UntitledThe fun part of not getting your call returned. Huh? Have you ever used any kind of fun thing to get your voice mail messages returned? The object of the game is to get your phone call returned. One of the first fun sales things I learned was to leave half a message and pretend you got cut off. “Hi, this is Jeffrey – 333-1112 – I’m calling about the money you left at…” And then hang the phone up. “Hi, this is Jeffrey – 333-1112 – I was talking to a couple of your competitors yesterday and they were talking about you and they said…” Hang the phone up. You are the first guy they will call back. It’s fun. And it works. In my seminars many people will say that it’s “unprofessional.” CASE IN FACT: I was doing business with an audiotape and CD manufacturing company. I sent our sales rep my book and he read it. He called me on the phone and said, “That method of leaving half a message is unprofessional.” “Why don’t you try it?” I said. He sent me an e-mail the next day. He said he got seven out of eight phone calls returned. No one was mad or called him unprofessional. First time he EVER got seven out of eight phone calls returned. With humor you have to pick your shots. The challenge of voice mail is that you do what is comfortable. I’m going to throw a couple of concepts at you, just a few ideas, and you play with what you think is most comfortable for you. Fair enough? I’m giving you permission to have more fun at what you do. You are taking it way too serious. You wake-up in the morning and you’ve got all this pressure all day long, and I want you to have a good time. I wake-up in the morning and I have the best time in the whole wide world, and then I go to bed and try to get up the next day and repeat the process. I take almost nothing seriously. Literally, I’m having a good time. I find that when I have a good time, it is attractive to someone else because they WANT to have a good time. You can’t wait for Friday so you can go home and have a good time. That’s pretty stupid. Why don’t you just have a good time all the time? Why are you waiting for Friday? Then you come in on Monday and you say, “Man, did I have a great time this weekend.” What is your point? Why don’t you just have a great time all the time then you won’t care what day it is. If you’re angry because you get people’s voice mail, you’re either going to hang up, or leave a puke message about wanting to meet with them at their convenience, blah, blah, blah, that won’t get returned. And — let me share the bad news — in today’s business world, you’re going to get voice mail more and more and more. Look at where voice mail is right now and look at where voice mail was five years ago. You could get almost anyone on the phone five years ago. Now you always get their voice mail. In fact, sometimes you even get their administrative assistant’s voice mail. Receptionists won’t even put you through to that person. They always put you through to the administrative assistant. You’re not good enough. “You know I asked for Bill and you gave me somebody else.” “Well, Bill has his calls screened because he thinks he is hot bologna.” “I don’t want bologna, I want Bill.” When you get Bill’s voice mail, why not try, “Hi, this is Jeffrey. I’m calling with the weather today. It’s a little cloudy and gloomy over here, but it could get real sunny if you would just call me back.” I did a seminar for a company that sells radio ads for the ten second traffic reports. They sold the commercial time for the helicopter. I recommended everybody change their voice mail to a traffic report around their desk, and people loved it. It’s totally up to you. I just want you to give yourself permission to have a good time at leaving a message. Most people in sales are not having a good enough time. A reader wrote: I’ve read your books and have employed your voice mail ideas with an account that I thought would be way too big for me. I almost didn’t do it. But I did. I started leaving voice mails. Fortunately, it was a situation where the prospect changed his voice mail often because he was going in and out of town. He wouldn’t return my calls, so I just started having funny conversations with his voice mail. He finally called me back one day and says, “I deleted and deleted. Then I started listening and laughing, and I laughed so hard I had to call you back. I had to talk to you.” I got the account. I guarantee that humor will get your call returned faster than anything. Just a little bit of funny. It’s up to you. But beware that humor is always a risk, because sometimes you get people on the other line that have no sense of humor. I’ll tell you what to do with these people in another lesson. But, eh, confidentially Doc, GIVE THEM TO THE COMPETITION. There is an old rule of sales that says, “If you can make them laugh, you can make them buy.” I say for this voice mail thing, if you can make them laugh, you can make them return your call. GitBit of more humor: Wanna know a few more ways to inject humor into your business life and real life? All you have to do is go to www.gitomer.com – register if you’re a first time user, and enter the words HUMOR in the GitBit box. Jeffrey Gitomer, author of The Sales Bible, and Customer Satisfaction is Worthless, Customer Loyalty is Priceless. President of Charlotte-based Buy Gitomer, he gives seminars, runs annual sales meetings, and conducts internet training programs on selling and customer service. He can be reached at 704/333-1112 or e-mail to salesman@gitomer.com
2003 All Rights Reserved – Don’t even think about reproducing this document without written permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer o 704/333-1112
