Today, we’re talking about the best practices for leaving sales voicemails. Are you a believer in voicemails, or do you think they’re a waste of time? Have you considered using voicemails as part of your outreach toolkit? It’s very easy to overlook voicemails for communicating, but if you can use them properly you can vastly improve your rates of connection!
In this episode of INSIDE Inside Sales, Darryl speaks with award-winning author and overall legend, Art Sobczak. Darryl and Art discuss the most common mistakes SDRs commit when leaving voicemails, and how to avoid them, as well as best practices for leaving sales voicemails. They also discuss incredibly valuable advice on how to use messaging that will set you apart, create attention, and even make your prospects curious enough to call you back! Learn how to leave voicemails that make the right impressions, here on this episode of INSIDE Inside Sales!
Not in the mood to listen? No problem, you can read the transcriptions below.
Host: Darryl Praill, VanillaSoft
Guest: Art Sobczak, Business By Phone
Raise Your Voicemails
Best Practices for Leaving Sales Voicemails
Darryl Praill: Well, can you believe another week has gone by, my friends, how have you been? I have been good, thanks. I know, you’re asking, you’re sitting in the car going Praill, I don’t care about how you’ve been. It’s all about me. I know, I get it, I get it’s all about you, and it’s all about how can we make you better, right? Well, my friend, I get it. We’re going to solve that problem today.
Darryl Praill: In fact, you know what we’re going to do today? I am going to have a conversation about a topic I’ve never done before. You know, we hit up on discovery, and we hit up on the art of the cold call, and all these wonderful topics, and we have these great people, and we hit it kind of five ways to Sunday, multiple times, multiple episodes, nature of the beast, right?
Darryl Praill: But today’s session has never been talked about before, and I’m really curious on what your take is going to be. You may agree with me, or you may not. But, before I get there, I always like to open up and have a little ramble, a little chat, what’s going on in my life, what’s going on, how does it matter to you, and, I want to share something with you. I’ve, you know I’m always advocating, when I’m talking to sales reps, about, you’ve got to reach out multi-channel.
Darryl Praill: You know this, right, you’ve got to do phone, you got to do email, you got to do social. And, and some of you are scared of the phone. It’s okay, part of it is generational, part of it’s just familiarity, part of it, it’s an unknown. And some of you are afraid of social. I get it, it’s all cool.
Darryl Praill: But your job is to use all of the tools that you have available to you. It literally, seriously is, because you don’t know how you’re going to connect with me. So, okay, multi-channel, Praill, we get it, email, phone, social, blah blah, I’m tired of hearing it, enough already. Okay, but it goes more than that. There are other channels too, right? There’s video, so when you send me an email, send me a video.
Darryl Praill: When you use LinkedIn, you can send me a video, so you’re touching me on both LinkedIn on social, and a video, or you can send me an audio message, all right? You can do that. Now, what’s interesting about that? What’s interesting about that is that when you leave me an audio message, or even a video recording, on LinkedIn as one example, you know what you’re doing? You’re leaving me a voicemail.
Darryl Praill: Now here’s the funny part. You don’t think of it that way. You go to yourself, you say, oh that’s awesome, because everybody’s sending text messages on LinkedIn, as one of the channels, social, but nobody’s sending a voice message or a video/voice message, no one’s doing that, so my message is going to stand out.
Darryl Praill: And you know what, you’re 100% right, so if you’ve not done that, it’s easy-peasy. Do it, because it actually works really well. But it is a voicemail. Okay, hold that thought. How many of you, when you use the phone, leave a voicemail? Ah, you’re hesitating aren’t you, I know you are. Because many of you are saying, and some of you are saying, yeah, I do, and I love you for it, but, let me guess.
Darryl Praill: Your expectations of that voicemail are negligible. Like, almost zero. Yeah, I’m leaving it because that’s what I had to do. But, the other part of you, or the other fraction of you out there are saying, voicemails are useless, and I don’t leave them, I just don’t even bother. Why? Who checks voicemail anymore? So, I get it, but do you see, do you see the conflict here? You see that the fact that you can leave me a voicemail on LinkedIn and you’re cool with that, that’s to your advantage, but you leave me a voicemail on the phone, that’s a waste of time? You get it? You get it?
