Ah, the humble phone message. Thanks to texting, voice mail is becoming less common. But until it disappears altogether, it’s to your advantage to know how to leave clear messages. In fact, a phone message is sort of like a thank you note: You can earn big respect by leaving a good one… and lose points if your message is annoying or rude.
Translation: If you sound unsure, then your current clients, prospects, and partners won’t be so sure about you either.

Of course, you won't get any responses at all -- high quality or otherwise -- if you don't leave a carefully planned and thoughtful voicemail. Here are the nine elements of a perfect sales voicemail.
"Dear [Prospect's Name], this is [Your Name]. On [Date of Last Contact], I contacted you about [Reason for Previous Call] and as I haven’t heard from you, I can only assume you're either, one, not interested and I’m simply clogging up your voicemail with annoying spam messages; or, two, you desperately want to contact me, but you’re trapped under a fallen filing cabinet and can’t reach your phone. Please let me know which one it is. I'll gladly send help if it's the latter. Just call me back at [Your Phone Number]. Thanks for your time!"