Most Reps: “Voicemails are an absolute useless, waste of my time”.
If you’ve ever said anything like the above, you probably made these arguments:
- “Prospects never call me back”
- “I can use that time to make more dials”
- “They’ll know I’m a sales person and never pick up again”
And in return I would say you’re right… kinda.
But the real issue is you’re treating voicemails like a 30 second infomercial.
If you do voicemails right, they’ll literally double your cold email reply rate from 2.73% to 5.87%.
So today we’re gonna break down how to leave voicemails without any of the drawbacks above:
- Double Tap Voicemails: How to leave a voicemail that actually gets a reply.
- Voicemail Script 1: 15 seconds, context only
- Voicemail Script 2: 30 seconds, context + social proof
Let’s do this.
Double Tap Voicemail Strategy Overview
Here’s why most voicemails are a complete waste of time:
- You introduce yourself upfront so your prospects realize it’s a pitch and auto-delete it.
- You spend hours leaving longwinded voicemails that no one listens to.
- You're asking for a callback but no one in their right mind calls back a salesperson.
The Double Tap Voicemails flip this strategy on its head with 3 ingredients:
- Lead with something about them (not yourself). Instead of introducing yourself, lead with social proof or personalization related to them. This makes them think, “oh, they work with someone I know? I’ll listen for a second.”
- Point them to your email. Prospects rarely call back, so use the voicemail to drive to an email because a callback feels heavy.
- Introduce yourself at the end. This is purely so they know what email to lookout for.
And lastly, we’ll only leave two voicemails, 30 seconds each. This prevents us from spending too much time talking to ourselves in the void.
Let’s see the first script.
Voicemail 1 - Social Proof Only (15 Seconds)
The first voicemail mostly leans on social proof, then drives them to take action over email:
[Social Proof] “Nick, we work with a few Skadden partners in the LA office.”
[Direct to Email] “No need to call back. I’m literally about to hit send on an email. Just so we don’t play phone tag, mind replying and letting me know if it’s even moderately interesting?”
[Introduce at End] “It’ll come from Armand at Northwestern, cheers.”
Notice two things:
- In the social proof: When we reference that we work with other partners in the LA office… we create a “sit-up moment” where the prospect thinks “oh, they work with people like me."
- In directing to email: Explicitly tell them not to call you back. Get them to do one thing.
Lastly, use a familiar tone like you’re calling a referral. This spikes curiosity when you sound like you know them and makes them more likely to check out your email.
(Think: "Hey dude! My buddy told me to give you a ring but I missed you. No need to play phone tag, I’ll shoot ya a text.")
Voicemail 2 - Social Proof + Context (30 seconds)
For this one, we add one extra step because social proof didn’t work alone. We’re gonna add context on the problem we’ve solved for other people like them, without going into a full pitch:
[Social Proof+Context] “Nick, we work with a few Skadden partners in the LA office on their tax planning amongst other things.”
[Direct to Email] “I’m sure you’ve got that taken care of, but I’m about to press send on an email to give you a sense of what we’re doing with those other folks. Just so we don’t play phone tag, mind replying and letting me know if it’s even moderately interesting?”
[Introduce at End] “It’ll come from Armand at Northwestern, cheers.”
Think of it this way, if the other partners alone didn’t get their interest… we need to give them some proof that we worked with them on something that might be relevant to the prospect.
And that’s a wrap, folks!
If you wanna hear this in practice, Nick broke down our entire voicemail strategy in this video.
If you like what you saw, it’d mean the world if you’d like & subscribe to the Youtube channel.
(It tells the algorithm you like Nick’s friendly face and really gets him excited to do more videos)