Darryl Praill: Yeah, that’s bad. You are, you probably never thought about it that way, but you are in conflict. Let me make it straight for you, folks, a voicemail is a voicemail is a voicemail. So, no matter what you do, A, you should leave one, two, it’ll make you stand out, three, it’ll give you a reason to follow up with them, because you left them a voicemail, and there better be a call to action in that voicemail, right?
Darryl Praill: All right, so. If we accept that premise for today’s conversation, you know what we need to talk about? We need to talk about voicemails, because you’re not leaving them, or if you are, you’re doing them wrong. So, who’s the right guy to talk to on voicemail?
Darryl Praill: So, well it’s funny, you know often I’m talking to all the experts and I know, oh, Mike Weinberg is great for that, or Mark Hunter’s great for this, or Jeb Blount is great for that, or Benjamin Denn, he’s great for this. But I said voicemails, who’s the go-to guy for that? So, I reached out to a variety of my circle, my trusted advisors, and I say, voicemails, who do I reach out to for voicemails?
Welcome, Art Sobczak
Darryl Praill: And they all said the same thing, and, ladies and gentlemen, here he is today. Let me bring on, Art Sobczak. This guy’s a rock star legend, he’s been around forever. If you don’t know Art, he is the president of Business By Phone, uh-huh, phone, huh? You see what I’m talking about? Voicemails? He’s the author of “Smart Calling,” all right? You can check him out at SmartCalling.com.
Darryl Praill: Oh, it doesn’t stop there, the man is not just on my podcast, he’s got his own, The Art of Sales. You can see that at TheArtofSales.com. But Art Sobczak is one of the legends, in fact I was talking to one of my trusted advisors, and he told me told two things, he said, “Darryl, when you talk to Art, “you got to give him a hard time. “Give him grief, because that’s the way Art is, “he’s a good guy, but give him a hard time.” And the second part is, “Darryl, between you and I, “that man is a trailblazer.” So, I’ve set the stage, Art, I am so delighted you’re here man, welcome to the show.
Art Sobczak: Darryl, thank you. Wow, what an introduction, and, I enjoyed listening to you. I was just going to sit back and I’m agreeing with everything you said. Well, almost everything, we’ll get into that.
Darryl Praill: Yeah, my wife almost agrees with everything I say too, and then she corrects me on everything I said. So, I love that. So, let’s just get right into it, Art, I’m kind of curious, let me just talk about, the emperor has no clothes, I’ll put it right out there. Is voicemail dead, yes or no? We’ll just start there.
Art Sobczak: Any time somebody says something is dead, I just have to shake my hand, my head, because, we’re going to make some blanket statement about everybody in the world and every single customer out there? Normally when somebody says something is dead, they have some kind of agenda or they have something to sell.
Art Sobczak: Now, does that mean that maybe some people aren’t listening to their voicemail? Perhaps, but does that mean that we should never do it? No, well here’s the thing. Anybody that says something is dead or voicemail is dead, keep this in mind. You are not your prospect, or you are not your customer.
Art Sobczak: And if I have the opportunity to leave another impression, to leave a commercial, after I’ve already done the heavy lifting, the heavy lifting being all of the research that I did for my call, on the slight chance that I might get somebody live, why in the world wouldn’t I leave a message?
[bctt tweet=”Anybody that says voicemail 📞 is dead, keep this in mind. You are not your prospect, or you are not your customer. 🎧 Listen as @ArtSobczak tells you how you can leverage the use of voicemails in #Prospecting. #SalesEngagement #SalesCall” username=”VanillaSoft”]
Darryl Praill: So, I love that, I agree with you. And I love that you said you’ve done the heavy lifting, right so, and that could be, not just that you actually picked up the phone and you dialed, by the way, kudos folks if you’ve done that, because many of you, as we said, aren’t. But you, you’ve got the contact information, you sourced out the phone number, you might’ve done some data cleansing, and I really connect with your point about, why would you miss another chance to leave and make an impression with your prospect?
