I just finished listening to a 1 minute voicemail from some idiot who mistakenly thought I was a small business owner with time on my hands. Actually, I only listened to the first 10 seconds of it. VoIP (Voice over IP) is a wonderful thing, but its given marketers without a clue new ways to annoy small business - telespam.

My voicemail tells folks the best way to contact me is via email. It says it for a reason. The company that contacted me to hawk their wares decided that it would be best to totally ignore that and leave me a spin filled message that really told me nothing about why their services would interest me. They didn’t even bother to follow up with an email.

Needless to say, I’m not really interested and I’ve already forgotten who they were, my only memory is annoyance.

Most small business owners I know have little time for unannounced calls and visits from sales reps; unless they are prepared to wait in line. A phone call demands your immediate attention; time likely better spent doing what you were doing before you were interrupted. That’s the beauty of email; a written record of a solicitation you can get back to when it suits you.

Just because the technology is there and it’s now cheap to call anyone in any part of the world, it doesn’t necessarily make it a good thing to do :).

If you’re going to interrupt a small biz owner from their busy day in this fashion:

- Target correctly.

- Make it personal. “War dialing” with pre-recorded messages is just bad business practice - it’s simply telespam and will likely give people a bad impression of your business and products.

- After identifying yourself, ask the person “have you got a minute or two to speak with me?”

- If they say no - it means no. If you’re that keen to speak with the person, ask for a time that would better suit them, or suggest you email your information.

- Keep it brief

- Ease up on the spin

- If a voicemail says the best way to contact someone is via an email address.. leave a brief message if you must, but email them the details.

Small business owners are some of the hardest working people I know - marketers need to respect that and that respect will translate to better outcomes from their outreach work.

Related:

VoIP and ecommerce