Sales Training Tips for Staffing Professionals
Navigating the Voice Mail Jungle
A Q&A with Colleen Francis
By Colleen Francis
The following was adapted from an interview conducted by Dan Walker, host of SalesRepRadio – a weekly podcast offering tips, best practices and expert advice for sales professionals across North America and around the world.
Q: What is your position on voice mail?
No, not your voice mail. The voice mail of all those potential customers you’re trying to reach. Nobody likes getting stuck in a voice mail black hole. The real question is what can you do to get yourself out when it happens? Do you just hang up and keep trying back until a real live human being answers?
The good news is, there are better and more effective ways for dealing with voice mail. The President and Founder of Engage Selling Solutions, Colleen Francis, is here to help guide us through them. Colleen, welcome back, and thanks for joining us once again.
Colleen Francis: Thanks for having me.
Q: Colleen, it happens to all of us. We pick up the phone to try to make contact and end up getting somebody’s voice mail over and over again. Is this just something we should learn to live with?
Colleen: Most sales reps probably think so. We’ve found that about 80 per cent of the outbound calls we make end up in voice mail, which is an awful lot. So a lot of staffing professionals end up trying to use e-mail or come up with some sort of trick to get through to the person they want to reach. What we’ve discovered is that there are several other options that can be both more effective and less time-consuming.
Q: Well, let’s hear ‘em, because I think a lot of us here are feeling like we’re getting stuck all the time.
Colleen: First of all, I really believe that you should only use voice mail as a last resort. The first time you call a prospect, if you get their voice mail, hit “0” immediately. This will usually put you through to a receptionist, their assistant or someone else in their department. Then ask this person a simple question, like: “I was hoping you could help me. I’m looking to get a hold of Mr. or Ms. X and I was wondering if you knew whether they are just in a meeting or if they are out for the day?”
The key to that question is the word “help.” Many staffing professionals have a hard time using the word help, and while some people might find this sexist, I’ve found that men tend to have a harder time using the word than women do.
Yet “help” is a magical word. When you ask this person for their help, they’ll almost always let you know exactly what’s going on – whether the prospect is in a meeting, on vacation or gone for the day. Then you can thank them for their help and ask if they know when is the best time to call the prospect back.
Q: Let me stop you a minute, Colleen. I’ve tried some version of what you’re suggesting many times, and the answer I usually get is: “What is this in regards to?” What do we do then?
Colleen: Yes, sometimes you get that. When I do, I’ll treat that person as if they were the prospect. I go right into my cold call pitch or opening statement, and then ask them: “Do you know if Mr. or Ms. X would be interested in that?” They usually say, “I don’t know, you’ll have to talk to them directly.”
Q: Okay, here’s something else I’ve gotten. What do you do when they say: “Why don’t you just send us some resumes and if we’re interested we’ll get back to you?”
Colleen: I love when people say that. I usually tell them: “I actually don’t have any resumes to send.” It’s such a shocking comment, and in your business, it’s the truth, because I do is customized. How do you know what resumes to send before you have had a conversation?
I never advocate sending information to someone before you speak to them directly. Instead, I encourage them to say something like: “You know, I don’t want to just send any resumes” or “we’ve got many profiles in our database, and I really need to talk to someone about what you’d need to see.” Or if this isn’t the decision maker I’m trying to reach, I might simply tell them: “That’s fine, thank you for that information. I’ll try calling back when Mr. X is in his office.” Then I keep calling until I get them.
Q: That’s good to know, because I think a lot of us run into that situation pretty frequently. What’s the next move when it comes to voice mail?
Colleen: The second rule I live by is, if you’re calling someone for the first time and they don’t know who you are, what you do or you don’t have a referral, I tend not to leave any voice mail at all. The chances of them calling you back are so slim that you may as well not waste your breath.
On the other hand, if you’ve already spoken with the person or you have a referral and you simply can’t seem to get them to return your calls, we’ve developed a three-step process that many of my clients have found improves their rate of return calls by as much as 80 per cent.
Q: Step one wouldn’t happen to be, “I’ll send you 100 bucks if you call me back,” would it?
Colleen: Nothing like that at all. In fact, this process is actually all about building trust and maintaining that trust and honesty with your clients.
In step one, I leave a voice mail that says: “Hi Dan, it’s Colleen Francis at Engage Selling. Sorry I missed you; I’ll try you again Wednesday at 2 o’clock.” As soon as I hang up, I mark down in my calendar to call them back on Wednesday at exactly 2:00 p.m.
Then – and this is the critical point – you have to call back precisely when you said you would. Believe it or not, a small number of people will actually be waiting by the phone for your call. The rest of the time, if you get their voice mail again, take a deep breath and say: “Hi Dan, it’s Colleen from Engage Selling. Sorry I missed you, I promised to reach you today at 2 o’clock. I’ll try you again Friday at 10:00.”
You’ll notice that I’m not leaving my phone number.
Q: Yes, I did notice. Why is that?
Colleen: Well, because they’re probably not going to call me back anyway, and this approach is just a little different from what most sales reps do.
Now, the third time I call, I am going to leave my number, along with the message: “Hi Dan, it’s Colleen from Engage Selling. I promised to call you at 10 o’clock today. Sorry I missed you. I notice you’ve been difficult to reach this week and I imagine it’s either because you’re really busy, you’re out of the office or I’ve just picked the wrong times to find you at your desk.”
This way, I’m taking some of the responsibility for missing them off their shoulders. Then I say: “I’ll leave you my phone number, its 613-555-5555, and you can call me back when it’s convenient. If I don’t hear from you in a couple of weeks, I’ll call you on the week of the 28th.” Then I hang up the phone.
Around 80 per cent of the time, I get a return call within 48 hours.