Darryl Praill: I don’t get it. But they, but they do, they miss that chance, so, is it because they’re projecting? Like you said, you know, you are not your prospect, are we sales folks projecting our own biases upon our prospect? Or are we in fact maybe instead, scared? So, we’re at the voicemail stage and the beep goes, and boom, we’re on, and it’s stage fright moment. What’s, why are we so hesitant to leave a voicemail?
Art Sobczak: Well, I don’t put myself in the “we” category, but I can only hypothesize about some people. One might be because they are projecting themselves onto other people. They may not listen to voice mail; therefore, they say nobody else does, which again, is wrong. I listen to voicemail, and, for other people, indeed, like you alluded to, it’s actually a relief that they got voicemail because now they don’t have to talk to a human, or put themselves out there, so then they can hang up and go on to the next one.
Art Sobczak: Other people have this false notion that it’s a waste of time. Now, let’s break this down a little bit. If I’ve already done, and again, I teach the Smart Calling process, which means that we’re doing research prior to our call, we’re preparing our opening/voicemail message, and, perhaps we’re doing some social engineering which is talking to somebody else in the organization prior to getting to the decision-maker, for the purpose of getting some information, so I’ve already invested all this time, I put together my messaging. Now, probably about 70% of the time, I’m going to get voicemail.
Art Sobczak: How long does it take me to actually leave that message? And that message probably shouldn’t be more than, maybe 15 seconds, 20 seconds or so? So, is that a lot of time? And so, we might say, well jeez, what if I’m doing it over, 20 times over the course of the day? Well fantastic, because I’ve just left 20 more possible impressions. And by the way, there’s, the same thing about wasting time, I’ve heard the same argument as it relates to doing research before a call.
Art Sobczak: I don’t have time to do research before a call. I’ll tell you where people, where sales reps really need to be concerned about wasting time. It’s the time that they’re wasting when they’re not doing some revenue-producing activity. It’s the time they’re wasting on Facebook, or checking their fantasy team, or you know, going online to read something else, or talking to someone else in their area. If you add up all that time, that’s probably much more than the time you could leave 100 voicemails over the course of a day.
Darryl Praill: All right, so, I’m sold. I, I’m a firm believer in voicemails. And folks, I want to be fully transparent here, okay, about me personally is, we project upon ourselves, I personally am not great at checking my voicemail on my landline, that desk that still sits on my phone, on my desk, yeah at my work. I’m actually better at checking the voicemail on my cellphone.
Darryl Praill: I actually do check that much more regularly, but I am incredibly good at checking voicemail or voice messages sent to me, or video messages, sent to me on LinkedIn. So, does that surprise you, Art, that I might be less inclined on the landline, but certainly more attentive on the mobile, and definitely very attentive on social? Or, are we all different?
Art Sobczak: Well obviously, everybody is different, and that’s why we can’t make an assumption that everybody falls into the same category. So, I want to make sure that, as you mentioned before, that I’m multi-modal here, that I’m leaving messages and impressions, and not just messages, but value messages, in a variety of different ways, so that I can communicate with people the way that they accept their communication. And, something else too is, I mean we call it voicemail, but ultimately, it’s a message, right?
Art Sobczak: And the message is pretty much going to be the same or it should be the same, whether you’re leaving it on a recording, on a phone, on a landline, on a cellphone, if I’m giving it in a video, if I’m leaving it in a, a LinkedIn voice message, I’m leaving it in InMail, an email, a fax, some people have those still, you know, whatever.
Art Sobczak: Bottom line is, we should probably be focusing, not probably, we definitely should be focusing more on the content of the messaging, and not worry so much about, what is the mode in which I’m delivering it, and, and we should be using all of them. And, because again, I don’t know how somebody is going to, what their favorite mode of communication is.
