4 Tips for a Professional Voicemail Greeting | FlexJobs

Whether you’re a business owner or employee, it’s not always possible to answer your phone. That means your voicemail greeting may be the first thing that a new client or other caller hears when they contact you—so your recorded greeting needs to be as professional and polished as your voice would be if you personally answered.

FlexJobs tapped a virtual panel of workplace experts to chime in with their advice and recommendations on their best tips to create a professional voicemail greeting.

1. Write Down What You Want to Say and Practice Saying It

Personal voicemail greetings are often causal and recorded on the fly, no rehearsal needed, with dogs and kids making noise in the background. This isn’t a good approach to recording a professional voicemail greeting for your business.

“It’s best not to try your message ‘off the cuff’ if you’re going to sound professional,” explained Mark Daoust, CEO of Quiet Light, a company that helps entrepreneurs buy and sell their internet businesses. “If you write your message down, you can ensure that all the pertinent information is there before you say it out loud. This will save you time in the long run because you’ll know exactly what you want to say.”

Daoust recommends practicing your message a few times before you record it to “help get the bugs out.” “When you hear it out loud, you might make a few tweaks,” he said. “You want to sound natural but confident. Keep the message clear and concise, just the facts, and end the message on a pleasant note: ‘I look forward to hearing from you’ is always good.”

2. Represent a Place, Not a Person

Calloway Cook, President of Illuminate Labs, said to be sure to reference your business first and the person recording the greeting (who will most likely be you) second since this helps distinguish your professional line from your personal one.

“For business owners that use their personal phone, I recommend using a free service like Google Voice to create a separate phone number for business, where you can record a separate (and more appropriate) voicemail greeting,” Cook said.

3. Smile With Your Voice

Callers hoping to reach a person rather than a machine don’t want to sit through a long voicemail greeting before they can leave a message. Seasoned entrepreneur David Adler, Founder and CEO of The Travel Secret, suggests recording a greeting that’s “enthusiastic, brief, and concise,” providing business hours of operation and address and other important information.

Daniel Chan, CTO of Marketplace Fairness, agrees with the strategy to keep your message brief and positive and recommends recording a greeting that sounds “cheerful and upbeat.”

Kerry Francis, Blogger for Virtual Boss Mindset, a blog about online jobs for stay-at-home moms and ways to make money from home, explains that the goal should be to “smile with your voice,” which she describes as speaking in a “welcoming tone.” Francis suggests that your greeting should state your name, title, and company’s name before apologizing for missing the call, asking the caller to leave a message, and stating that you will return it ASAP.

Francis shared this sample script:

Hello, thank you for calling. This is Kerry Francis, Vice President of Virtual Boss Mindset. I’m sorry that I missed your call. Please leave your name and number, and I will return your call as soon as possible. Thank you, and have a wonderful day.

4. Use the Greeting as a Soft Sell

Doc Kane, Publisher at the business tools and side hustle site Nihon Hustle and Cofounder of Maplopo, advises thinking of your voicemail greeting as an impactful movie logline.

“What can you say about yourself in one or two sentences that tells the listener precisely what it is you do and what you’re about?” Kane said. “Extra bonus points for actually making it feel like a mini-story told well.”