5X More Callbacks (Sales Voicemail Examples) | Selling Made Simple

We all know mastering your cold calling game is essential for sales success. But what a lot of reps don’t come prepared for is voicemail. And that’s a real problem since 4 out of 5 cold calls end in a no pickup. So, how can you up your voicemail game and maximize the value of every one of your calls? Simple—just use these three word-for-word voicemail templates. So, ready to beef up your voicemails with these templates? Great, then let’s jump in. 1. The Foundation The Foundation Template. This is the template that each of the other voicemail templates are built on top of. And it goes like this: Hello, this is [your name] from, [company name]. I’m calling because, [reason for calling]. This benefits you for, [benefits]. I will follow up with an email right now and I look forward to speaking with you shortly. Have a great day. Goodbye. It’s simple. And it’s effective. Now let’s take a look at what using this template looks like in the real world. Real World Example So this is a word-for-word example of what I say when selling our Selling Made Simple Academy to the VP of Sales: Hi this is Will Barron, calling from Salesman.org.  I’m calling because we’ve just improved your competitor’s revenue by 24% with 4 weeks of training and we can do the same for you.  I will follow up with an email right now and I look forward to speaking with you shortly.  So let’s break down this template so we can understand what we’re really trying to do here. First off, you can see that I’m not doing anything weird or manipulative. The old-school way of selling would be something like this: “I’m calling as I have something incredibly exciting to share and I need you to call back right now before you lose access to it…” I’ve even heard old-school sales trainers tell reps to start sharing a benefit and then purposefully hang up halfway through the sentence so it sounds like they’ve been cut off. Both of these tactics are gross and obviously manipulative. Imagine using a tactic like this with a surgeon, which is who I used to sell to when I worked in medical device sales. They’d think you were an idiot at worst and at best, it would severely devalue you as an industry expert in their eyes. Why It’s Effective Let’s look at this template again and see why it works: Hello, this is [your name] from, [company name]. I’m calling because, [reason for calling]. This benefits you for, [benefits]. I will follow up with an email right now and I look forward to speaking with you shortly. Have a great day. Goodbye. The main thing that we are trying to communicate is that we are an expert calling upon someone that we can help. We’re also getting them used to our voice and preempting the fact that we are going to continuously follow up with them until they give us a response. That is all we are really asking for from a voicemail. Unless you’re halfway through the deal and you have something specific to talk about, most of the time your prospects won’t reply directly to your voicemail. And that’s why we always follow up with an email that builds on the trust and rapport our voicemail just created. Now what’s great about this template is that you can tweak it for a variety of situations. And that brings us to template number two… 2. The Referral As you might’ve guessed, this is the template you can use to increase response rates by pointing to a referral. So for example, every time I provided a high level of service to my surgical customers, I would ask them if they thought any of their colleagues could also benefit from the same value. Often, they would provide a referral which I would then use voicemail, calls and email to follow up on. So let’s look at how we can use this basic voicemail template specifically for referrals. Hi,