On Tuesday this week I gave my first in-person talk at a 4Networking meeting since before the pandemic. I first joined 4N back in about 2015 and I’ve given numerous talks around the network over the years. At 4N these talks are known as 4Sights and they are not allowed to be a sales pitch, but an insight into your business or your life.
During the pandemic everything moved online and I did give a couple of presentations at these meetings, but nothing beats taking the stage in real life!
My talk this week was all about how to create a great voicemail greeting for your business, which is a really important thing to get right because it may be the first impression a potential new client gets of your business.
It was an interactive presentation. I encouraged several attendees to get out of their comfort zone and come and read some voice over scripts for me to help demonstrate the points I was making. It was a lot of fun and the attendees all had a laugh as well as learning something!
I enjoy talking at events like this, though when I was at school I absolutely hated public speaking.
The venue for this week’s meeting was the Beefeater in Lincoln – a nice enough place, expect that as the restaurant was quite busy, they squashed us into a corner near the toilets. Not only that, we had to spread out either side of a pillar to have enough room to eat our breakfast which made introducing ourselves to the room somewhat tricky…
Anyway, for my talk everyone squeezed up into one small area so they could see and hear me – they were almost sitting on each others’ knees – which made for an intimate talk. At least nobody had to walk far to join me at the front.
What I taught people was a few top tips that will make a voicemail greeting sound better. These include smiling while you’re talking, imagining you’re speaking to just one person, and thinking about your delivery (upbeat and happy, friendly and approachable, serious etc). At the end of my talk I gave everyone a top 10 tips sheet to take home, along with a template for writing a good voicemail greeting. (You can get these too if you’d like – they’re downloadable from my website under the ‘Freebies’ tab).
Of course not everyone enjoys recording their voicemail greeting – some people hate the way they sound, or they just get nervous about doing it. If that’s you, there are two ways I can help. If you just want a generic greeting that’s better than the one your phone came with, pop to the shop on my website and you can download one of three different done-for-you messages for just £4.99. Or if you want something more bespoke that’s tailored to you and your business I can do that too with prices starting at just £60.
And if you’re looking for a speaker for your next networking meeting, and you’d like me to come and deliver my talk, I would be delighted to do that too!
Get in touch at liz@lizdrury.co.uk