No Answer? On to the next result.

My living is made on the phone. That means I make a lot of calls to a lot of businesses and even after 10 plus years of cold calling I am amazed at how many businesses allow phone calls to go to VM.

Now there is a qualification to this but it isn’t applicable to me. In the era of caller ID many businesses can see that a call is from a “solicitor.” (Ouch. I hate that designation but I get it)!

However, I use my personal cell phone to make calls; not as a trick to get people to answer the phone, but because I am on the road a lot and it is the best way to stay in touch with family, friends, prospects and clients.

Point being, when I make a call, caller ID or not, there is no reason why the call should not be answered. It very well could be a potential client or in my case, a caring demand generation leader with a great idea for your business 😉

SeeSaw Services is dedicated to serving firms employing 1-20 employees (although aberrations in employee count occur).

I kept a log for 3 months when I first started with SeeSaw and 34% of my calls went to a VM.

Now get these facts related to not answering the phone.

• Around 70 percent of people will stop dealing with a firm whose customer service is unreliable and more than 60 percent will go on to do business with a rival company. (High Level Marketing, n.d.)
• Assume an average job payment is $500.00. And let’s go on the low end and say you receive 20 calls per month inquiring about paying you $500.00 for a certain job right in your wheelhouse. If you miss 6 of those calls per month you stand to lose $21,600.00 annually. That is a lot of dough! (High Level Marketing, n.d.)

So many of the prospects I call (and have since become clients) did not answer my call because they were out in the field working. That is great! You should be working in the field as you are AEC professionals. You didn’t go to all that school and develop your expertise to answer a phone! You are here to build and create.

The reality is a professional business that is squared away is answering the phone within three rings. Anything less is not best practice and is costing you business.

No way around that reality.

If you need administrative help, we got you. Let us return that lost revenue to your business!

Yours in business development,

Wally