At a recent workshop, I was asked about whether advisors are more likely to get a response from prospects by leaving a voice mail or by sending an email.

There are merits to both. Email is easy to send and easy for prospects to respond to ... but also easy to ignore.  Voice mail does a better job of seizing the listener's attention (at least until he presses the delete button), but takes longer to deliver your message and is more intrusive as a result.

Rather than speculating, I asked a Toronto based advisor who prospects extensively among business owners to conduct a simple, three week experiment.

Vmail or email?

This advisor calls business owners from 7:30 to 11 every morning.  His call focuses on the tax saving opportunities of individual pension plans (IPPs).

Over the past couple of years, he has developed a list of one thousand business owners who he has talked to briefly, who were not interested in meeting but agreed that he could email them information on IPPs and stay in touch. 

Much of his current focus is circling back with these prospects that he has spoken with previously, offering a commentary from accounting firm PWC on new developments on IPPs arising from the last budget.  When he gets voice mail, he leaves a short message reminding prospects of their last conversation and offers to send them the report.

When prospects call back, he tries to get them to agree to a 20 minute meeting at their office to review the commentary. If they are still resistant, he says he will email them the report and concludes by saying that he would like to stay in touch.

Week One

In week one, this advisor continued to leave voice mails and tracked the response rate.  11% of business owners for whom he left messages called him back. (Remember that he had spoken to them previously and they had agreed that he could send them information on IPPs and stay in touch.)

Week Two

In week two, instead of calling and leaving a voice mail, this advisor sent an email.  Only 8% of those emails were returned.

Week Three

In week three, he left a very short message along the lines of:

It's Dan Richards.  We spoke last fall about the tax savings for business owners from individual pension plans. I have a report from PWC outlining changes in the last budget.  I will send you details by email. Look forward to connecting.

He then sent the prospect an email providing a bit more information on the commentary, and asking them to let him know if they would like to receive an update on IPPs.

In this third week, he got return calls or emails from 14% of the prospects.

This is an example of field experiments, in which rather than speculating on what will work best, you conduct a controlled experiment.  In this case, the answer is quite clear.  When it comes to getting prospects to respond, your best odds are with neither voice mail nor email alone but rather a combination of the two.

As you think about your own challenges, consider whether there is examples like this one in which you can identify, test and measure the results from different tactics, with a view to running your business more efficiently.