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And How to Use Them to Make Your Next Touch Land
A sales voicemail’s job usually isn’t to get a callback. It’s to help your next touch land. When a prospect hears your voice and then sees your name in their inbox, that recognition can make the email more likely to get opened.
Most reps treat voicemail as a standalone pitch. They cram in what their company does, ask for a return call, and hope. That’s a quick way to get deleted before you finish saying your name.
After more than 250,000 cold calls across my career, I learned not to treat the phone in isolation. Calling works best as part of a layered, multichannel motion. Voicemail is one of those layers.
Key takeaways
- A voicemail can increase the effectiveness of your other touches without generating a callback.
- Keep voicemails to 20 to 30 seconds, lead with value, and point the prospect toward a specific email.
- On day one, use a double or triple tap: call, leave a short voicemail if they don’t answer, then send the email it references.
- Don’t default to asking for a callback. You usually haven’t earned that much of the buyer’s time yet.
- One common cold-calling mistake is using the phone in isolation instead of coordinating it with email, social, text, and voicemail.
Why do most sales voicemails get ignored?
Most sales voicemails get ignored because they’re seller-centric pitches asking for something the rep hasn’t earned yet. The message becomes 30 seconds of “here’s what we do,” followed by “give me a call back.”
Think about what a callback requires. You’re asking a stranger to stop their day, dial you, and spend time on a conversation they haven’t been given a reason to want. That’s a high-friction ask built around your timeline.
It’s the audio version of leading with “I, we, our.” The buyer can feel that the message is about your needs before they can put words to it.
Buyers are also drowning in outreach. It’s never been easier to automate bad prospecting at scale. A lot of what gets sold as a growth hack is just spam using sexy words to describe it. Scaling something that already wasn’t working doesn’t turn it into strategy.
If your voicemail sounds like every other pitch in the queue, it gets treated like every other pitch in the queue.
How should you use voicemail to connect the rest of your sequence?
Use a short, low-friction voicemail as a pointer to another touchpoint, usually email. Instead of asking for a callback, put a human voice behind the digital message so your next touch arrives with some recognition.
As I put it in my book, sequences are the glue that holds it all together. Voicemail is one of the touches that can help do the holding.
Here’s how I run it. The voicemail doesn’t pitch. It says, in effect: I sent you an email, here’s the subject line, look for it.
In my experience, pointing a voicemail toward an email can lift open rates.
Three rules keep it useful.
Keep it to 20 to 30 seconds. Write the script to read like a three-to-four-sentence cold email, not a meandering voice note.
Don’t default to asking for a callback. You usually haven’t earned that much of their time. Removing the bigger ask keeps the touch lower-friction.
Name the specific email subject line. It gives the prospect an anchor for finding your message. Say it clearly because many prospects read the voicemail transcription rather than listening.
Using that structure, it could sound like:
“Hi [Name], I’m Leslie. I just sent you an email. The subject line is ‘[Subject Line].’ It includes a quick insight about [relevant issue]. No need to call me back. I just wanted to put a voice to the email.”
Notice what’s missing: no company overview, no fifteen-minute meeting request, and no long product pitch. Every line points toward the next touch.
Why shouldn’t you default to asking for a callback?
A callback is a relatively high-friction ask. Early in a sequence, you rarely have enough standing to make it.
This is Earn the Right in practice. The size of the ask should match what you’ve already given. A callback is a big ask. “Look for my email” is a small one.
Early in the relationship, you’ve contributed very little. The smaller ask is more proportionate. You move from “I need your time” toward “I have something relevant for you.”
There are exceptions. Some prospects work exclusively in an office or heavily use the phone themselves. Dentists and realtors are examples where a callback request can make more sense.
For most modern B2B buyers, meet them in the channels where they’re already comfortable responding.
How do you optimize a voicemail for visual voicemail?
Write it to be read as well as heard. Many prospects read the transcription instead of listening to the audio.
