Do Your Prospecting Voicemails Sound Robotically Redundant?

Recently, I decided it might finally be time to buy new car.

After all, my 25-year-old Honda Accord—despite still possessing the capability to reliably get me from point A to point B—is almost as old as Mark Zuckerberg. It was built the same year that the Exxon Valdez dumped millions of gallons of crude oil into the Prince William Sound. And it probably logged its first 1,000 miles around the same time the Berlin Wall was torn down.

Needless to say, my days driving in this car are undoubtedly numbered.

So, over the last few weeks, I’ve been exploring different car brands and models. I’ve visited a few dealerships and given my name and phone number to salespeople, knowing that doing so granted those folks the right to follow up with me. Thus far, the voicemail messages I’ve received from those reps have all sounded exactly like this:

“Hello, Mrs. Lee. I wanted to follow up on your recent visit to our dealership. We’re experiencing high demand for used Hondas, but our inventory is currently in short supply. We’re very interested in yours, and wanted to see if we could get you in a new car right away.”

Each time I received that message, I chuckled. Had every dealership hired the same sales trainer? And were they now, unknowingly, using the exact same follow-up message? It certainly seemed that way.

The problem with that, of course, is that instead of grabbing my attention by declaring their desperate need for my 25-year-old Honda, the word-for-word delivery of their messaging felt diluted and insincere. I realized that I was simply being fed a regurgitated script—and that realization was certainly not going to compel me to return their call.

As a VAR sales manager or salesperson, why should you care about my car buying experience?

Because whether you sell managed services, software development or hardware, the IT industry can be just as competitive (and redundant) as the automotive market. For your messaging to truly rise above the rest, it must be unique and relevant.

That’s particularly true when it comes to prospecting and your ability to capture prospects’ attention with compelling follow-up voicemails that remind prospects why they were willing to spend a few minutes with you on the phone in the first place. But for those messages to resonate, you have to make sure they’re different.

So, how do you do that?

If you’ve already had an initial conversation with a prospect, go back through your notes and try to find some information that you can use to follow up in a different way than your competition.

What was the pain point that made them pause? Which areas of need did they seem most interested in? What kinds of follow-up questions did they ask during the call? There’s likely a very good reason why the prospect was willing to listen to you initially. It’s your job to know what that reason is and extrapolate or expound on it in your follow-up voicemail.

If you do that, you’ll distinguish yourself from your competitors by hitting on the key points that each prospect cares most about. Ultimately, that will compel prospects to respond to your outreach, and chuckle at how absurdly similar your competitors’ messages are to each other.

Kendra Lee is a top IT Seller, Prospect Attraction Expert, author of the newly released book, “The Sales Magnet,” and the award winning book, “Selling Against the Goal,” and president of KLA Group. Specializing in the IT industry, KLA Group works with companies to break in and exceed revenue objectives in the Small and Midmarket Business (SMB) segment.