[bctt tweet=”We definitely should be focusing more on the content of the messaging, and not worry so much about, what is the mode in which I’m delivering it, and, and we should be using all of them. Says @ArtSobczak #SalesSuccess #B2BSales #SDRs” username=”VanillaSoft”]
Common Mistakes While Leaving a Voicemail
Darryl Praill: All right, so let’s jump into it, in the sense of, the start, we’ll start with mistakes, we’ll get to what you should be doing, but, for the audience especially, what mistakes do you see people doing when it comes to leaving a voice message? Common mistakes.
Art Sobczak: How much time do we have?
Darryl Praill: Not as much as you need, I know.
Art Sobczak: And you know, the funny thing is that these mistakes are the same today as they were 10, 15, 20, 30 years ago, and, and actually they’re more egregious today, because we have the capability to not make these mistakes, and it’s so much easier for us to not make these mistakes. Number one, and by the way, these mistakes apply to whether you’re leaving a voicemail, or, an opening statement, an opening statement being when I have the person on the phone live.
Art Sobczak: When I do my workshops, I always tell people, you know what, I’m not going to cover how to create your voicemail, because we’re going to cover that in how to create your interest-creating opening, and the only difference is the ending, which I’ll go through here when we get to the, the part on what to do.
Art Sobczak: But let’s go through the mistakes. I would say by far, the number one mistake that people make on voicemail and opening statements is not having a, anything of possible value for the listener. And I always call it possible value. So many people say you need to have your value prop or your elevator speech.
Art Sobczak: The thing is, I don’t know what’s going to be of value to you until I actually speak with you and ask you questions, so I can surmise what may be of value to you based on what I know about you on, based on research and also what I know about your industry and other similar people in your position. So, so I call it possible value.
Art Sobczak: So, so that’s the number one mistake, because too many people have the me-mes, which is, I want to talk about me, my product, how great we are, and again, this hasn’t changed over the years. This is still the same, too many people just want to talk about their thing. And I did an entire YouTube video on that, it’s, Quit Talking About Your Thing, that’ll get you in trouble.
Darryl Praill: I love that. Quit talking, I’m sorry. I’m a kid at heart, I love it, sorry. Keep going.
Art Sobczak: Ah, he said thing.
Darryl Praill: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he said thing! Carry on.
Art Sobczak: So, the next, and it’s closely tied into this, is not personalizing and customizing your possible value. And, this is where I alluded to before, that there’s absolutely no reason for us to not know something about the people that we call. With a couple keystrokes and mouse clicks, I can find out a lot about you, your organization, what’s going on in your world. And the fact is today, is that people have become professional ignorers.
Art Sobczak: Feel free to tweet that one out folks, @artsobczak. Professional ignorers mean that we have to ignore almost all of the messages we receive daily because we get so many, there’s no possible way that we can pay attention to most of them. And, however, we do pay attention to some of them. Which ones? The ones that are about who? Us.
[bctt tweet=”Professional ignorers mean that we have to ignore almost all of the messages we receive daily because we get so many, there’s no possible way that we can pay attention to most of them. 🎧 Listen as @ArtSobczak explains! #ColdCalling #SalesTraining” username=”VanillaSoft”]
Art Sobczak: No kidding. Boy, there’s some rocket science, right? That hasn’t changed either. And, I mean if I just go in and listen to my voicemails from today, I think, probably five of them, yeah, four of them had absolutely no value, and of course they were not about me at all, and, the one that had some possible value didn’t even allude to me or anything that was going on in my world, personally. Now, how do we create attention? How do we make someone curious? When we set ourselves apart from everybody else out there who’s trying to get some of our attention.
Art Sobczak: When some message says, this is all about Darryl. Now, when you see that, or hear, hear or see that message, you’re going to lean in a little bit. That doesn’t mean you’re going to buy, but it’s the first step in getting you into a conversation. So, that is the second major mistake, and another, here’s another one. And it’s the same on voicemail or it’s the same on, especially on opening statements, and emails too, as well.
Art Sobczak: And I think there’s some template out there, somebody must be teaching this. It’s, it goes like this. Hey Darryl, Art Sobczak here with Business By Phone. I’m one of the world’s greatest sales trainers as it relates to inside sales, been doing this forever, I’ve helped millions of companies generate untold billions and billions of dollars, and what I want to do is get on your calendar and take 15 minutes of your time.
