Think through what you are going to say before you place the call. When men hear the beep, they often freeze up and forget what they wanted to say. If you want to be the go-to guy at work, then you have to exhibit competence on all levels. Don’t spoil your confident image by hemming and hawing and filling your messages with “uhhhhs,” and “ummmms.” If it’s a really important call, consider writing out what you want to say beforehand. If the person picks up, great, you now have some notes to remember what you wanted to talk about. If they don’t answer, you can leave a clear and concise message.
You have reached xxx-xxxx. We picked this machine up at a garage sale in “as-is” condition. You can try to leave a message on it, but we are not sure it will be recorded. If we don’t return your call, it means the machine did not work.

Does leaving a voicemail message create performance anxiety for you? If it does, you probably are a millennial. There's good news and bad news about this. The good news is that you are early in your career, with lots of opportunities to make a positive difference in your world.
Here’s the thing: no matter how perfectly-crafted your sales voicemail is, plenty of people are still going to ignore it or stop listening midway through. That’s actually okay, though. We already know that other types of messaging, like emails, get a higher response rate. But where voice messages win is in quality – when you do get a response, that means the person has a very high level of interest.