Look Good on Voice Mail

Your use of voice mail tells others a lot about you. Here's how to make a good impression.

1) Present a Positive Image

Your outgoing voice mail message should be simple, positive, and professional. State your name and company followed by concise directions. You may want to leave a daily message because it shows that you check your messages and tells callers what to expect. For example, "Welcome to Steve Kaye's voice mail at Personal Quality. Today is Monday and I will be out, helping a client improve profits. Please leave a message and I'll return your call tomorrow." This message lasts nine seconds.

Make sure that your outgoing message is unencumbered by music (turn off the radio), rustling papers (sit still), and background noise (close the door). These sounds make it make it difficult for callers to understand your message. Similarly, avoid gimmicks such as singing, reading poetry, or citing long lists of credentials. These appear unprofessional.

2) Practice Professional Courtesy

Some people use voice mail to screen calls. Although this may control interruptions, it becomes rude if you never respond to the messages. Those messages are very important to the people who left them. That's why they called.

Set aside a time each day to return calls. If the messages were left by people whom you do not want to talk to, have an assistant return the calls. Or call back when the other person will be away from the phone and leave a message. The brief moment that you spend on a return message helps the caller continue business and frees you from receiving additional unwanted calls. For example it takes eight seconds to say, "Hi, Chris. This is Steve Kaye responding to the message you left today. Please remove my name from your call list. I have no interest in cryogenic ant farms."

- - - - - - - -

IAF Certified Professional Facilitator and author Steve Kaye works with leaders who want to be more effective. His innovative workshops have informed and inspired people nationwide. His facilitation produces results that people will support. Call 714-528-1300 or visit his web site for over 100 pages of valuable ideas. Sign up for his free newsletter at http://www.stevekaye.com

---

An Original Perspective on Waging Conflict as a Way to Promote and Restore Self-dignity

Conflict is a fact of life for all of us, but too many painful consequences are generated by avoiding or managing it in the wrong way. When... Read More

Is Your Management Style Assisting or Hurting Your Business?

Many times business owners can have significant differences in management styles that can deter the growth of both the employees and the business.Employees can have differing needs... Read More

Management Coaching to Improve Relationships with Work Associates

As a recent employee to your job, you are becoming familiar with the work environment and your work associates. You have met the boss on two occasions;... Read More

Business Innovation ? Status Games

Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation.There are other useful definitions in this... Read More

Seven Cs to Avoid Procedure Writing Errors

You do your best to make sure your organization is operating as effectively as possible. But if your policies and procedures are incomplete, outdated, or inconsistent, then... Read More

Problem-Solving Success Tip: Use Your Project Management Skills

Solving a big problem is a project: you're far more likely to solve it successfully if you treat it like one. That means you'll need to identify... Read More

Presenteeism: The Hidden Costs of Business

(prez.un.TEE.iz.um) nPresenteeism, a relatively unknown concept, is the complement of Absenteeism. It is defined as the measure of lost productivity cost due to employees actually showing up... Read More

Business Fails When We Do Not Talk

You may remember being told as a child, "Keep quiet!" "Children should be seen, not heard," and "You talk too much." You were a "good" kid if... Read More

Lead to Succeed: The Seven Essential Steps to Work Leader Success

In my book "You're In Charge?What Now?" I use a mnemonic to describe the seven essential steps to work leader success. The mnemonic is "L.E.A.D.E.R.S" and each... Read More

Tales from the Corporate Frontlines: The Responsibility for Job Security

This article relates to the Job Security competency, commonly evaluated in employee satisfaction surveys. This competency evaluates how your employees view their job security within your organization.... Read More

More Problem-Solving Success Tips

The ability to solve complicated problems quickly is more important than ever in today's tough economy.From the time we're little kids, we're taught to solve problems by... Read More

Solve Problems Permanently - Ask WHY

As Albert Einstein said:-"The significant problems we face today, cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."Problems don't go... Read More

The Permissive Environment is the Suspect

The permissive and participatory conduct which most employees take for granted, eventually escalates into the more serious assaultive behavior commonly referred to as employee on employee workplace... Read More

Pricing Strategy for Retail Flower Shops

When you create your profit and loss statement to assess the health of your business, you will see:Sales minus Cost of Goods Sold equals Gross Profit.You pay... Read More

Success at Work : People Skills : Dealing with New Ideas

Re-organizing, re-engineering, re-training, down-sizing, outsourcing, changing-changing-changing. Organizations today think they need to be constantly changing or they will perish. Corporate leaders worship at the alter of new... Read More

Knowledge Management - Leadership Behaviours Which Encourage Knowledge-Sharing

The concept of knowledge management or knowledge sharing makes intellectual sense to the leadership teams in most organisations. Why wouldn't we want to learn from our successes... Read More

Developing Your Management Style

One thing a lot of us don't do in sales is take time out to analyse things.How are we doing it? Why are we doing it? Can... Read More

Lone Rangers Suffer without Tonto

A lone ranger is someone who prefers working in solitude or isolation. Sometimes life circumstances can call for us to adopt this attitude. When it comes to... Read More

Pitching to Employees

The senior flight attendant on the WestJet flight was starting the routine safety talk: the bit about flotation vests and emergency exits that we ignore at the... Read More

Organizational Capital in Politics, War, Sports and Business

Intangible Corporate Assets such as Organizational Capital, Blue Sky and Brand Name Capital, actually they all have a common thread in my opinion. Here are some thoughts... Read More

Is Your Business Healthy?

Most business owners I work with want to grow their businesses. I guess this probably applies to most businesses in general. But growth for the sake of... Read More

Using Employee Opinions Effectively When Designing HR Programs

Using Employee Opinions Effectively When Designing HR ProgramsEmployee opinion is one of the most powerful resources available to human resource professionals. But what are the best methods... Read More

An Honest Look at Your Business

There is a difference between being comfortable and being in apathy.It is very comfortable to have a smooth running organization when you have a team that knows... Read More

Five Days to More Effective Inventory Management

The litany of headaches related to the implementation and on-going care-and-feeding of enterprise-based inventory management applications (upgrading, downtime, maintenance, hardware obsolescence, and so on) is long. These... Read More

If You Build It, Investors Will Come

When you begin to write your business plan or a section within it, you probably ask yourself, "What should I talk about? What key points should I... Read More

Motivating For Higher Performance

Employee motivation is probably the most important single manageable factor for success and profitability of all the facets of specialty store retailing. It is too vital to... Read More