe me and don't even bother trying it.
Every single person that has ever put this into play consistently has started receiving callbacks. They are almost always shocked at how many they get.
To elaborate on the psychology behind it, based on my experience, unless you have an overtly unusual name, most prospects know somebody with your name. They start to think that maybe that individual is reaching out, whether it's a friend, a colleague or in my case their landscaper (true story).
They call back just to figure out if it's that same Carlos or what is going on. A lot of times they actually just go right into the last conversation they had with that other person. I've actually had a few of these where I was listening to them for 10-20 seconds chatting about whatever that was and they still don't know that it's not the same Carlos. For example a prospect once called me & jumped into how they were so sorry and were meaning to get back to me on the deal they were about to close. I responded with "Man, I wish I were that same Carlos, but I'm actually cold calling you right now believe it or not!".
Once they took a second to collect themselves & actually realize I wasn't the same Carlos I asked them if it was alright for me to grab 20-30 seconds to see why I was calling (asking for permission to continue even though they have called you back is vital).
Either way, once they call back and give you a chance to speak, you go into your algorithmic cold calling script & say "Mr. Prospect, I'm sorry to say that this is actually Carlos from XYZ & I was originally cold calling you. I know you've now called back into a cold call but I'm wondering if I could have a few seconds to tell you why I initially called?" and then go into the rest of the algorithmic script.
The next time you get a voicemail with a prospect you're trying to reach, do the following:
- leave a voicemail saying "hey it's (your name), call me back"
- profit
Give this a shot & let me know how it works for you. I'm super confident those brave enough to try this will see a substantial uptick in callbacks.
