Voice Mail Profits - Still Doable?

Don Alm reminisces about using voice mail a few years back to allow businesses to reach interested customers.

Because I like to be “on the field of battle” and “rap” with people in ALL types of careers I was asked by a couple of real estate agents if I knew of a way they could get their Listings to the public.

Because Voice Mail was just getting going…I set up a “Central Info Number for Real Estate Listings”. “Property Line”.

I contacted a “Voice Mail” service company who provided me with 1 main number and unlimited extensions.

Each participating agent paid $50/mo (I billed them $150 every 3 mos)

For their $50/mo they got 5 “extensions” with which THEY could call into the main number and enter their password on the touchtone pad. This brought them to “the extension they wanted to record a 2 minute outgoing message”.

The agents would give info about the property and ask the caller to leave their name and mailing address at the end of the call.

I built it up to over 100 agents on the service. Every agent would advertise the Main Number in their regular advertising and give the extension number of the property they were advertising…so the question of “How would the public know about the number” was answered. I also ran some display ads in the real estate section on Sundays.

I just set the thing up…phoned agents and askd them to call my sample extension…faxed them the agreement and whala…a nice little income producer.

I did the same thing with a “RESTAURANT LINE”. (I called it “Menu Line”)

One Main number and the prompter voice listed extension numbers for the various typesof cuisine…Italian restaurants ext 135…Greek ext 136…French food ext 137…etc.

I placed plastic displays in motels and Stickers on the phones IN EACH MOTEL ROOM.

Why would the motels let me place stickers on their phones? Because MY service saved their front desk clerks a lot of TIME.

I got $150 a month from each restaurant. I also worked a deal with the newspaper where they gave me a special discount price for a half page ad twice a month….where I would list the service and the restaurants participating.

This was in Aspen, CO where there were 140 restaurants. I got 46 to participate.

I think the big cities have such a Real Estate and Restaurant “Line” now. You might check the websites of some large newspapers.

“Food for thought”.

Don Alm
Roseburg, Oregon

Depending on where you’re located, the question is… is there a local non-toll number or numbers most people can call that won’t run up your bills?

(Though I have no experience with their service, the search engines yielded this service with voice mail in 1225 cities though some of their “local exchanges” are completely unknown to locals like me… It’s Golden Voice. Perhaps they could help you. in this.)

Is Voice Mail the best way to handle this any more?

If it’ s your chosen system, then advertising real estate listings in the Sunday Paper may be your best bet.

Because these are pricey advertisements to buy (and you may be better buying several smaller ads to place on the page instead of one big ad), the price of advertising will determine your break even point.

If you’re charging $50 per month and the Sunday ads are $1,000 per month, you need 20 real estate agents to break even just on the advertising.

Perhaps radio produces equal results for $500 per month… then it’s 10 agents to break even on the ads.

IF you’re not so sure that voice mail will really work, should you get people to subscribe to email or a text message system?

See how James Jones uses email for a similar service when you download his free ebook