Q: Around 80 per cent – you’re not cooking those numbers, are you, Colleen?
Colleen: Absolutely not! I’m as amazed as you are at how simple this approach is, and how successful it is in getting that return call. I think it’s for a couple of reasons. First, by making the client these small promises – that I would call them at a certain time – and then sticking to them, they start feeling that they can trust me to keep my word.
Second, in the third call, I accept some of the responsibility for not being able to get a hold of them. When we have trouble reaching someone, most of us may find that our tone of voice begins to suggest that the person is a jerk for not returning our calls. This just makes the client even less likely to call us back.
Instead, because I’m accepting some of the responsibility, I generally get a call back saying, “Hey, Colleen, it’s not your fault; I’ve just been out of the office” or “I’ve just been really busy.” This tells me the real reason that they haven’t been returning my calls.
Q: I notice that the word “promise” creeps into every message you leave. That kind of meshes nicely with our conversation the last time around, when we talked about the importance of honesty in sales and of keeping our promises.
Colleen: Exactly. The message to the client is that, if Colleen can keep her promises on these small things, she’ll probably keep her word on the big things, too.
Remarkably few staffing professionals use the word “promise.” And there’s nothing quite as satisfying as that small percentage of the time when you actually get the person on the phone the second or third time you call, and they say: “I was expecting your call today.”
Q: Does e-mail ever come into play in this process?
Colleen: It sure does. If I have an e-mail address for the person, I will send them an e-mail right after I leave that third voice mail message.
In it, I always say the same thing: “Hi Dan, its Colleen. Sorry I missed you on the phone today. I promised to call you at 10 o’clock. Here is my number and my contact information. Why don’t you call me when you have a minute? I noticed you’ve been difficult to reach this week and I imagine that’s either because you’re really busy, you’re out of the office or I’ve just picked the wrong times to find you at your desk. If I don’t hear from you in a couple of weeks, I’ll call you on the week of the 28th (around two or three weeks from now).”
Then I start the process all over again.
Q: In that e-mail, should we stay away from including our value proposition and just try to keep it simple and generic?
Colleen: I usually keep it generic, because remember, I only leave a voice mail when I’ve already made contact with the prospect. Often what happens is first we call the customer, we give them our value pitch and they say, “Well, that sounds interesting, why don’t you call me next week and we can talk about it?” That’s when I would start the three-part voice mail and e-mail trail.
I don’t feel it is effective to start pitching any value propositions in a voice mail message. People just don’t listen to their voice mail that closely. How many times have you hit “3, 3, 3, 7” to fast-forward and delete a message that launches into a whole sales pitch? I know I’m guilty of it, and I’m sure my clients do it too.
Q: What if we have a referral versus just a typical cold call. Should we use voice mail then?
Colleen: Yes, and it’s actually very similar.
When I have a referral, I call and leave an initial voice mail that says something like: “Hi Dan, this is Colleen Francis from Engage Selling. Bob at XYZ Corporation suggested I call you to talk about how we helped him find the right employees for his technology company. Sorry I missed you today. I’ll call you again on Wednesday at 10:00.”
From there, it’s basically the same process – call when I said I would, leave a message with another specific time for a third attempt, and then finally leave a third message where I give them my number and shoulder some of the responsibility for missing them. The only difference is that, in each voice mail I leave, I make sure to reference the referral and my value proposition. I would say that, once again, I average a return call within a day or two of leaving that third message at least 80 per cent of the time.
Now that I’ve gotten into the habit, it’s really kind of fun. I usually do my initial calls on a Monday, my second calls on Wednesdays and the third calls on Friday mornings. It’s interesting how many return calls I get before the end of Friday afternoon. That means that it’s only taken me five working days to get through to my customers, while most of my clients find themselves leaving voice mail for upwards of three to four weeks.
Q: It’s nice to be able to accomplish that process in a week. Okay, so when we call and we have a referral, we always invoke the name of the person who sent us and pop in a quick value proposition.
Colleen: Exactly. And make sure the value proposition is related to how you helped the person who referred you.
Don’t just say, “Bob suggested that I call you because we are excellent recruiters.” Say: “Bob suggested I call you because we helped him improve his employee retention rate by 80%” Verbalize the problem you solved and the value you provided to Bob. It’s a much stronger referral when you can do that.
Q: This may be throwing you a wild card, but what if the person who referred us is a friend or someone who we’ve worked with, but never sold anything to?
Colleen: Then I think you could probably say something like: “Hi Mr. X, this is Colleen Francis from Engage Selling Solutions. Bob suggested I call you because he knows that we’ve been able to help companies like yours hire the right people for his temporary projects” or “we’ve been able to help people like you to do with their summer ramp up.”
Here, the key word is “help,” which - like “promise” - can make a huge difference in whether or not you are successful. I use “help” all the time in my value proposition, especially when it’s related to a referral.
Q: You’ve given us some great guidelines to follow here, Colleen. Can you bring it all home for us?
Colleen: Well, number one, use voice mail as a last resort. Always hit “0” or try to get someone else in the company to help you find the contact you’re looking for first.
Number two, only leave voice mail for someone you don’t know if you have a referral you can mention to them.
And number three, if you’re already in the sales process with the prospect or you have a referral, use our three-step voice mail strategy to show the prospect that you will keep your word, to take responsibility for not reaching them and to invite them to call you back.
Q: Colleen Francis, Engage Selling Solutions. Thanks so much for your help and we look forward to speaking with you again soon.
Colleen: Thanks very much. It’s been my pleasure, as always.
Colleen Francis, Sales Expert, is Founder and President of Engage Selling Solutions (www.EngageSelling.com). Armed with skills developed from years of experience, Colleen helps clients realize immediate results, achieve lasting success and permanently raise their bottom line.
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