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How to Leave Powerful Voicemail Messages That Get Your Commercial Real Estate Prospects to Call You Back

By Jim Gillespie | September 14, 2010

One mistake that commercial brokers often make when doing their telephone prospecting, is leaving voicemail messages that don’t really inspire their prospects to call them back. You ideally need to answer the "What’s in it for me?" question in your prospect’s mind to get them to want to pickup the phone and return your voicemail message, and a lot of brokers aren’t really doing this.

Many brokers will leave a voicemail message similar to, "Hi John, this is Steve Robinson with ABC properties. I’m calling to see if you’re interested in selling your property right now, so if you are interested please call me back at XXX-XXX-XXXX."

And here are some of the problems with leaving a voicemail message similar to that one:

1) If the prospect isn’t looking to sell their property right now, you’ve given them no reason to call you back. And you want to be engaging in telephone conversations with your prospects even when they aren’t looking to do anything right now, so they feel that they know you better when they are finally looking to buy, sell, or lease.

2) Even if the prospect is interested in selling their property right now, they may not call you back because you still haven’t given them a compelling reason to do so. You’ve only identified yourself as a commercial real estate broker who’s working in the area, and let’s face it, you have a lot of competitors in the area who are calling this exact same prospect. So you haven’t really differentiated yourself to the prospect to get them to want to call you back.

Consider leaving a voicemail message similar to this one instead:

"Hi John, this is Steve Robinson with ABC Properties. There are some important trends occurring in the marketplace right now that are affecting the value of your property, and I’d like to tell you about them. In addition, I’ve put together a report showing what all the properties in your area have sold and leased for over the past six months, and I’d like to send you a copy of the report in the mail. So if you’d like me to send you the report and you want to learn about these important trends, give me a call at XXX-XXX-XXXX."

This voicemail message does much more to answer the "What’s in it for me?" question in the prospect’s mind to get them interested in calling you back. They’re much more likely to want to talk to a broker who can tell them important trends affecting the value of their property, and provide them with a six-month comps report, than they are likely to want to talk to a broker asking them to call the broker back if they’re interested in selling. This is especially true if they aren’t interested in selling right now, which will probably be more than 90% of the time when you’ll be prospecting them. But even if they are interested in selling right now, they’ll more than likely be interested in hearing about the important trends affecting the value of their property, and they’ll more than likely be interested in getting your comps report, too.

So understand that the percentage of the time you get your prospects to return your voicemail messages when prospecting them, is directly proportionate to how compelling of a reason you give them to call you back. And when you leave voicemail messages that compel your prospects to call you back, you’ll be speaking with them more frequently than your competitors will be, and you’ll be building more solid relationships with your prospects because of this, too.

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