Darryl Praill: Oh, I hate that voicemail.
Art Sobczak: So, that I can tell you what I do. Okay? So, please reply and let me know when I can take 15 minutes of your time. You may as well say, Darryl, can I have $300 out of your wallet right now? Because, if I ask for your time, that’s more valuable than money. And, the thing is that, most of these messages have not even given them a reason to listen to the rest of your message, let alone give you 15 minutes of your time. So, here’s the thing. We should not be asking for a decision in an opening statement or a voicemail.
Art Sobczak: Actually, we do. The biggest decision we want somebody to make is that they are going to reply or give us a time when we might be able to ask them some questions, okay? And, again, when sales people say on, especially on a live phone call, and again I know we’re talking about voicemail but this is one of my pet peeves, when somebody get somebody on the phone live, I mean think about it, that’s one of the biggest challenges for sales people today, to get somebody on the phone live.
Art Sobczak: And it always kills me when somebody gets me on the phone live and I answer my own phone, where they say, well what I’d like to do is to get on your calendar for 15 minutes so that we can discuss this, this, and this, and I always say to them, why, why would you want to set up another call when you have me on the phone, right fricking now?
Darryl Praill: I know! Yes, I’ve had this conversation over and over again, I do not get it. I’m with you, yes, I’m, so I know what’s going on, but yes, I’m with you, I hate it. Hate it.
Art Sobczak: Maybe they’re so surprised they actually got somebody on the phone they don’t know what to say, but.
Darryl Praill: It is, that’s exactly what it is.
Art Sobczak: Anyway, I digress. So, those are the three major mistakes. No value, not customizing and personalizing the message, and asking for 15 minutes of someone’s time. So, here’s all we’re trying to do with our voicemail message. Are, everybody sitting down out there? Here we go, I mean this–
Darryl Praill: Okay, okay, hold that thought, hold that thought, hold that thought.
Art Sobczak: All right.
Darryl Praill: I want to tease them. We’re going to go for a break and when we come back, he’s going to tell you what you need to do. We’ll be right back. All right, I interrupted him folks, he was about to give you the gold. He was about to give you everything you wanted to hear because you’ve heard what you’re doing wrong.
Best Practices For Leaving Sales Voicemails
Darryl Praill: But we’re back. And you stayed around, thank you so much. Serious question, how many of you fast-forwarded, did the jump-ahead button, 30 seconds, ignored the commercial, because you wanted to hear him? Uh-huh, I’m with you, I do it too. Art, tell us what to do.
Art Sobczak: Okay, here’s the thing. Everybody, are you sitting down out there, because this is mind-blowing. Matter of fact, I, this should require a permit. Here is, here is what you’re trying to do with your voicemail message. Leave a question in the listener’s mind that they want the answer to. That’s it. I can hear the minds exploding out there right now, all over the screens. So, there we go.
[bctt tweet=”Leave a question in the listener’s mind that they want the answer to. That’s it. The holy-grail of #SalesProspecting, advises @ArtSobczak. #SalesStrategy #SalesTips” username=”VanillaSoft”]
Art Sobczak: We’re, we’re not trying to sell, we’re not going to try how, tell how great we are, we’re not asking for a decision. We want to leave a question in somebody’s mind where they’re thinking, huh, okay. Yeah, got my attention, I wonder what that is, or I wonder how they do that. Or, I wonder what that process is. So, we want to make them curious enough so that, several things, one of several things might happen.
Art Sobczak: And I do suggest backing up a voicemail with an email, so, perhaps we’ll get them to reply to the email, or, when our call comes back in again, because that’s the way I suggest we end a voicemail, by saying, and I will call you back on whatever day, so when our call comes back in, they look at that caller ID and they see our name or number again, now they might be thinking, oh that’s that guy that said he might be able to help us get more store traffic without any increase in advertising expense. Hmm, okay, maybe I’ll pick that one up.
