Voicemail is either our best friend or worst enemy (or possibly a little bit of both).  Is it a convenience in sales and critical in our selling skills — or just one more layer sabotaging our sales success as we try to reach clients and prospects?
My suggestion is that instead of lamenting about how frustrating it is to reach people’s voicemail, why don’t you instead commit to improving your voicemail skills and phone skills so that you can strengthen your sales motivation and your bottom line?
Here are 15 tips to surviving (and thriving) with voicemail:
1. If your goal is to get the phone call returned, don’t leave information that would allow the person to make up their mind. Add a call-to-action to your message by providing a key date or something of interest that will encourage the person to return the call. You have to create a reason for them to call you back.
2. Repeat your phone number twice. If the person can’t quickly write your number down, you’ve given them a perfect reason to not call back.
3. Avoid asking the person to call you back at a certain time. This provides them with an excuse not to call you.
4. Never state in the message that you will plan to call them back. Again, this only gives the person an excuse to ignore your message.
5. Messages left on a Friday afternoon are the least likely to be returned. For most people, Monday mornings are very busy and, as a result, only high–priority activities will get their immediate attention.
6. Do not leave voicemail messages at odd hours of the night. Most voicemail systems offer a time stamp and the person hearing the message will immediately suspect you really did not want to talk to them.
7. The best hours to leave voicemail messages are from 6:45 to 8:00 a.m. and from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Driven people are usually working during these time periods, and the person receiving your message could potentially view you as one, which is good.
8. Wisely use time zone changes to make as many calls as possible during the optimal voicemail periods listed in the previous tip.
9. Voicemail messages are an excellent way to introduce yourself to a person. Be personable, yet professional, and link your message to something of interest to the person you are calling (such as another person or event). The recipient may view your message as a waste of time if you have no purpose other than getting your name in front of them.
10. When leaving a message with multiple points, be sure to immediately disclose how many you will be making. This will prevent the recipient from accidentally fast-forwarding or deleting it before it is completely heard.
11. If you can’t say it briefly, don’t say it at all. Voicemail is not “story time.” Leaving a long message is an invitation to have the entire message skipped. The optimal voicemail message is between 8 and 14 seconds.
12. When leaving your phone number, do not leave your website address as well. This will give the person an opportunity to make a decision about you without calling you back.
13. Leave a “PS” at the end of your message. A “PS” is a very quick, additional piece of information that will connect with the person.
14. Mention the person’s first name at least twice in the message, but don’t use their last name (doing so comes across as very impersonal).
15. Refer to a mutual acquaintance in your message as a way of connecting with the recipient. (Caution: Make sure they think positively of that person!).
Voicemail doesn’t have to be your nemesis.  Instead, it can be a tool to keep your prospecting and sales motivation on track.  Don’t try to wing it.  Be conscientious of the way you are using voicemail to its fullest so that you won’t just survive it — you’ll thrive with it!

If you want to be lucky, work harder than everyone else around you.
If you want to be lucky, practice delivering kindness to those you meet each day.
If you want to be lucky, develop new skills before you need them.
If you want to be lucky, be a good friend to the ones you already have.
If you want to be lucky, be deliberate about following through on the promises you make.
If you want to be lucky, say “Please” and “Thank You” more often.
If you want to be lucky, stop completing and start competing.
If you want to be lucky, keep looking for solutions to the obstacles standing in your way.
If you want to be lucky, take action when you feel fearful, frightened, or weak.
If you want to be lucky, push past your limits and try new things.
If you want to be lucky, spend less time complaining and more time fixing things.
If you want to be lucky, give what you have and give first.
If you want to be lucky, go out of your way to make a difference.
If you want to be lucky, stop expecting to get lucky.
Just keeping doing the right thing until you are where you want to be.
You might not be lucky, but you’ll certainly feel like it.

Make a list of your positive qualities. It's easier to deny your special abilities if you never try to identify them. Are you honest? Unselfish? Helpful? Creative? Be generous with yourself and write down at least 20 positive qualities. Writing down qualities that make you a valuable and competent person helps convince you that you are indeed valuable and competent. As with your list of past successes, review this list often to reinforce the idea that, if you've accomplished great things in the past, you're capable of doing it in the future.

"Visualize this thing that you want, see it, feel it, believe in it. Make your mental blue print, and begin to build."

"The most important thing about goals is... having one."

"A happy family is but an earlier heaven."

"Every mistake that I made - and we all make mistakes - came because I didn't take the time to get the facts. I didn't drive hard enough."

"The two most powerful warriors are patience and time."

"Each man (is) the architect of his own fortune."

"We must take change by the hand or rest assuredly, change will take us by the throat."

"If you can give your son or daughter only one gift, let it be enthusiasm."

"Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another."

"It takes the hammer of persistence to drive the nail of success."

"When the solution is simple, God is answering."

"Success is the maximum utilization of the ability that you have."

In a perfect world, prospects would fall from the sky. There would be no need to hunt or chase people down, they’d simply just appear!
Unfortunately, as we tune back into reality, we have to accept that prospects can be tough to come across. Many salespeople have exceptional product knowledge and people skills, but lack the prospecting abilities to actually put those skills into practice. There’s no escaping the fact that we have to prospect consistently in order to sell consistently.
If prospecting is continuously slipping to the bottom of your daily todo list, here are 8 tips that can help you find more people to sell to. The best part? They are all easy to implement! With these tips you can finally throw the excuses out the window and get to work!

1. Sell more products to existing customers
2. Set a goal for the number of networking events you will attend each month
3. Take a look at your email list and scan for potential prospects
4. Ask your current customers for referrals
5. Go for lunch or coffee with one new person each week
6. Volunteer to speak at trade shows or conferences
7. Join trade associations that your clients and prospects belong to
8. Send relevant items of interest to your mailing list

Notice that there is a common theme that seems to exist in all 8 of these tips. In order to meet new potential customers, you must take action! There is no sales strategy or process in the world that will allow you to make sales if you have no customers.

"Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the staircase."

"Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even."

"Move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new."

Trying to change someone is a waste of time. The very thought of changing someone is saying that they are not good enough as they are, and it is soaked with judgment and disapproval. That is not a thought of appreciation or love, and those thoughts will only bring separation between you and that person.

You must look for the good in people to have more of it appear. As you look only for the good things in a person, you will be amazed at what your new focus reveals.

 

"To be given a chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy."

"The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little 'extra'."

"Ideas will be the major source of new wealth."

"Thought is the original source of all wealth, all success, all material gain, all great discoveries and inventions, and of all achievement."

"Deal first with whatever is causing you the greatest emotional distress. Often this will break the logjam in your work and free you up mentally to complete (the) other tasks."

"Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are."

"You can't steal second base and keep your foot on first."

The law of attraction cannot change anything in your life that you hate, because hate prevents the change from coming. Since the law is giving us exactly what we are putting out, when you hate something the law must continue to give you more of what you hate. You will not be able to move away from it. Love is the only way.

If you focus completely on the things you love, then you are on your way to a beautiful life.

"Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase."

"Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. "

"When a man dies, if he can pass enthusiasm along to his children, he has left them an estate of incalculable value."

"The fiery trials through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation."

"In calm water every ship has a good captain."