Should You Leave a Voicemail When Cold Calling?

So there's few topics in sales that spark more debate on a sales floor than whether or not you should bother leaving voicemails. You've got some reps who are in the camp of they're a total waste of time. And then you've got other reps who are like, you always gotta leave a voicemail. You always gotta leave your 30 second commercial. I'm gonna go through in this video the case against voicemails, which is frankly pretty strong, but actually the reason why you should be leaving voicemails and a number of different voicemail scripts that you can use. Because here's the thing, if you leave voicemails the right way, you can double your cold email reply rate. And in this video, I'm gonna take you through the exact two voicemail scripts that I use to drive cold email responses. Let's dive in. So we're gonna start with the case against voicemails, which, frankly, is pretty damn strong. Case point number one, prospects almost never call back. This one is true. I've gotten probably five voicemail callbacks in my entire history of working in sales. That's not very many. Prospects are just not gonna call you back. Case point number two, voicemails slow you down. And this one is also true. You can make like 25% more cold calls in the same same call blitz if you skip spending the time to leave the same voicemail again and again and again. Case point number three, and this one really shocked me because I didn't even think about this when I first got into sales. Voicemails actually give away that you're a salesperson and make them less likely to pick up in the future. We actually looked at some data in collaboration with Gong. We analyzed over 300 million cold calls and the data proved this one to be true. When you leave a voicemail, it hurts your connect rate on future calls by almost 30% because your voicemails reveal that you're a salesperson. So all of those things are true, but you still should be leaving voicemails for one key reason. The reason is the goal of a voicemail is not to get a callback. The goal of a voicemail is to drive them to respond to your prospecting email. And that same GONG data showed that when you leave a voicemail, it more than doubles your cold email email reply rate because your voicemail draws attention to the fact that you're a human being reaching out and you drive them to respond to your email. You can also mitigate that connect rate hit that you take by giving away that you're a salesperson by leaving a voicemail. By rotating the numbers that you call from most good sales engagement platforms will let you buy multiple phone numbers that you can dial from and you should just rotate the numbers that you call from. That way you can leave your voicemails, drive email responses and also not hurt your future dials. And so with the case settled that yes, we should be leaving voicemails, I'm going to take you into not what's called the voicemail double tap strategy that you can use to drive more and more and more cold email replies. For the double tap strategy, you are only going to leave two voicemails. Voicemail number one is context only. I'll get into the scripts in a second. Voicemail number two is context plus social proof. And there's three key principles with these two voicemails you're going to leave. Principle number one is we're going to lead with context, nothing about the product or company. Principle number two is we're going to call, call out in the voicemail that we sent them an email and that they should respond so that we don't call again. Principle number three is we're gonna keep these super, super short. Your first voicemail should be like 15 seconds. Your second voicemail should be like 30 seconds. And if you follow these principles, I promise you will get more cold email responses. You're not gonna get callbacks, but you don't want callbacks. You want more cold email responses. So let's get into voicemail number one, which is context only about 15 seconds long. You've got four pieces to it. The upfront context, the direct to email, the incentivization of them to respond to that email. And then you're going to introduce yourself at the end. The way that it might sound is, hey, Dave, we work with a couple other Scadden partners in the LA office. There's no need to call me back. I'm literally about to hit send on an email to you. Just so we don't end up playing phone tag. Do you mind taking a look and letting me know if what I sent is even moderately interesting? It's going to come from Nick at Acme. Thanks. So that's an example you can see. I, I'm literally putting my hands behind my head. I'm trying to make it feel like I'm calling a referral or I'm calling like someone my buddy introduced me to. This is not meant to be like a stiff salesy voicemail. Your cold email reply rates literally triple. If you pair them with a cold call. Right now you can get 34% off our 30 minutes to presidents Club outbound bundle which includes our cold calling course, Cold Calls to Presidents Club, which will teach you exactly what to do, what to say say, and how to sound for every single step of a cold call. It also includes our cold email course which will teach you how to write personalized one to one feeling cold emails in minutes, not hours and how to make world class offers to your buyer to solicit responses instead of just asking for time. And so if you go to 30mpc.com courses, go check out our outbound bundle and you will find yourself booking meeting after meeting after meeting and on your way to President's Club. Another one that I use with a team that I coach called Vitable. They sell health insurance to home care agencies. Hey Mark, we work with a couple other home care agencies in Rochester. There's no need to call me back though. I'm literally about to hit send on an email to you. Just so we don't have a plain phone tag, do you mind taking a second and letting me know if what I sent over is even remotely on point? So what I'm doing here, I'm leading with the fact that we work with people like them or that I saw something about