Check Your Business Voicemail Greeting

One of the areas that is almost always over­looked the most for small busi­ness own­ers is their per­son­al greet­ing mes­sage on their busi­ness cell phones. Here is the typ­i­cal mes­sage you hear on a mobile phone, for exam­ple, ​“This is Bran­don. I’m not avail­able at the moment. So leave me a mes­sage after the beep and I’ll get back with you short­ly…” (Remem­ber that the tone of voice usu­al­ly sounds bor­ing too). Think of your voice­mail mes­sage as a way to sep­a­rate your­self from your com­pe­ti­tion. This is the per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty to leave a good impres­sion on a poten­tial client or leave a greet­ing that is just dif­fer­ent than the norm. Your callers are not stu­pid. You don’t need to remind them that they have reached your voice­mail or about the ​“beep” sound. They know how to leave a mes­sage. Besides, voice­mail and the ​“beep” have been around for over 30 years. The key to a good voice­mail greet­ings is to be dif­fer­ent and get right to the point. Here are a few bet­ter exam­ples for Bran­don, ​“This is Bran­don from Bran­don’s Paint­works. When leav­ing your mes­sage, let me know the best time to call you back, and I will do so promply. Thanks for call­ing” or ​“This is Bran­don. Your call is impor­tant to me and I promise to get back with you in less than xyz mins…” One final tip about your voice­mail mes­sage: Smile when record­ing your greet­ing and speak clear­ly! You’d be sur­prised at how many peo­ple will com­ment about your pos­i­tive atti­tude when leav­ing a mes­sage. When I learned this con­cept a few years ago from anoth­er mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­al and switched my voice­mail greet­ing to sound more pos­i­tive (and that I ​“wel­comed” their call), I had many peo­ple say things like, ​“Wow! That was a pos­i­tive greet­ing.” or ​“Whoo…what a great message…you sound chip­per.” It is this sim­ple: nev­er leave the impres­sion that a cus­tomer’s phone call is not important!