In my last post, I mentioned how Google Voice would change how sales people conduct their cold calling campaigns. Here’s another voicemail tidbit that can help you get noticed over the rest of the pack.

If you recall from the last post, I mentioned how Google Voice allows its users to route incoming callers directly to voicemail if they decide from previous encounters that the incoming caller is spammy in nature. They can also decide to block the incoming call entirely if they feel that the caller from a particular number is being a pest.

Welcome to the wonderful world of VoIP.

Google Voice users can also do some other things with their voicemail that gives them greater flexibility in how they store, retrieve and manage that message. Check this out.

Adding Text Notes To Voicemail Messages

Here, we see the typical message held in Google Voice. Google provides a transcript of the message, if they are able to decipher it, which helps when your prospect is looking through messages for specific terms. They don’t have to rely on knowing the time, date, number or name of the caller.

The biggest gain here, however, is that Google Voice provides their users with the ability to put a text note into that voicemail. On the “More” menu, we see that the power prospect we are trying to reach can hit the “Add note” link and start typing a text note tied to this particular voicemail.

And it’s ready to roll.

This can be a useful tool to have. Not only can your prospect add useful reference notes, but they can also perform a search in Google Voice for certain terms in that note text. All they have to do is type the term that they are searching for in the search box located at the top and up pops the messages they are looking for.

So now your managers, directors and high profile target prospects have an additional tool to manage, file, and search through their voicemail messages and easily find what they are looking for.

3 Tips For Leaving Google Voice Voicemail Messages

As a sales rep calling into these companies, you can leverage these added features by doing a couple of things:

  1. Focus your voicemail message on showing value. Voicemail messages like, “Hey, it’s Bob. I called last week and left a message about SEO services. Call me when you get a chance” don’t show a lot of value, aren’t worth keeping around, and will probably get deleted. Messages that show value to the prospect will focus on their issues and business challenges. Remember to see things from their perspective and talk in terms of their interest. If you can’t do this, then you run the risk of having your voicemail message deleted and having your number marked as spam, or worse, completely blocked.
  2. Speak clearly and project your voice. Low quality calls with low volume or those with lots of noise on the line may be decipherable to your target prospect. The Google Voice transcription engine, however, will have trouble deciphering the call and may garble the text transcription. Now imagine what it would be like if your prospect didn’t have to play your voicemail to get an idea of what your message was about. Imagine the speed and power of visually scanning the voicemail message pane for important messages as opposed to playing each one sequentially. If you want to have your message rise above the other sales noise, speak clearly and project your voice. An accurate Google Voice transcription helps your message stand out and get noticed.
  3. Offer a suggestion on how they can tag the voicemail message for future reference. Something as simple as, “If you are using Google Voice, you can tag this message with ‘sales training’ for future reference”. If your prospect is using Google Voice either through Google Gmail or Google Apps and your voicemail is worth keeping, they will write their own notes. Why not help them out by suggesting a tag for quick reference? The search engine will crawl through the transcriptions and find relevant keywords if the transcription engine successfully transcribed the message. But there are times when the Google engine won’t transcribe a few words correctly, and sometimes it may not perform the transcription at all. You want to cover all of your bases and provide several avenues to getting your prospect back to the message quickly and easily by including a relevant term that they can reference.

If you have additional ideas on using the power of Google Voice to reach your target prospects, leave a comment below and share with the community.