Speak clearly. Keep the language simple. Enunciate the email subject line so the transcription captures it correctly.
If the transcript becomes a wall of jargon and half-caught words, the message loses its usefulness. But if they can clearly read the subject line you’re referencing, you’ve created recognition even if they never press play.
Write the script the way you’d write a short, clean email.
What is the day-one double tap?
The day-one double tap, sometimes a triple tap, is a multichannel play I use at the beginning of a sequence.
Call first. If they don’t answer, leave a short voicemail that points forward. Then send the email the voicemail references.
Each touch sets up the next.
It isn’t about piling on channels for activity’s sake. The phone creates awareness. The voicemail creates recognition. The email carries the value.
If the buyer is active on LinkedIn, you can pull social into the same motion. I sometimes use a quad-tap that includes LinkedIn.
You also don’t need to leave a voicemail on every dial. Use voicemail strategically, starting on day one, when it can point the buyer toward a specific high-value message.
Why is sales a craft, not a volume game?
Sales is a craft because effectiveness matters more than blind efficiency. Leaving a hundred pitch-heavy voicemails isn’t productivity if the message itself is bad.
Sales teams love black-and-white thinking, especially around quality and quantity. I don’t buy the false dichotomy. Quantity matters, but quantity without quality is spam.
The goal is relevance at a level you can still scale. That means understanding the segment, the persona, and what those buyers are dealing with without burning 30 to 60 minutes researching every individual before you dial.
A missed call doesn’t have to exist as an isolated attempt. A brief, relevant voicemail can give that touch a role inside the larger sequence.
You’re not trying to be louder than the competition. You’re trying to be more relevant and easier to engage with.
Now let’s do the work.
FAQs
If I have high connect rates, do I still leave voicemails?
Yes, selectively. Even with strong connect rates, some prospects won’t answer.
A short voicemail can give a missed call a useful role inside the sequence by pointing the prospect toward another relevant touch instead of treating the attempt as a dead end.
Should I leave a voicemail every time I call?
No. You might call several times in a multichannel sequence and only leave voicemail at strategic points, starting on day one.
Leaving one after every attempt can dilute the value and start to feel like pestering.
Does this work for the IT persona who isn’t active on LinkedIn?
Yes. Leslie has specifically talked about leaning heavily on the phone for IT personas who don’t spend much time on LinkedIn.
The broader rule is to use the buyer’s channel of choice. For some segments, that means the phone deserves a much bigger role in the sequence.
How often should I mention the email subject line?
When you’re using voicemail to point toward an email, mention the subject line clearly. It gives the prospect an anchor for finding the message in a crowded inbox.
It also helps when the voicemail is consumed through visual transcription.
Can I use AI to leave these voicemails at scale?
Be careful. Automation should scale a strategy that’s already working and buyer-centric.
Using AI to blast pitch-heavy voicemails only scales bad outreach faster. Let AI assist with low-risk, low-value support work. Keep human judgment in the outreach itself.
What if they call me back anyway?
Be ready. A callback isn’t the goal of this voicemail strategy, but it can still happen.
Have your Six-Minute Call Structure ready so you’re prepared to handle the live conversation without abandoning the buyer-centric approach.
How do I catch seller-centric language in my scripts?
Read the voicemail script out loud and count the “I, we, our” phrases. Then look for places where “you, they, them” or actual customer language could replace them.
If most of the script explains what you do rather than what matters to the buyer, rewrite it.
Can you recommend books that will help me learn more?
Leslie’s book, Profit-Generating Pipeline: A Proven Formula to Earn Trust and Drive Revenue, goes deeper on multichannel sequencing, voicemail, and the ideas in this article. You can find it at www.salesledgtm.com/book.
How can I learn more about hiring Leslie as a speaker or working with her team?
Visit www.salesledgtm.com to learn more about Leslie’s speaking, training, consulting, and Sales-Led GTM services.