them that prompted me to call them, that gets them to sit up and be like, oh, this is about me or this is about my peers that gets them listening. What I'm doing is I'm saying, hey, don't call me back because we know they're not going to call us back. I'm literally about to hit send on an email. Go check your inbox. Now what I'm doing is I'm subtly saying, hey, I'm going to call again just so we don't play phone tag. Let me know what you thought of that email. And that's how we incentivize them to respond to us. And then the last piece is we're introducing ourself at the end so they know the name and the company that they should be looking for in their inbox. The reason I'm not doing that upfront is because that's what every single salesperson does in their voicemail. Most salespeople start their voicemails with hey Mary, this is Nick with Acme Co. Hey Jane, this is Nick with Acme Co. Well, that sounds like a sales voicemail and it's gonna get deleted before they hear the rest. So we have to flip it and lead with context to get them to listen to the rest of the voicemail. Now, if they haven't responded to our email or called us back by the next time it comes around to call them, we're gonna leave another voicemail and we're actually gonna follow a very, very similar script where we mostly lean on context. But on this one, we're gonna add a little bit of social proof as a way to tease out a couple more replies and give them just a tiny taste of what we do. The reason that we're not including this in the first voicemail is one, including this extra social proof frankly, takes more time and you can really draw out most of the responses with that context only voicemail. Reason number two is when you include this social proof, it starts to give away the fact that this is indeed a sales voicemail and we want them to know that. But when they have the benefit of a full, full email where we can actually explain what we do and how we help. Not an extremely hurried, harried voicemail. And so listen to how this one changes. I'm going to keep a very similar structure and add just a taste of what we do. Hey, Dave, we work with a couple other Scadden partners in the LA office on their tax planning, amongst other things. I'm sure you've got that taken care of, but I'm literally about to hit send on an email to you just to give you a sense of what we're doing with some of your peers. Just so we don't end up playing phone tag. Would you mind responding and letting me know if what I sent over is even moderately interesting? It's going to come from Nick at Northwestern. Thanks. So you can see I added we work with them on their tax planning, amongst other things. I'm sure you have that taken care of. I want to lower the sales pressure, but I'm going to send you an email giving you a sense of what we're doing with those other folks. So I'm trying to give them a little bit more to be like, all right, I might as well see what Nick's doing with my peers. Another one for Vitable. We're selling to home care agencies. Hey, Michael, we work with a couple other home care agency owners in Western PA on their health benefits, amongst other things. And I'm sure you already have that taken care of, but I'm literally about to hit send on an email to you with some detail on how we're working with those other folks just so we don't end up playing phone tag. Would you mind taking a Look at that email and letting me know if what I sent over is even moderately interesting, it's going to come from Nick at Vitable. Thanks. So again, what I'm doing here is I'm including some more detail on the fact that we're helping other folks like them. I think they've got that taken care of, but the email is going to share more about how we help their peers. I'm leaning really, really hard on the social proof. And that's it. If we get to this point in our sequence where we've left the context only voicemail as well as the context plus social proof voicemail, stop leaving voicemails. It's not like they have zero benefit, but if you think about the law of diminishing returns, there is a decay curve associated with doing the same thing again and again and again. And every sales calorie that you spend leaving a third, a fourth, a 17th voicemail, you could be spending other prospects. So you have to use your efforts wisely. And so to recap what we talked about related to voicemails, yes, there's a strong case against them. Prospects don't call us back. They take a decent amount of time to leave and yeah, they do hurt our future connect rate, but we still want to leave them because they double our cold email reply rate, which makes the time that we spend totally worth it. And we can mitigate the risk of that connect rate decline by rotating the numbers that we call from. We covered the two different voicemails that we're going to leave. Voicemail number one is 15 seconds, context only. We lead with context, we direct to email, we incentivize the response and then we introduce ourselves at the end if that one doesn't work. Voicemail number two, very, very similar. This is a 30 second voicemail with context plus social proof where we lead with context and a little bit of social proof. We direct them to email with a little bit of social proof, we incentivize the response and then we again introduce ourself at the end. And then at that point, after two voicemails, we're gonna stop leaving voicemails and focus our voicemail efforts elsewhere. So if you liked this video, we put together a full 30 mpc course on cold calling that breaks down step by step, what to do, what to say and how to sound on every single part of a cold call. Openers, pitches, objections, how to actually book the meeting, what do you do if they no show you how to leave a voicemail, how to get past the gatekeeper and more. So there is a link in the description of this video and I think there might be a coupon code. I'm not sure. Don't follow me for my negotiation advice, apparently because we're proactively giving out discounts. Thanks for watching the video and we will see you on the next one.