We have to talk about your voicemail. Now again, I tried my hardest not to sound like a grumpy old man in this course. I think I held off for the most part to a little bit in the last lecture, but I really gotta let it all out here. Many of you have all ages have a huge, huge voicemail problem and it is destroying your credibility. It is harming your career advancements, it is shutting down your pipeline of new prospects, customers. Let's start with some of the basics.

Okay, you've got to have a voicemail on your cell phone. If you don't have it. It's pretty rare for people not to but every once in a while I encourage I encounter it. You call it it just rings and rings and rings and then it goes dead. I do understand there are some cultures in the world where it's just not the norm. And there are even some religious cultural influences as to why that is so I don't mean to sound culturally insane.

Sensitive. And I appreciate that here on Udemy. We have students from 190 countries, I personally have students from 183 countries at the moment of this recording. And if you are in a culture where it's just not the norm to have voicemail, I understand but I do want to give you a tip. If you want to deal with people from other cultures, you need voicemail. If you want to deal with people who are used to having voicemail, you're making it a lot harder for them to do work with you to feel comfortable with you, because you're wasting their time.

If I have to call you 10 times before I get you and I can't leave a voicemail, and I can't send you a text because I'm calling you through Skype and it doesn't work that way. Yeah, I could use what's up that's another way but you're making life difficult. So if you want to increase the odds of communicating more effectively with customers, clients, prospects bosses, my advice is number one, you gotta have a voicemail. Number two, this is gonna sound obvious, but it's not. You have to actually check your voicemail. Again, it's very common in my experience for people say under 38.

Just don't listen to voicemail. You may have the function that record or takes the audio recording and converts it to text and you read it, that's fine. I'm not saying you literally have to listen to it. Although in many cases, the transcription isn't that great. And it's not going to capture a sense of emergency or the emotional component. If you listen.

So I do actually recommend you listen to the voicemail from not every telemarketer but an important client or a boss. You've got to actually listen to it because if someone leaves you a voicemail and you don't listen to it, how do you respond? If you don't respond. That's a slap in the face. You're telling the customer client prospect, you're not important. I don't respect your time, because I'm now going to make you tell me the thing a second time.

If I just call you and say, Hey, what's up? Your client or customer prospect may have left you a detail message about a specific problem they want you to solve. And if you don't listen to it, you're wasting their time. It's a big world out there. There are a lot of other vendors, consultants, people who do what you do, nobody has to work only with you. So if you make life difficult for people, they'll find someone who will make life easy.

So by all means, you've got to listen to voicemails and respond to them in a timely manner. absolutely critical. Okay, next issue with voicemail You gotta have an actual message that's personalized. If I call you and all I get is the generic message of you have reached 2127644. First of all, it takes a long time to hear all those numbers and the generic message number two, I'm now wondering, did I call the right person now I got a look at the number I, I wrote down and if that's on the phone, and it's the same phone, it's difficult. I got a wonder is this person still in business?

If I'm calling someone who is when I think I was a highly successful internet consultant or real estate broker, and I get just a generic number like that there's a part of me and I'm not the only one who thinks this way. There's a part of me that thinks what they're afraid to put up their own name. Today a bill collectors chasing them are they a criminal or a drug dealer? What are they hiding from? From, it just doesn't sound professional to get a random number. Now I know a lot of people not picking on the young kids anymore.

I know people my age and older who are independent real estate brokers who are independent technology consultants. And they have that situation where it's just a random number. And guess what, they don't make much money. They are some of the least successful people and nice people, friendly people, but they just don't care about their image. They don't care about their reputation, and they make it really hard for people to get ahold of them. So you need a message and the message shouldn't be cutesy we don't need to hear your dog barking.

Again, if this were 10 or 20 years ago, and everyone had a clear differentiation between here's my home number and my home voicemail or the return Quarter that played it back on the tape. And here's the office phone, it would be different. But today, things have blended together people's work phones, personal phones, cell phones. Typically, if it's not one phone, it all filters into one phone through call forwarding. So you need something that isn't too cutesy that isn't just personal if people are calling you, and it's a business call again. Mine is very simple.

I'm TJ Walker. And I state the name of my company, leave a message I'll call you back. It's that simple. So here's my homework assignment for you. I want you to have a friend, call your voicemail and then tell you what they think. Ask for any kind of feedback.

What do they like? What do they not like? Some people try to be so Curt and cute. And say, You've called TJ Walker. Why click. I mean, that's cute for about Two seconds the first time you hear it if the person is less than 23 years old after that, if you're calling the person many times it becomes annoying.

Now, one other really, really big issue and this is a great way to get yourself. taken off the list of someone scenes a rising stars and advancer of someone that we shouldn't do business with. It's when your voicemail is full. And I realized some of your saying that TJ you're just so old. nobody uses voicemail. I'm here to tell you.

People use voicemail. Maybe not your friends, maybe not the people you date. Maybe not the people you socialize with. Maybe not the people you graduated from college with in the last five years. But people do like to leave voicemail they've taken all the time and trouble to find your name. Find your phone number dial, letting it ring hearing your message.

The next Want to leave a voicemail? So if you've gone through all that effort, you've heard this big long message and then now you're ready to leave your message. And you hear this recording. The person's voicemail is full and cannot accept new messages. It is extraordinarily annoying. I guarantee you your boss is not impressed.

Your new client is not impressed because now they've done all that work. They have to hit end call and they've accomplished absolutely nothing but wasting their time. Thanks to you. So now they gotta decide, do they want attacks? Well, believe it or not, not everybody makes every single phone call from a cell phone. And this will really shock some of you but I know plenty of people over 60 don't have smartphones.

They use flip phones. They're not using text And if they need to get ahold of you and they're not near a computer because they can't send email or text or their phone, they're just out of luck. Do you want to write off all those people you might not want to party or socialize with people over 60 they still have money and their money still works anyplace else you want to spend it. So I'm begging you. Have a voicemail. Check your voicemail.

Have a personalized voicemail that is professional that states your name, your organization. Make sure you take it all the voicemails out after you've heard them, delete it. So there is space for new messages and then return the call somebody calls you call back. Now here's the message to old people. Somebody texts you with a question text back To them, do this and you will be in great shape.