All modern technology has its good aspects and its bad aspects – and none more than voicemail. Just ask the harried CEO with 34 messages after lunch, the inside sales rep who never gets to talk with anyone, or sales trainer Colleen Francis.

“We love voicemail because it lets us ignore calls we don’t want to take, or prepare for calls we’d rather not take right now,” says Francis. “We also hate it because it lets our prospects do the exact same thing - including ignoring calls from us! Like all business tools, voice mail can be a double-edged sword. If you know how to manage it, you’ll never again have to blame voice mail for not closing enough business.”

Here are Francis’ tips to get out of voice mail jail free!

Never leave a voicemail message for someone who doesn’t know you.
To the prospect, you’re an anonymous caller. The chances of this stranger ever returning your call are, at best, about one or two percent! The only time you should ever leave a voicemail for a prospect is when you have been referred to them.

Voicemail should only be used as a last resort.
Too often, we give up as soon as the voicemail kicks in on a call, either leaving a message (bad idea) or simply hang up (better, but not great).

When in doubt, hit zero.
You owe it to yourself to try everything you can to either locate them, or at least find out something about them. One way to do this is to hit zero when a voicemail message kicks in. You’ll likely get bounced to a receptionist, an executive assistant or a co-worker. Try asking the following question:

“I was hoping you could help me. I’m trying to reach Jane Smith, and her voicemail picked up. Do you know if she’s in a meeting, or out for the rest of the day?”

Depending on the response you receive, you can then try one of the following strategies:

Strategy one:
Them: “She’s in a meeting.”You: “Thanks for your help. Do you happen to know when she’ll be available?” “Maybe it’s best to call back then?”

Strategy two:
Them: “She’s away today.”
You: “Thanks for your help. Do you know if she will be back tomorrow?”

Strategy three:
If you speak to your prospect’s personal assistant, ask if it’s better to schedule a call in advance, and then have them set a fifteen-minute appointment.

You can’t make a sale if you don’t talk to your prospect! Give these strategies a try, and let us know how you break out of voice mail jail.

Colleen Francis is Founder and President of Engage Selling Solutions. Sales and Marketing Management has ranked her one of the "5 most effective sales trainers in the market today." Subscribe to her online newsletter Engaging Ideas and you'll also receive 10 weeks of free sales tips.

I read a great post recently on Paul McCord’s blog about how “busy” salespeople can be. This is a guy who only reads email and answers phone calls at four specific times throughout the day (something I haven’t been able to bring myself to do!), so I trust he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to productivity.

Here’s his story:

“But I’m always prospecting.” That was Rachel’s response when we began talking about her failure to generate enough business to make the cut with her broker/dealer. Rachel is a relatively new salesperson who has been struggling for months and she and her manager have been trying to find a way to get her on track.

It didn’t take long for the conversation to get around to her activities, in particular her prospecting activities. She was baffled by her lack of sales success because as she said, she was ‘always prospecting.’

Rachel showed me a list of several hundred names and phone numbers she had on a call list—a few dozen had check marks beside them, even fewer were scratched through. She showed me the stacks of fliers and letters she had mailed out. She showed me a list of networking events she had attended over the past couple of months. She showed me a passel of follow-up emails she had sent out. She told me that her business card had been added to every corkboard in every restaurant, laundromat, and other business that had a board to display customer’s cards.

A Busy Bee
Rachel had been busy; there was no doubt about that. The problem was although she had been busy, she hadn’t been prospecting. In reality she was always finding ways not to prospect. She engaged in a great deal of activity, but the activity she engaged in wasn’t the activity that would produce business; instead, it was the activity that made her feel good, made her feel productive, allowed her to convince herself that she was being extremely active.

We salespeople tend to focus on activity—after all, activity is what gets us in the door, gets us the business we must have in order to succeed. But activity alone is fruitless. Activity for activity’s sake is just as sure a way to failure as inactivity.

Investing time and energy in the wrong activities has killed as many sales careers as inactivity has. As salespeople we have three very basic duties—finding and connecting with quality prospects, working with those prospects to help them satisfy needs or wants, and insuring that they are taken care of during and after the sale. Everything else is busy work and busy work doesn’t make a sale, doesn’t generate income, and doesn’t move us toward our sales or income goals.

Before you engage in any activity consider whether that activity is income producing or not. If it isn’t directly producing income, does it really need to be done? If not, move on to an activity that will directly lead to a sale.

Author of "Creating a Million Dollar a Year Sales Income: Sales Success through Client Referrals," and “SuperStar Selling: 12 Keys to Becoming a Sales SuperStar,” Paul McCord is president of McCord & Associates, a sales training and management-consulting firm.

Telesales expert Art Sobczak finds sales lessons everywhere. Recently he wrote about a conversation he overheard in the computers aisle of an electronics store.

Customer: "What's the difference between the $400 model and the $675 version?"

Sales Rep: "Well, it has a few more features, but the $400 model does a pretty good job."

The customer agreed to get the $400 model, and the rep went to retrieve one from the back. While waiting, I overheard the customer say to his wife, "I probably would have gone for the $675 version, but I guess we don't need it."

This happens all the time.

According to Sobczak, “When you hear questions about the differences between lower and higher-priced versions of what you sell, what they're really saying is, ‘I could buy the higher-end product/service, buy I'm not yet convinced of the value. So help me understand why I should get it.’”

Here are the typical mistakes Sobczak sees reps make in this situation, and what you should do instead:

Mistake: Gagging out a data-dump explanation
Just like at any point in the sales process, if you present data without knowing what, specifically, they would or could be interested in, it could cause their eyes to glaze over. Worse, you might provide fodder for an objection.

Mistake: Downplaying the higher-priced option
For fear of losing any type of sale, some reps play up the lower-priced option while not knowing anything about the prospect's situation. They make an assumption that the person won't buy higher. This assumption takes money out of the rep’s pocket.

”Again, keep in mind that when they ask about the higher-priced item they could be saying, ‘I can be sold on the higher-priced version ... I just need to justify it,’” says Sobczak. “Your first response should not be presenting. Instead, question. Focus questions on uncovering reasons why the top-of-the-line version delivers more value, to determine if that's what they need or want.”

For example, "Well, the Deluxe Option has a few nice extras that might be a good fit for you. Let's find out. Tell me, do you ever run into situations where you have to manually extract the additional data you need from your database? I see. Well this version does that for you. And, how about situations where ..."

Or, "I'll be happy to explain. So I can make my comments most relevant, please tell me, how do you plan on using the system?"

”There are many more sales reps who sell on low price than there are buyers who buy strictly because of price,” says Sobczak. “Find out what they need, and everyone wins.”

Art Sobczak, President of Business By Phone Inc., specializes in one area only: working with business-to-business salespeople--both inside and outside--designing and delivering content-rich programs that begin showing results from the very next time participants get on the phone. Learn more at www.businessbyphone.com