Final important voicemail tip. Many voicemail systems allow you to listen to it and redo it if you're not happy. Very few people ever follow up on that, but do it. Now you don't want to spend 10 hours listening and redoing a simple message to your boss everyday will eat up too much time. But if it is someone who doesn't know you where there's not a strong pre existing relationship, a client prospect, maybe a brand new client, and you're not sure maybe you had a bunch of arms, hit the button that allows you to listen to the message and then hit the buttons. If you're not happy, hit this button and re record it.

Keep recording it and listening to it until you're comfortable with it. This alone should take some of the stress off. A lot of times people get nervous and that's when the ions come out. If you know in advance, it is voicemail then It takes all the pressure off, you can just read do it until you're happy with it. Also, I should have mentioned this earlier, but it's critical so often these days, we're just assuming it's going to be voicemail, we can actually get a human being that we're often shocked to have an actual human being pick up. That's the best of all possible worlds.

Don't say oh, I was hoping to get your voicemail. Use the opportunity. Be ready for the opportunity to say exactly what you wanted to say. Don't make the hang up. So you leave a voicemail. That's awkward, and frankly, weird.

Don't do that. Okay, here's your homework. I need you to leave a voicemail on someone's phone, and then call them up. Ask them to tell you what they think of your voicemail, get some feedback, get a critique from someone else, ideally in your place of business, of what they think of the message. Leave on your voicemail. Please do that now.