Art Sobczak: So, that’s what we’re trying to do, leave that question they want the answer to.Because if you give the whole story, and they can make the decision that they don’t ever want to talk to you, guess what? They never talk to you.
Darryl Praill: I got to admit, that would work for me. If someone called me up, left a voicemail saying hey Darryl, it’s George. Listen, I want to share with you how I was able to help your competitor, insert competitor name, grow their free trials by 22%. If you want to know how we did it, give me a cell back. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll reach out to you again.
Darryl Praill: If I had that, I would be intrigued, and I would either wait for him to reach out to me again, because I know he’s going to do it again, and next time I would pick up the phone, or, if I had the time, I would actually call him back. I’m not saying I want his product, but I do want to know how he accomplished that goal because, if I can learn, why wouldn’t I want to do that, because I have deliverables I had to do, so that would work for me.
Art Sobczak: Well you better get ready for all the phone calls and voicemails you’re going to get with that message now.
Darryl Praill: Okay, so, your point is, craft an interesting voicemail, and I think you said, it serves one purpose, and to do that, you leave a question. And that one purpose is not to get 15 minutes in their calendar right now, correct?
Art Sobczak: No, no, not at all. Because, I mean you don’t even know if you want them on your calendar for 15 minutes. Yeah perhaps you do, but, but we don’t even want to say that. I mean here’s the thing. When somebody hits you cold with a request for something, what is the natural human reaction to that?
Darryl Praill: We–
Art Sobczak: Right?
Darryl Praill: Yeah, it’s like yes, yes. Yeah.
Art Sobczak: It’s resistance. Yeah, it’s the flight.
Darryl Praill: Yeah, total yeah.
Art Sobczak: It’s natural flight emotions, like well wait a minute, wait. It’s like the person coming up to you again in a retail store, may I help you, no just looking. Person running up to you with a survey. Oh, no, I, you know, get away from me. But, if I hint at something, very conversational, this is what we’ve done, I know you’re in a similar situation, I know something about you, and basically I’d like to ask you a few questions, see if it might make sense for us to have a conversation.
Creating a Value Proposition in Voicemail
Darryl Praill: That’s good. All right so let me ask a question, let me ask a loaded question. I leave that voicemail. They don’t call me back. I call again. Do I leave another voicemail? And if I do leave another voicemail, is it different?
Art Sobczak: Yeah, this is funny, and it’s actually kind of a pet peeve of mine, because I’ll get that question quite a bit in workshops and people go, okay well, what should I leave on the second and third voicemail? Let me ask you a question. Does Walmart change their slogan every week?
Darryl Praill: No, they don’t, they do not.
Art Sobczak: No, and I think, anybody that has a big gun, a big possible value proposition, that’s the one that’s likely going to get somebody interested. And by the way, a big premise of advertising is repetition. The more we hear something, the more it’s going to sink in, especially if we’re agreeing with it. I mean I don’t make this stuff up; this is psychologically proven.
[bctt tweet=”A big premise of advertising is repetition. The more we hear something, the more it’s going to sink in, especially if we’re agreeing with it. Says @ArtSobczak #SalesTips #SocialSelling” username=”VanillaSoft”]
Art Sobczak: So, why in the world, if I have created a, again a possible value proposition in my voicemail, based on the research that I’ve done about Darryl and VanillaSoft, or you and your podcast, whatever it is that I’m potentially selling that may be able to help you get something or avoid something, why would I want to change that? I want to reinforce that. So, what I’m going to do is leave that message again, and I’m not going to say, you didn’t respond to my voicemail. Oh, jeez, Captain Obvious.
Darryl Praill: Hate that. Hate that.
Art Sobczak: No, no kidding. Right. So, and by the way, if you sent a pre-approach email, which is fine, and by the way, what should go in the email? Pretty much the same thing that’s in the voicemail, and by the way, please, please, please don’t put in your email, and when can I get 15 minutes on your calendar? No, the email should do the same thing as your voicemail, pique some curiosity, and get a reply.
