Every word counts. Here are the three worst mistakes we run into, quite often. We're going to use as an example a hypothetical company, Wonderful Web Widgets (WWW) - who wants to sell a web based service to businesses that enables businesses to create and communicate with a list of prospects on the web automatically.

#1 - Use of the company name. Almost always a big mistake. When the message says "Wonderful Web Widgets" the prospect who's listening doesn't know that name at all, and they are not impressed or further qualified by hearing it. It is just a waste of time to state it. EXCEPTION - if your name is well known, or if you're calling to a list of your customers, including your name is very important, as it quickly identifies you as a known entity to the listener.

#2 - Features instead of benefits. Prospects respond to benefits much more than the features of your product or service.

A feature rich message might say "our system uses a pre-programmed autoresponder sequence, with easy online management, with a simple javascript code placed on your website to generate the signup form."

And a benefit rich message might say "our system produces sales for you by delivering a series of messages that you create to your prospects, completely automatically".

Most prospects will find the benefit rich message much more interesting.

Discussing the features with a qualified lead may be necessary for a sale, but in the limited time available in your pre-recorded messages, describing features is a waste of time, and may also lose the interest of good prospects.

#3 - No qualifier. If you don't include a qualifying statement, you will spend a lot of time and money speaking with unqualified prospects. This is obvious, yet many broadcasters neglect to include any qualifiers in their messages. For example, the WWW service described above might cost only $99 per month, but there is also a $1999 setup fee. The folks at WWW have learned that many prospects don't buy when they hear about the setup fee.

In that instance WWW might put this into their message - "after a one-time $1999 setup cost, the service is available for only $99/month". This message might sharply reduce the number of leads that WWW obtains from their voice broadcast campaign, but the quality of their leads will be higher, since they've heard the qualifier.

As you craft your own voice broadcasting message, don't make these common mistakes. Avoid your company name, think hard about the primary benefit of your product, the primary qualifier for your prospects and stress those in your message.