Art Sobczak: So, what I want to do is, if I send a pre-approach email, I might say, and as I mentioned in my email to you, what I do is specialize in working with, helping them to, and we’ve done this for other companies, helping them get a result of, and I’d like to ask you a few questions, see if it might be worth a conversation. So, that’s the biggest decision I want you to make, is to see if it might be worth a future conversation based on answering some questions.
Art Sobczak: But again, the whole premise here is, the possible value that you’re wondering, okay, I’m similar to those people, he helped them get those results, those are the results that I want, I wonder how they did it, might be worth just exploring a little bit. Again–
Darryl Praill: All right, so, no I, I’m going to cut you off here shortly, because we’re, we’re running out of time, and I want to, I want to change gears dramatically. So, folks, voicemails, okay? Follow, or, listen to his podcast, TheArtofSales.com, all right? Buy his book, “Smart Calling.” All right, all this stuff is about the voicemail.
Darryl Praill: Now, I want to talk briefly about the fact that if you liked everything Art said, you can actually see him live and in person, and continue this very conversation, and that is because Art is going to be a speaker at OutBound 2020. If you don’t know it, VanillaSoft is the title sponsor, it’s taking place May 5th to 8th in Atlanta. Art, what are you going to be talking about at the conference?
Art Sobczak: Well, I am so excited to be at OutBound because it is the premiere event for what I consider to be the best of the best of the sales profession, and those are the people that use the phone, because we all know that using the phone is harder than communicating face-to-face, so I consider anybody doing OutBound the elite sales pros of our profession, and thank you by the way to VanillaSoft for sponsoring this great event.
Art Sobczak: So, what am I going to be talking about? I’m going to talking about more of the same of what we just discussed here, except we’re going to be rolling up our sleeves, everybody will, and I’m going to give you a template where we can pretty much fill in the blanks, and you’re going to create your own interest-piquing opening statement/voicemail message that you will be able to use when you walk out of that room.
Art Sobczak: Now, there are some preliminary steps that I’ll touch on before I get there, matter of fact I would suggest that you get a copy of “Smart Calling” before you come so you can talk about, or so you can be well-versed in those steps because we, again we need to do our research, we want to do our social engineering which is talking to people other than a decision-maker prior to getting that decision-maker on the phone, we want to set our objectives for the call, and, then we want to prepare our messaging.
Art Sobczak: And, we’re going to work on that while we’re there, we’re going to be filling in the blanks, and then what we’ll be doing is we’ll be reviewing some of the things that people come up with live. So, one of my super powers that I’ve developed over the past 35 years is being able to take someone’s messaging and just tweak a word here or there, because words make a difference, and sometimes I can make something stronger by taking words out, and maybe even by replacing words that can make the difference between getting hung up on, or getting somebody to say, sounds good, yeah, let’s talk. And really, that’s what we’re trying to accomplish.
Art Sobczak: So, this is truly going to be a workshop. I tend to be, I really, I’m a pretty simple guy. I don’t like to be at the 30,000-foot level because I’m afraid of heights, so I tend to be at the ground level, and we’re going to work on the things that you can actually say, because in all my years of doing this, what I’ve found is that, as sales people, we tend to have one thing in common, and that is, what do I say when I have that person on the phone? Well, we’re going to be working on that, and it’s going to be something that’s proven, that you’ll be able to use right away to get the response that you’re looking for.
Darryl Praill: Okay folks, you heard it here. He’s the man, he’s a rock star with the phone, he’s got the books, he’s got the podcast, he’s got the business, he’s got the street cred, he’s a trailblazer, and he’s speaking at OutBound. He mentioned it was the epitome show of the whole season, of where you want to go, the best of the best, and he’s there, and he’s going to get down and dirty. He’s suggesting you read the book first, so “Smart Calling,” buy it, read it, book your ticket. Go to OutBoundConference.com, there’s a discount code, it’s in the show notes. In the meantime, Art, thank you so much for telling’ us about voicemail. Everybody, I’m Darryl Praill. I’m with INSIDE Inside Sales. We’ll talk to you soon. You take care, buh-bye.